He's heard it all

Meet the gatekeeper for the U.S. Open

You need more than a dream to play in the U.S. Open; you also need $125 and a completed entry form filed before the deadline. You'd be surprised how difficult that second part can be.

Larry Adamson has heard it all in 21 years with the United States Golf Association. He is the organization's director of championship administration, which means he fields those 9,000 or so U.S. Open entries, plus those for all of the USGA's other championships. The USGA accepted 8,468 Open entries this year and rejected some 600-plus others for various reasons, from missed deadlines to bounced checks to bad credit cards to failure to sign the entry form.

MAILBAG Since it is illegal to pull and detach attached flora (branches, weeds, etc.), why shouldn't a player be penalized for pinching a smidgen of grass from the fairway and throwing it up in the air to gauge the wind? I know it's a technicality, but the whole golf rule book is filled with technicalities. The rules should at least make an exception for this wind-testing, but as the rules are written now, this is a breach every time. —Steve Eckelman, Austin, Texas Lighten up, Eckelbert Humperdinck. Take off that blue blazer, move out of your parents' basement, forget that your last name is an anagram for Lame Neck and live a little. As for the grass thing, just let it go, we're begging you. Do you know where I might find a list of golf games that can be played by our mixed league? We have played some but are running out of new ones. Our league consists of good and not-so-good players. —Cathy Calabrese, New Castle, Pa. I'm sure some other readers will contribute some league games. A few obvious ones: Criers: Subtract the three worst holes from your score. Hate 'Em: Pick two holes you hate before you tee off, subtract your scores on those holes when you're done. Hogan Ball: Subtract your putts from your score; fewest shots wins. Even Steven: Count scores from only the even holes. Honest Abe: Guess your score before you go out; closest without going over wins. Modified scramble: Pick the best drive, then everyone in foursome plays own ball in from there on each hole (with handicaps). Ringer Board: Played over several rounds, post your best score on each hole (with or without handicaps) and gradually improve your score. Blind Bogey: Pro secretly picks two holes to subtract from score before the round. Alternate Shot: Partners take turns playing one ball into the hole. Stableford: You get points for net birdies, pars, bogeys (5 for birdie, 3 for par, 1 for bogey, none for double, -2 for triple or worse; or assign any point values you wan). Pick Your Pro: Choose a pro who is playing in a PGA or LPGA event that day. Add your net score to the score of the pro you pick, say, Greg Norman. Flag: Add 80 percent of your handicap to the course rating; that's how many strokes you're allowed. Say you're allotted 75 shots. After you play No. 75, stick your flag in the ground at that point on the course. Player who advances their flag the farthest is the winner. Fewest Putts Wins: Self-explanatory. And, of course, Bingo Bango Bongo, the king of the lame games: Players in each group get one point for being first to hit the green, closest to the pin and first in the hole. Which means you must not play out of turn or putt out if you miss your first putt. One game, Cathy, that never bores is simple match play, individual or team. Don't keep stroke scores, just the match score. It also speeds up play because you can pick up once you've lost a hole. What is happening with Sergio García? At the beginning of the year I heard him brag about how good he was going to be this year, possibly better than Tiger. He is doing miserably and I haven't seen anything written on why he's having problems. Can you shed some light on this? —Joe Strobach, Sunnyvale, Calif. Joe, we know Sunnyvale is a famous rest home, but you've got to get out more. Sergio is far from miserable. He won the first event of the year. He was ninth in the World Match Play in February; fourth at The Players Championship in March; eighth at the Masters in April; and he won the Canary Open on the European tour at the end of April. OK, so he missed two cuts in Texas and was 73rd at the Memorial Tournament. Three weeks doesn't make a slump. If two wins in five months is miserable, then it's time to give up Matlock reruns, bud. Do you think that with Tiger Woods on the scene, golf has reached its peak in popularity? I follow with dismay the downward slide of baseball and Michael Jordan-less basketball, and I wonder if golf is currently at its summit. Through Tiger, can it be said about golf, "Now I've seen everything?" If so, I need to sell my shares of Callaway and Titleist. What are your thoughts on high-yield bonds? —Ed Wolpert, Orlando, Fla. No, Tiger hasn't peaked yet, nor has the game's popularity. Has he done the Grand Slam in a year? Just wait. Has he smashed Jack Nicklaus' record for majors? He will. Has he broken Sam Snead's all-time victories record? Just a matter of time. As for Byron Nelson's streaks for cuts made (113) and consecutive wins (11), the former is already within range and the latter may have fallen in 2000 if only Phil Mickelson hadn't done a Mongolian Reversal on Tiger at Torrey Pines, ending Woods' winning streak at six. Tiger continues to amaze, and just when you think interest is starting to wane, he does something to crank it up a notch. As for high-yield stuff, I'd go with one: The name is Bond, James Bond.

How difficult can it be to file an entry on time? Pretty difficult, it turns out. Even though the entry forms were available online two months before the April 24 deadline, Adamson said about 70 percent of the entries arrive at Golf House in the final three days. That FedEx convoy you saw was probably heading to Far Hills, N.J. And not only are Americans the league leaders in procrastination (or would be if they ever got around to it) -- they're world champion excuse-makers. But, of course, you already knew that.

Adamson, 61, a former high school basketball coach in Indiana who was sure he was "the next Johnny Wooden," will retire from the USGA this year, move to Nashville and pursue some other interests. So I asked him for his top five wackiest U.S. Open entry tales.

