2012 U.S. Open: The Olympic Club Is Golf's Version of the Twilight Zone

If you think you’re going to see Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy battling it out for the U.S. Open title on Sunday afternoon at the Olympic Club, you might want to think again. 

The Olympic Club is golf’s version of the twilight zone.

It’s as if the fog rolls in off the San Francisco Bay on Thursday morning, and by the time it finally clears on Sunday evening, everyone is left scratching their heads and asking themselves, “What in the world just happened?”

In 1998, we had Lee Janzen—a U.S. Open champion from 1993 who had not won a single event anywhere in the world in almost three years—come back from a seven-stroke deficit on Sunday to defeat Payne Stewart, a guy who already had two majors under his belt and had been leading the tournament after each of the first three rounds.  

We had Scott Simpson upset Tom Watson in a shootout to win the 1987 U.S. Open.

We had Billy Casper erase a seven-stroke deficit on the back-nine to defeat Arnold Palmer in 1966 and complete one of the greatest comebacks (or meltdowns)—depending upon whether you are a glass half full or glass half empty kind of person—in the history of golf.

And then we come to the 1955 U.S. Open where Jack Fleck, while shaving and listening to Mario Lanza’s “I’ll Walk With God” in his motel room on Saturday morning, heard a voice telling him that he would win the U.S. Open.

So what happened next?

Well, of course Fleck went out and won the 1955 U.S. Open, defeating none other than Ben Hogan in an 18-hole playoff.

Four U.S. Opens have been held at the Olympic Club, and all four have produced shocking results. 

Janzen had no business defeating Stewart.

Prior to 1998, Janzen hadn’t won a tournament in nearly three years and was seven strokes behind Stewart, a two-time major champion, with just 15 holes to play.

Had it not been for a large gust of wind at the most opportune time, Stewart would have likely captured his third major championship title that afternoon in San Francisco.

Janzen hit a four wood off the tee at the fifth hole on Sunday, which had gotten stuck in a tree.

As Janzen walked back towards the tee box to hit what would have been his third shot and would have almost certainly led to a double bogey on the hole, a huge gust of wind just happened to shoot down the fifth fairway and knocked Janzen’s ball right out of the tree.

From there, Janzen chipped back into the fairway, hit a six-iron clear over the green and chipped in for a routine par…well, at least a routine par at the Olympic Club, a.k.a. golf’s Twilight Zone.

Palmer was eyeing the all-time U.S. Open scoring record with just nine holes to play in 1966, when Casper’s putter somehow caught fire and erased a seven-stroke deficit.

Watson was past his prime by 1987, but he also knew the Olympic Club like the back of his hand from his days at Stanford. He was writing one of the best comeback stories in modern golf history when little-known Simpson somehow took Watson down in a Sunday afternoon shootout.

And, needless to say, an Iowa driving range pro by the name of Jack Fleck defeating Ben Hogan at the Olympic Club in 1955 (with a set of golf clubs Hogan had just given him earlier in the week, no less) was quite possibly the greatest upset in the history of golf.

The other thing that cannot be completely overlooked was that each of these fluky U.S. Open Champions at the Olympic Club—Fleck, Casper, Simpson and Janzen—were deeply religious men.

Fleck to this day claims he heard some kind of divine voice coming through the mirror while shaving, telling him that he’d win the Open.

Casper was a devout Mormon, and Simpson donated 10 percent of his U.S. open winnings to his local church.

Whether it’s the San Francisco fog, the voices, the gusts of wind or the fact that four deeply religious men have managed to pull off some of the greatest upsets in golf history at the same course, the Olympic Club just has an eerie aura about it.

We certainly may see a shootout between the likes of Woods, Mickelson and McIlroy next weekend at the Olympic Club, but if the peculiar history of U.S. Opens held at the Olympic Club is anything to go by, we’re more likely to see a Jason Bohn or a Ben Crane emerge from the fog holding the U.S. Open trophy on Sunday.  

Golf fans, welcome to the Twilight Zone.

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