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(John David Mercer, USA TODAY Sports) The Greenbrier Classic is held at the The Old White TPC in White Sulphur Springs, W.V., where the PGA TOUR began visiting in 2010. This week’s field is limited but sports a few familiar faces, most notably the Travelers Championship winner (more on him in a moment). The Old White resembles Scottish links golf courses, most notably St. Andrews. The fairways are wide and forgiving, but the putting greens are undulating challenges that will challenge the pros to go after flags. Build around Bubba Watson: It seems like an easy recommendation to place Watson atop this list mere hours after his win at the Travelers Championship … because it is easy. Watson is the best in the field. He has a summer home in West Virginia and is intimately familiar with the Greenbrier. Bubba hasn’t fared better than T16 in two stops here, with T30 being his low-water mark. Still, because o

By: Luke Kerr-Dineen | June 29, 2015 5:18 pm Sad news from one of the most recognizable voices in golf. In a Golf World profile published Monday, longtime CBS golf commentator Peter Oosterhuis announced that he has early- onset Alzheimer’s Disease and has known for about a year. Oosterhuis enjoyed a successful playing career before turning to the booth, notably forming a successful partnership with six-time major champion Nick Faldo at the Ryder Cup. According to the story: Oosterhuis has a hard time saying the official name of his diagnosis: early- onset Alzheimer’s … Now 67, Oosterhuis was given the bad news by a Charlotte neurologist last July. He had been aware of some memory loss that was affecting his commentary on CBS and Golf Channel. “Maybe in the course of my commentary, I wasn’t giving a lot of information like I used to; I would just talk about what’s on the screen

A mind reader would need an interpreter to know what Bubba Watson is thinking. A thought bubble wouldn’t help, either. The only option is to sit back and watch what he’ll do next, which isn’t always pretty, is sometimes ugly, and is never dull, in cooperation with his operating philosophy. “Why do what everybody else does?” he said once. “That’s boring.” (Getty Images) Watson is never boring, even with a three-shot lead with four holes to play, and four pars to win. So it was that Watson took the circuitous route to a victory in the Travelers Championship on Sunday, his second of the season, second in this event and the eighth of his PGA Tour career. He needed two extra holes to defeat Paul Casey in a playoff at TPC Highlands, making it more exciting than necessary and reinforcing the need to keep your eye on the ball when it has a pink dot and Bubba is hitting it. It won’t necessarily be a popular victory, though it should be. Hi

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press The final round of the U.S. Senior Open of Golf turned into a two-man race between Jeff Maggert and Colin Montgomerie, with the American coming out on top for his second major title of the year.  For his victory, Maggert will receive a nice chunk of change. According to Yahoo Sports, the total purse for the tournament is $3.5 million.  Maggert, who started 2015 by winning the Regions Tradition in May, fired a 65 in the final round to finish two shots ahead of Montgomerie. This was the 51-year-old's final putt of the day, via U.S. Open Golf: Here's the leaderboard following Sunday's final round at  Del Paso Country Club: 2015 U.S. Senior Open Leaderboard 1 Jeff Maggert -5 (65) -10

There's a familiar name atop the early leaderboard at the U.S. Senior Open. Tom Watson, 65, came within one shot of shooting his age, opening with a 4-under 66 at Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento, Calif. He needed just 26 putts to complete his round. Watson overcame an early double bogey to move to the top of the standings, carding four birdies over his inward half to sit one shot ahead of a number of players at 3 under, including two-time U.S. Open champ Lee Janzen. Watson, who won the U.S. Open in 1982, has never won this event, finishing second in 2002, 2003 and 2006. Watson's last Champions Tour victory came back at the 2011 Senior PGA Championship, and he hasn't recorded a top-10 finish in four Champions Tour starts this season.  Watson nearly became the oldest player to ever win a major at the 2009 Open Championship, and with 54 holes still to play in temperatures that are expected to eclipse 100 degrees, he could become the oldest winner of a Champions To

Jordan Spieth likes his chances of winning golf’s Grand Slam, but science and hocus-pocus are stacked against the newly crowned U.S. Open victor doing what the modern legends of the game have never achieved. Neil Paine at fivethirtyeight.com ran the numbers and they just don’t add up to Spieth sweeping the British Open and PGA Championship to wrap up the calendar slam. "No matter how you cut it, the odds of Spieth finishing off the Grand Slam are still fairly low -- about 1 percent, if the probabilities ... are any kind of guide," Paine wrote on Monday after Spieth became just the fourth player since 1958 to win the season’s first two majors and won back-to-back grand slam events for just the 13th time. Sure, crunching the data is one way to go if you’re into prognosticating about whether the world’s second-ranked golfer will lift the Claret Jug next month and the Wanamaker Trophy in August. A less reliable but truly tim

