A couple of observations about this 98th U.S. Open at Olympic, as we approach the halfway point:

• As pretty as the Lake Course is, Olympic's Ocean Course, across the street, is prettier. I wandered over there as the last of the 154 golfers (Tommy Tolles withdrew with a bad back, Dudley Hart with a bad wrist) finished play on the Lake Course Thursday. The Ocean Course was shrouded in cloud cover with a tiny ray of sunshine poking through over the Pacific. Had I been packing clubs I'd have snuck on.

• Thursday and Friday at the Open are the longest single days in sports (the first rounds of the NCAA hoops tourney would be a close second). I got to Olympic by 7 a.m. to watch Steve Pate hit the tourney's first shot (fittingly, it went into the gnarly rough on the right). By the time the last shot was struck, Tom Watson and Tom Kite were on the Senior tour and Matt Kuchar was of legal drinking age.

PREDICTION ... The weather will stay the same (hazy, not much wind) and so will the scores (around par), but look for players to be more conservative when confronted by the leafy green veggies otherwise known as USGA rough. I watched Mark Calcavecchia learn the hard way. On the fifth hole, he got into the left rough, went for the green and hit it about five feet. He made double. On the 9th hole, he pushed his tee shot into the right rough. When he pitched out too aggressively, his ball rolled through the fairway, through the trampled and matted left rough and into the 10th fairway. He then hit a beauty, but missed a bunny for bogey and made another double.

WYNN SHOWS PLACE...I ran into Michelle Fryatt in the gallery. She told me her husband, Ed Fryatt, played on the Nike tour in `95 and has been relegated primarily to the Omega Tour in Asia, but has still been hangin' with the big boys. Before they flew to San Francisco, Michelle and Ed, a UNLV alum, went to a party at the Las Vegas home of casino mogul Steve Wynn. Said Michelle, "We were going 'Do you think we should bring chips and salsa?'"

THE FLY ON THE BALL SAW...Pricey stuff at the world's largest souvenir stand, the U.S. Open merchandise tent. Cheapest: a ball marker, for $2. Most expensive: a $275 framed panoramic picture of Olympic. Most in demand: a brown Beanie Baby-like stuffed bear, with the Open logo. By 11 a.m. Monday all 1,000 of the $12 items had sold out ... A man who tried to get Tim Herron to switch cigarette brands, just after Herron had hit his second shot on the par-5 first hole. Herron politely declined.

UP AND OVER ... If you're going to watch an unreasonable amount of golf, you may as well get a good view. That's why 62-year-old Phil Mickelson Sr. (the golfer's dad) was in the U.S. Open merchandise tent hawking periscopes on Thursday at Olympic Club. Mickelson, a former Navy and commercial pilot, is the owner of Sportscope periscopes, which cost $59 and are especially useful at crowded venues like the Open. He told me his most critical Sportscope application came when he realized a squirrel was digging up his backyard putting green in San Diego. Using the Sportscope he caught the squirrel, which no longer exists.

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Previous Views from the Gallery
Thursday, June 18 Wednesday, June 17
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Alan Shipnuck's Round 1 Reflections U.S. Open Photo Gallery Alan Shipnuck's Golf Mailbag Open Preview: Fresh Face or Fossil? SI Flashback: The Open at Olympic
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