Saturday, June 16, 2012
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Youngstown’s Dennis Miller watches his shot during Round 2 of the U.S. Open on Friday at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. Miller, who is golf director at Mill Creek, missed the cut after finishing 12 over for the day and 22 over for the tournament.
RELATED: Furyk ‘plods’ way to share of lead at Open’s halfway
Mill Creek’s Dennis Miller has experience of a lifetime at US Open
By matthew Peaslee
The Masters bills itself as a “tradition unlike any other.”
Although he missed Friday’s cut at a separate major tournament, Dennis Miller’s time at the U.S. Open in San Francisco was an experience unlike any other.
“All in all, I wouldn’t change a thing this week,” Miller said. “I came in with very low expectations and once I saw the golf course I knew I was in for an uphill, tough battle.”
He shot a 12-over 82 on Friday at The Olympic Club to finish his two-day tournament with a 22-over 162.
“That’s definitely the highest I’ve ever shot,” Miller said. “It was so difficult. If you hit the ball in the rough, you really weren’t left with many options. You just had to punch it out and basically waste a stroke.
You couldn’t get it around the green where you’d like to get it up and down.”
Miller netted a par on his first hole of the day, the 449-yard, par 4, No. 9. A triple bogey on No. 1 took him to 4-over on the day and 17-over for the tournament. His biggest problem, though, was the awkward fairways.
“If a fairway is 30 or 40 feet wide, you literally have a about a 10-foot landing area on one of the sides because they slope right to left,” he said. “If you hit the center and catch the slope, you’re going to roll down into the rough. That happened to me so often.
“If you didn’t have it in the fairway — you were done. It made for a long day.”
A long day for everybody. Only three players are under par and tied for the lead with a 1-under.
Tiger Woods, another round closer to a serious shot at his 15th major, overcame three straight bogeys on the front nine for an even-par 70. Jim Furyk, nine years removed from his U.S. Open title outside Chicago, plodded his way around Olympic for a 1-under 69. Former PGA champion David Toms kept a steady presence in his round of 70.
Woods had to be close to his best simply to break par.
“Well, that was not easy,” Woods said. “That golf course was some kind of quick. ... You had to stay as patient as possible.”
Furyk rolled in a 40-foot birdie putt from off the third green in the morning, the highlight of his 69.
“Plod, I think, is a good word,” Furyk said. “You take what the course gives you and play the best you can from there.”
Woods is coming off his second win of the year two weeks ago at the Memorial, and hasn’t lost a step. It might not show it in the scores, just the leaderboard.
“A long way to go,” he said.
Sharing the lead with other major champions might not be a coincidence.
“Whoever wins this golf tournament is going to be a great champion, somebody that’s probably won events before, that can handle the emotions and can handle the adversity in a U.S. Open, and somebody with experience,” Toms said. “At least that’s what I think. You never know. Strange things can happen, but I would think that you would see a lot of that on the leaderboard come late Sunday.”
Defending champion Rory McIlroy missed the cut for the fourth time in his last five tournaments. He set a U.S. Open record last year at Congressional with a 131 through 36 holes. He was 19 shots worse at Olympic, with a 73 giving him a two-day score of 150.
Also leaving San Francisco far earlier than anyone expected were Luke Donald, the world’s No. 1 player, Masters champion Bubba Watson and Dustin Johnson, coming off a win last week at the St. Jude Classic.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.