1. It's deadline day. Adamson's phone rings. A voice asks, Where are you? "I'm thinking it's a guy in the office," Adamson said. "I said, 'I'm here in my office.'" The caller is a taxi driver from Newark. I've got a piece of paper that's pretty important and I'm supposed to get it to you today but I'm lost. "I asked him where he was and he said he didn't know, he was calling from a pay phone across the street from a motel with a chicken on top of it," Adamson recalled. "I told him, 'I'm good, but I need more clues than that. Why don't you go ask a guy in the motel with the chicken on top -- it was actually a weather vane -- where you are.' He was in Somerville, N.J., only seven or eight miles away. The entry made it, but some golfer spent more than $200 to fly it in."

2. Another last-day caller. "He said, 'I've got this entry here. I'll mail it today, so look for it in four or five days,'" Adamson said. "I said, 'I'm sorry, they've got to be in hand at 5 p.m.' He said, 'Hey, this is my year, I'm playing well, I really think I can qualify,' and so on. Well, he calls back after half an hour and says he's not going to take no for an answer and asks, 'Where's your office?' He drove up from somewhere south of Washington, D.C. I'd forgotten about him, but about 4:30 that afternoon I get call from our switchboard that there's a guy who wants to see me. It's a large, middle-aged man, perspiring like crazy. 'Did I make it?' he asked. I said, 'You're fine, you've got a few minutes to spare.' He said, 'Well, I had a flat tire about a mile down the road and I had to run the rest of the way here.' Local qualifying was still 36 holes then, and curiosity got the best of me. I looked it up. He shot 88-95 or something like that. It wasn't his year."

3. Last year a man from Vermont waited until the last day and tried to beat the deadline by driving to USGA headquarters in New Jersey. "He was on his cell phone, he kept calling and saying, 'I'm on my way, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make it.' It was like a countdown," Adamson said. "He got caught in traffic on the George Washington Bridge. He didn't make it."

4. One man, incarcerated in the Augusta, Ga., jail, sent a special request. To qualify, he needed then-USGA director P.J. Boatwright to spring him from jail, set up a special 36-hole qualifier and play as his marker, and, the man added, you can even put the handcuffs back on him between shots. He didn't get in Open qualifying.

5. A Kansas overnight-mail service left 20 entries on a counter in its office for four or five days, missing the Open deadline. "The company pleaded its case, saying it was a human mistake," Adamson said. "But we couldn't accept those."

Here's some key advice if you're thinking of entering the Open or any other USGA event: Enter early. If a qualifying site fills up, it's first-come, first-served. Adamson said several host pros at a qualifying site got bumped and had to play at a different course because they were among the last to file entries. Also, be careful. Mistakes on the online entry forms are common. This year one aspiring Open entrant called, saying he hadn't received his starting time or pairing for local qualifying. On the computer entry form, he'd put only his name and "Columbia, S.C.," no other address. "Plus, I looked it up and told him, 'Sir, qualifying at that site you wanted was yesterday,'" Adamson said. "He wasn't very happy."

Last-day computer entries with mistakes are too late to correct. The errors include wrong credit card numbers or bad credit cards, and several players accidentally checked a box saying they were reinstated amateurs. (Their entries were declined.) Several other people incorrectly listed themselves as fully exempt on the qualifying form, having checked the wrong box.

"Americans, we love rules and regulations until it comes to us -- then I'm the exception," Adamson said. "We have a policy so it's fair for everyone. Mothers of junior players, they're the worst. Blood is thick. A mother isn't concerned with your policy, just what you're going to do for her child and you'd better give him a break. I had a woman tell me last week, 'You should really be proud of yourself. You just cost this family a college scholarship. The college coach was going to be there to watch our son play.' It's like talking to a wall. You just have to listen and say, 'Yes, ma'am.'"

As for ringers, players who compete in local qualifying and don't come within 10 shots of par -- that standard has now been lowered to eight -- receive a letter from the USGA that requires them to send additional scores from other events to show that they're legitimate competitors. If you don't respond to that letter, you're not going to get in another qualifier. "When I first came here, the blacklist of those players was 150," Adamson said. "Our black list now is 13,000. The letter doesn't stipulate what competition the scores can be from and 90 percent of those who replay are reinstated. But you have people try to clean themselves up in the last three hours before entry deadline. I had one guy who didn't respond to the letter ask me to cut him some slack. I said, 'What events did you play in last year?' He said, 'None, I was too busy. You don't understand what it's like out here in the world.' I said, 'You want to try to qualify for the national championship when you didn't meet the stroke policy, didn't answer the letter and haven't played in an event in the last year and you want me to cut you some slack?' He said, 'That's right. You said it well, man.'"

Adamson said he'll miss the USGA but probably not the excuses that come from the qualifiers. "The U.S. Open is one of the great sporting events," he said. "There's nothing else in sports like it. Your next-door neighbor can try to play in the Open. The odds aren't very good, but he can do it. Just send in your $125 and see what happens. The U.S. Open is the last bastion. When I watch the Open on TV, I always think about what happened at local qualifying in Amarillo or Indianapolis or wherever leading up to it. That's the story, to me. At local qualifying, you can have one guy who's dead serious and has a shot paired with another guy who watched Tiger play last Sunday and thought it looked pretty easy."

What's he going to do next April when he's not staying late into the night at the USGA office going through entries? "I'll probably call in and say, 'Hey, how's it going?' And then laugh," Adamson said.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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