U.S. Open Golf 2012: Why the Field Will Take Golf's Top-Rated Stars

It shouldn't be surprising if golf's elite are swallowed up by the brutal test of The Olympic Club at the 2012 US Open.

It's a fittingly foggy forecast in San Francisco this week. Literally, because that is typical in the City by the Bay, but especially for the championship itself.

Golf is a game in which the top rated players are separated from the rest by the finest of lines.

At the US Open in particular, that line blurs more than usual, and sometimes it's just about getting a lucky break at the right time.

Lee Janzen won the last championship held at this course with a final score of even par. The winning number in 2012 is likely to hover far closer to par than Rory McIlroy's record 16-under total last year at Congressional.

McIlroy's breakthrough at a major catapulted him into immediate stardom, but Curtis Strange was the last to repeat as US Open champion in 1988 and 1989. Since then, golf has seen a massive increase in parity.

Since Michael Campbell's victory in 2005, the only player who wasn't a first-time winner of the event was Tiger Woods in 2008. That was also the last time Woods won a major.

While the odds aren't in McIlroy's favor to win his second consecutive title—or his second Open, period—the other elite players in the world can't love their odds, either. Neither can former champions.

In 1987, the Open at Olympic was won by Scott Simpson, and it was his only major title. His three-under-par total was the lowest in the five times the course has hosted the event.

Any player can get hot (er...shoot relatively close to par), and the final day of the tournament will turn into "any given Sunday."

Many of the world's top players enter the year's second major with lots of momentum and in fine form. In fact, only Matt Kuchar and Hunter Mahan have failed to record at least a Top 10 leading up to this event.

Aside from the recent case of McIlroy, those who have won the US Open starting with Campbell have faded in recent years.

Campbell is not the same golfer at all. Geoff Ogilvy, Angel Cabrera, Tiger Woods, Lucas Glover and Graeme McDowell all enter this tournament with their games wildly inconsistent. With the grand exception of Woods, all of these players have fallen off the radar in the golf world.

Sure, people remember that they won, but it didn't serve as a catapult for the rest of their careers.

This may be a little difficult to follow, and that's the point. If fans expect to watch a huge tournament and see the players finish similar to where they stand in the Official World Golf Ranking, they are watching the wrong tournament.

That's not to say there won't be intriguing storylines along the way with the game's top players.

Luke Donald has established himself as the world No. 1 with six wins in the past year-and-a-half, but he has never won a major.

Lee Westwood has held the top rank for a brief time, but he has only had close calls at majors. He finished tied for seventh in the 1998 championship.

Those two are paired with McIlroy in what should be an exciting featured trio in the first two rounds.

Even 14-year-old Andrew Zhang will be in the field. Having just finished the eighth grade, Zhang is the youngest player in the tournament's history. He wasn't even born the last time the US Open was held at The Olympic Club.

The funny thing is, Zhang will probably beat some full-grown established pros this week, whether he makes the cut or not.

Most US golf fans want to see a major player win their major—whether it's Tiger breaking a four-year major dry spell, Phil finally winning that elusive first Open or Rory further fortifying his label as the game's next big thing,

The cream of the crop may rise to the top, but the victor will probably be someone who is initially overlooked. It will be much to the dismay of fans of the game's most popular players, some of whom are sure to be in the hunt on Sunday afternoon.

So who in this deep, world-class field will win this thing? Whether your favorite wins or not, you will stay tuned.

Won't you?