Golf Central

We bring you the best in US Open coverage, as befits a newspaper with 37 Pulitzer Prizes, and although circulation figures show we're the second-largest metropolitan daily paper in the US, you know who's No. 1! ... Once again, as only we can do at Torrey Pines (despite those local rags who call us the Old Gray Whale), we not only bring you the news that is fit to print, but also some (OK, all of it) that we have made up. Read on to find out What Didn't Happen At The US Open But Could Have...

The USGA and PGA Tour officials were trying to sort out who the main offenders were in the near-scrap, and have altered the working media's seating arrangements in the press center at Torrey Pines to make certain the warring parties are kept apart throughout the remainder of the US Open.

According to reporters on the scene, the tension in the Torrey Pines media center mounted when a casual discussion about what "the real Open" is turned heated. Press badges were hurled to the floor, laptops were slammed shut and papers scattered as several of the large - and, in many cases, overweight - journalists had to be separated.

"Somebody mentioned that Ben Hogan won four Opens, and one of the British contingent said that was untrue, that Hogan had actually only won one Open," said Chris Wightman, the USGA's Director of Communications. "And it went on from there. We're making certain there is nothing wrong with our set-up"

Wightman said a group of local Southern California journalists had been overheard "making fun" of the way their British counterparts pronounced various Mexican food items. A local scribe from the South Bay Daily Breeze was heard using a faux British accent and deliberately mocking one of his UK counterparts' pronunciation of "Natchos with Jalapeenos" using a hard-J consonant sound, and then giggling as he went for another bottle of Budweiser.

The beer the South Bay journalist was drinking was then described as "piss water" by a British newsman. A reporter from the Orange County Register also objected to being called a "colonial" by one of the British contingent, who then also referred to award-winning author and commentator Rick Reilly, formerly of Sports Illustrated but now of ESPN The Magazine, as a "smarmy git."

Phyllis Wade, the eighty-something matron of the US golf press who has worked as a volunteer in PGA Tour and USGA media centers since 1948, said she had "never seen anything like Thursday's affair" in all her years of dealing with the media.

"That English man Henry Longhurst was such a gentleman," said Mrs Wade. "In fact he was ever so complementary the first time when Mr Hogan won his famous Open at Riviera in '48, which gave the course it's name of Hogan's Alley. The newsmen used to get together and have cigars and glasses of port after typing in their reports."

Scottish golf journalist Lawrence Donegan of The Guardian tried to stay above the fray in the "Open" debate. "If they want to call it the 'Open' fair play to them," Donegan said. "I'm easy, dude. But Ben Hogan only won one 'Open', and that was at Carnoustie in 1953."

Not all of the British media were as easy-going as Donegan, whom, it must be noted, had several jobs prior to golf journalist, including spending several years in the States researching grassroots books such as California Dreaming (1999) about his time in the US as a used-car salesman. As a pop musician, Donegan also laid down the boxy groovy bassline to the Bluebells' 1993 jangly UK smash hit, "Young At Heart".

This was pointed out to the US journalists, but none of them had ever heard of Donegan's hit-making exploits or the song "Young At Heart", however, which touched off yet another row.

One British journalist, believed to be from the UK's best-selling golf magazine Today's Golfer, was heard to say: "Oi mate you're taking the piss," and then had to be separated from an offending local reporter by the Times' own Thomas Bonk (6-foot-5), former Associated Press lead golf writer Ron Sirak (250 pounds) and Golf Weekly's Jeff Rude (6-foot-4). The British magazine writer then left the press facility muttering: "It's like [expletive] Guantanamo Bay in this [expletive] place."

Efforts by Times researchers to determine what the British journalist meant by "taking the piss" were still underway at press deadline.

The USGA communications office issued a terse statement to all journalists, instructing them to "stop being so silly" and "just write better."

Heartfelt thanks to our dear colleagues and friends at the Los Angeles Times for not contributing to these reports, and apologies for any offence caused by them. We also promise no gray whales were harmed in the preparation of this report.
- SG Matthews