The Rocklin City Council voted unanimously early Wednesday morning not to allow rezoning along a golf course in the city. In a 5-0 vote that came just after midnight, the council denied plans proposed by Rocklin Golf Club owner Charlie Gibson that would allow new homes to be built near the fourth green and fifth tee. Rocklin residents packed the city council meeting Tuesday night to voice their thoughts, as some concerned opponents said the new construction would add traffic and hurt their property values. "Once the Rocklin open space is gone, it's gone forever -- no matter how small it is," said one opponent of the plan. For Carol Ellis, it's all about preserving the open space near her home. "To have that rezoned just so some developer can build a few houses and make a few dollars would set an awful precedent," Ellis said. However, Gibson and his staff said building homes is the only way to generate revenue and keep the cour

Each week on GolfChannel.com, we’ll examine which players’ stocks and trends are rising and falling in the world of golf. RISING Jordan Spieth (+10%): He won with flawless golf at Augusta, and now ugly golf at Chambers Bay. The strength of his game is that he has no weaknesses. Grand Slam talk (+8%): As if a return to St. Andrews wasn’t exciting enough â€" Rory’s defense, Watson’s farewell, the Home of Golf for goodness’ sake â€" we now have the possibility (likelihood?) of Spieth nailing down the year’s first three majors. Whoa.  Jason Day (+6%):  They won’t make a movie out of his gutsy week at the Open, but to finish in the top 10 at the toughest major, on one of the most grueling walks of the year (eight miles, 195 feet of elevation change), with those symptoms, was a remarkable feat. King Louie (+5%): Would he have won in a rout if he weren’t paired with Tiger? Only half kidding, because that sweet swing was grooved at Chambers. Just in

In this incredible era of near-perfect, record-shattering, computer-aided performance, one traditional quality is increasingly in short supply: personality. Character, some might call it. Technical prowess has a way of ironing out the things that make cars truly memorable beyond just their speed and handling. This is not a problem with the 292 horsepower 2015 Volkswagen Golf R. ( Full disclosure: Volkswagen needed me to drive a Golf R so badly they left one at my house for a week. I had to give it back a few days early because of a work trip to New York, but it was fun while it lasted.) I think that is especially interesting given the Golf R’s country of origin, and that country’s propensity as of late to turn out cars with incredible performance but feel just a little too synthetic. I’ve started calling them German Cyborg Cars.They’re these high tech, immensely powerful machines that c

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. -- Congratulations to Rory McIlroy, who just earned a prize that eluded Tiger Woods for his entire career: A true rival. That's how I planned to end this piece, back when I sat on the bank overlooking the 14th hole on Sunday, dead sure that Jordan Spieth would win the U.S. Open. I had just left Dustin Johnson behind after two bogeys and a three-putt par on 12 that might as well have been a bogey. I was supposed to stay with him all day, but when the energy starts to gather around a player like Spieth, you'd be an idiot to stay away. The prospect of walking up the 13th hole with DJ while the real action was taking place by the water was too daunting to consider, and so I abandoned him. Johnson's playing partner, Jason Day, wasn't much better. He couldn't hit a short putt all day, and was visibly sagging after his bout with vertigo that led to an on-course collapse Friday. The heroism of Saturday's 68 was long past, and no

Photo President Obama at the airport in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, before going to the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. â€" With four fund-raisers and an awkward reconciliation with the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, behind him, President Obama returned to a beloved golf oasis here for a weekend getaway with friends. This time, though, was different. A punishing drought has raised questions about whether such oases can survive, and about the president’s weekend here. The vast emerald green courses in the area are watered by a disappearing Colorado River and an underground aquifer that has fallen about 55 feet since 1970. While environmentalists generally support the president, some grumbled that he needed to take u

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press On Friday, Jason Day caused a serious scare when he became dizzy and collapsed on the ninth fairway. On Saturday, the 27-year-old earned a share of the 54-hole lead with a two-under 68 in the third round of the 2015 U.S. Open. Day is tied with Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and Branden Grace atop the leaderboard. According to the PGA Tour, it has been just over four decades since four golfers were tied for the lead after three rounds of the U.S. Open: You can view the full standings below: Simply finishing two shots under par in the third round of a major tournament on a course that is giving every golfer a wealth of problems is impressive all by itself. Day's performance was downright inspiring. His caddy revealed just how much Day's vertigo was affecting him on the course, per

