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 The U.S. Open championship has been played at the Olympic Club in San Francisco three times: 1955, 1966 and 1987. With its narrow fairways and lofty trees, Olympic has tamed some of golf's legends, including Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer. This year, as the Open returns to Olympic for a fourth time, CNN/SI offers you a chance to relive some of the course's famous—and infamous—championship moments. A Summit Of Drama Playing at this swashbuckling best, Arnold Palmer had the U.S. Open all but tucked away—twice. Then disaster struck—twice—and cool Bill Casper swept up the pieces in a topsy-turvy playoff roundby Alfred Wright
Two small statistics reveal the strength of Casper's performance. There were only 15 subpar scores in the entire Open, and Casper had four of them in the rounds he played-69, 68, 73, 68 and the playoff 69. He one-putted 33 greens and did not three-putt a green until the ninth hole of the playoff. And he calmly played his own game, no matter how bad things looked. A subdued and shaken Palmer, sitting in front of his locker after Sunday's calamity, said, "It's hard to believe." By Monday night it was even harder to believe. In fact, who could?
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The 85th hole is a long time to wait to get the lead in a
72-hole golf tournament, but Bill Casper can be a very
patient man. By going his patient way at San Francisco's
Olympic Country Club this week he defeated that cataclysm
with legs, Arnold Palmer,
in a stunning U.S. Open. It was an Open that for three days
pitted two of golf's most contrasting stylists against
each other at a time when each was displaying his
characteristics to the fullest. Palmer flashed a return to
the dramatic heights of his
heyday, capping three and a half rounds of masterful golf
with one of the most disastrous collapses in the history of
the 66-year-old tournament. In the last nine holes on
Sunday he blew a seven-stroke lead, and nothing quite so
shocking has happened
since-coincidence-Palmer came from seven strokes behind to win
the 1960 U.S. Open. His last-hour unheroics dropped him
A dejected Palmer walks off the course at the 1966 Open.
