Forty-one years later, it remains the benchmark by which demanding tests of golf are held, and Hale Irwin won’t dispute that winning the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in 1974 was grueling work. It’s just that in one respect there was an ease to it.
“By Tuesday, 70 percent of the field had given up,” Irwin said. “I said to myself: All I have to do is beat 30 percent.”
So infamously tough was the golf course setup that the late Dick Schaap wrote a book about the week and titled it “Massacre at Winged Foot.” Legendary are the incidents that took place, from Jerry McGee getting heckled in a practice round and challenging that fan to a $100 bet that he couldn’t advance a golf ball out of greenside rough at the 18th, to Jack Nicklaus putting off the green on his first hole Thursday, to Johnny Miller saying he knows “what 6-inch rough looks like and that wasn’t 6-inch rough, it was much higher.