It began simple enough, with an innocuous question on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive on Saturday. “Good morning, Mr. Player, how are you?” Golf Channel's Damon Hack asked. The answer, if it can be called that, was more of a world-class rant from Gary Player, all this delivered, or so it seemed, without his stopping to take a breath. Here is the video, followed by the transcript: “I’m standing in the most beautiful state in the world, Washington, Seattle, unbelievably beautiful, and we play this U.S. Open, this great championship, a group of people, the USGA that I have great respect for, but this has been the most unpleasant golf tournament I’ve seen in my life. I mean, the man who designed this golf course had to have had one leg shorter than the other. It’s hard to believe you see a man miss the green by one yard and the ball ends up 50 yards down in the rough. “Imagine, this is a public golf course. This is where we try to encourage people

The world’s best golfers started complaining about Chambers Bay months in advance, and many of them have openly ripped the site of the 2015 U.S. Open this week. The baked greens and rock-hard fairways are out of control, and despite leading the tournament after two rounds, Jordan Spieth called No. 18 “the dumbest hole I’ve ever played in my life.” That criticism is mild compared to what 1965 U.S. Open champion Gary Player had to say. “The worst golf course I might’ve ever seen in the 63 years as a professional golfer… The USGA, who I admire and have chosen great golf courses in this great United States of America â€" they’re preaching speed of play. Enjoyment. User-friendly. This golf course here, if you’re a 10-handicap, you couldn’t break 100 if you had the best day of your life. They’ve got pros putting from 20 feet and hitting the ball 20 foot to the right, a man misses the gree

Harry How/Getty Images Jason Day goes down with vertigo on the ninth hole. Chambers Bay Golf Course, located in University Place, Washington, is eliciting a variety of comments from the poor quality of the putting surfaces to the beautiful views of Puget Sound, from the scenic, yet unwalkable terrain to the poor viewing for spectators. And yet the overall site is so compelling that you wish that it was all that it could be. Phil Mickelson summed it up with one comment. “Amy wants to come out and follow, and she simply can't, she just can't come out and first of all see,” he said. This is a woman who has followed her husband on every continent where golf is played. Mickelson’s comment hits the mark for most who attended. Unless your idea of a good time at a golf tournament is waiting in line for

Tiger Woods’ latest ‘worst ever’ round was as difficult to watch as Fox Sports' telecast of the U.S. Open. All Tiger Woods could do, at the end of another awful round of golf in a season full of them -- this time in the opening round of the U.S. Open chamber of horrors at Chambers Bay -- was engage in a bit of gallows humor. "At least I kicked Rickie’s butt," quipped the 14-time major champion, who won his last grand slam event seven years ago at the U.S. Open. In a season of "worst evers" the 80 (15 shots back of co-leaders Henrik Stenson and Dustin Johnson) was Woods’ worst score at a U.S. Open. But, as the struggling former ace remarked after his late-afternoon round was beamed nationwide during prime TV viewing hours, he was at least a stroke better than one of his playing partners. Rickie Fowler, whose Players Championship win last month seemed eons ago, scraped in with an 81 -- two shots better than club pro Rich Berberian Jr.,

Fox Sports coordinating producer Mark Loomis vowed ahead of the U.S. Open to not overdo the technical graphics and gadgetry at his disposal. And Loomis delivered on that Thursday, sometimes to a fault, as the network launched coverage of its first major golf tournament in a 12-year, $1.2 billion partnership with the United States Golf Association. Within hours of Fox Sports 1 opening to broadcasters Joe Buck and Greg Norman, viewers complained on social media about a lack of informational graphics accompanying the action. Fox failed to identify who was shooting and how they were doing for entire holes at Chambers Bay Golf Course. One of the critics was Dan Jenkins, famed golf writer and author, who tweeted: “A tip to Fox Sports: Please put on the screen who I’m looking at and how they stand. Or is it going to be guesswork all week long?’’ The answer to that question is “probably” since Fox appeared to spend Day 1

The opening round of the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay is finally upon us, and it shouldn't disappoint.  Not only will the links-style course offer a refreshing backdrop for the year's second major, but playing conditions should also make for a fascinating weekend.  The 7,600-yard, par-70 beast in the Pacific Northwest is an unknown commodity, and some lengthy par fours and difficult putting conditions figure to shake things up as the tournament gets underway. According to CBS Sports's Kyle Porter, Chambers Bay touts the three longest par fours in U.S. Open history. The 14th hole measures 546 yards, the 11th clocks in at 537 yards and the 13th sits at 534 yards. That's one way to generate intrigue on the back nine. As favorites such as Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson get ready to tee off, here's a rundown of what to expect when play begins, with the following odds courtesy of Odds Shark.  Top Odds to Win U.S. Op