Congressional Golf Club and host for next Thursday’s starting U.S. Open has often been labelled the ‘Playground of the Presidents’.
But when the world’s top golfers take to the Maryland course it will very much be a case of ‘Pressure test for the Pro’s’.
Congressional's new par four 18th hole with clubhouse in background. Who'll be walking down the final fairway next Sunday as 2011 U.S. Open champion? (Photo - USGA)
Of the four Major’s, the U.S. Open is often rated the toughest. It questions every aspect of your game, and rarely does a U.S. Open champion win by anything than a few strokes under par.
Congressional is one of the most private golf clubs in America lying in Bethesda and just a short drive over the Potomac River from the seat of power in the U.S. – the Capital building and the meeting chambers for the House of Representatives and the Senate.
It was Congressman Oscar E. Bland and O.R. Lubring, who founded the Club and setting out, in the words of the Club ‘to provide an informal common ground where politician and businessmen could meet as peers, unconstrained by red tape’.
Herbert Hoover - Congressional's Founding President & eventual USA President.
They took the idea to Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, who agreed to serve as Founders’ Club President and, from 1922-23, Honorary Founding President of a soon-to-be-built Congressional Golf Club.
When founded in 1924, the club boasted so many politicians and people in authority that naming the club ‘Congressional’ hardly came as a surprise.
Nor did the decision to adopt the Capital building as the club’s logo.
Past members of Congressional reads like a who’s who of American politics.
U.S. Presidents who have been members of Congressional include William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald Ford.
Other prominent members included Harvey S. Firestone, and founder of Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, along with William C. Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst and Walter P. Chyrsler.
Then sitting U.S. President Bill Clinton was present in the gallery at the 1997 U.S. Open when Congressional last contested the event.
The Club has a long history of hosting big tournament golf including playing host to the 1964 U.S. Open, 1976 U.S. PGA Championship, the Kemper Open from 1980 to 1986, 1995 U.S. Senior Open and 1997 U.S. Open.
More recently, the Tiger Woods hosted AT & T National has been played at Congressional from 2007 to 2009.
However the course has undergone major changes since Woods won in 2009 and it’s why the AT & T National was switched to Pennsylvania last year.
For the 1997 U.S. Open the course played 7,213 yards and when Graeme McDowell steps out onto the first tee to defend his title, he’ll be staring at a 7,643 yard test.
And the absence of Woods has led to sharp decline in the price of ticket ahead of the season’s second Major.
In fact, they’ve dropped by 20% on the resale market on EBAY with a four day ticket that originally cost almost $US 500 now being able to bought for $US 402.
Ernie Els won the last U.S. Open to be played at Congressional and just doing enough to hold off Colin Montgomerie and Tom Lehman.
It was the second on three Major triumphs for the affable South African but after winning the 2002 British Open at Muirfield the Major victories have deserted Els.
“If you had asked me after my second U.S. Open win at 27, I would have said I would have won probably eight Majors, at least” said Els.
“So now, with a grand total of three, I would say yeah, I am a little disappointed I haven’t put another one on my resume.
“Other players, they would give anything just to win one. I think I probably could’ve won more.”
Els will get the chance to try and make if four Majors and in a U.S. Open, particularly in the absence of Woods for a first time, that looks already to be one of the most wide -open for some time.
