Thought He Was On Sacred Ground

There were two winners during this weekends US Open at Pinehurst.  Out of 155 golfers who teed it up on Thursday only two were able to break par which is exactly what the USGA wanted when they allowed Pinehurst to dig up the modern golf course  it had become and replace it with the 1905 course it use to be.  The USGA got exactly what they wanted except for one thing 156 players teed up on Thursday.

Martin Kaymer won the US Open by mercy rule if they  were playing baseball.  It was over by the 7th inning.  Everyone that played this weekend all of them hit plenty of what they thought were good shots only to watch their balls trickle through the green or land on the green and roll off the front.

Kaymer had some of those too but he was the only one that seemed to make the right decision every time.  He took an unplayable lie while his ball laid piled up against pine straw that rains  had created on Saturday .  Even coming down 18 ahead what seemed like 20 shots instead of becoming a macho man and trying to power on the green from 150 yards in front of a full house of people and a national TV audience he chose to chip out of the wire grass bush that was in his way and hit the shot about 20 yards.

My son Brooks who has coached a national champion Tri Athlon athlete preaches all the time your mind and your body need to be in sync.  There is no doubt  Kaymer had all his game together this weekend and nobody else did.  About five o'clock Johnny Miller made a comment when the Sunday round was beginning to look like a rout that the young guns needed to make a charge and none did.

If you were like me and whether I watched it live or on tape I saw just about every minute of  golf at some point this weekend the second winner this weekend was Erik Compton.  I had never heard of him before Friday but I think everyone that heard his story pulled hard for him Sunday.

A nine year old is told he has Viral Cardio Myopathy and by the age of 12 had his first heart transplant Fifteen years later feeling discomfort  which he understood he was having a heart  attack and another six month another transplant.

How lucky can this guy be?  There are people who stay on transplant list for years many die before a match can be found.  By the age of 28 he has had two.  After playing golf at Georgia he spent from 2001 until 2012 playing on any tour he could get on.  Canadian, Hooters any place he could get permission to play until he won his PGA card in 2012.

If you were still watching by the time he hit his second shot on the green at 18 he almost came to tears when he realized as he began that walk in front of 20,00 or more circling the 18th green that he was playing his greatest golf  and this was what he had lived his life for this moment.

Tying Ricky Fowler as the only two of the 155 to break par when interviewed by TV afterwards about what he thought PineHurst Number 2  was.  "He said I thought I was on sacred ground".  After all he been through he thought he was in Heaven.