U.S. Open golf as a 'Michigan football game.'

The golfers out there will get a kick out of this.

First, a bit of golfing minutiae.  The U.S. Amateur is one of the great little-known events in golf.  It is a fantastic event, played on some great golf courses that sometimes use the event as a tune-up or an audition for a U.S. Open.  Because it is played as a "match play" event, it makes for either riveting (when, say Tiger Woods is coming from behind, to win his third in a row) or boring (when, say, Byeong-Hun An is lapping his opponent) drama, such that tv is usually afraid to spend much time on it.  And crowds are so sparse, the USGA traditionally lets people attend for free.  Not so the USGA's big event, the U.S. Open, where tickets are pricey and hard to get sometimes.  Because they can usually only allow about 30,000 people at most on a golf course.

This year, and this week, the U.S. Am is at Erin Hills in Delafield, Wisconsin, halfway between Milwaukee and Madison.  It is a very cool, new golf course that has gotten such rave reviews that they awarded it the 2017 U.S. Open.

The USGA's big honcho for competitions is a very interesting guy named Mike Davis.  They asked Mike Davis about Erin Hills, and he said:

"I guess I'd put it this way: If I compare this to, say, Bethpage or Pinehurst, which would be our biggest U.S. Open sites, this makes those sites look tiny in terms of what you can do," Davis said. "It is a huge site.

"This might be the first U.S. Open where we don't have to put a cap on tickets. . . . Think about a University of Michigan football game. You could put that many people on this golf course and they would move around just fine."

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/golf/128358708.html

[The complete article from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is quite good and worth reading.]  What caught my eye and what was so hilarious about this is that Erin Hills is only about 60 miles due east from Camp Randall and the Wisconsin Badgers.  Also known as, "chopped liver."