Golf
Terry Blount, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

Key to Chambers Bay is getting over the hills

Golf

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. -- This weekend just might be an old guy's paradise on Puget Sound, or it might be a Puget Sound purgatory.

Depending on how you look at it, Chambers Bay is a chance for the over-40 golfers to compete at the U.S. Open, and possibly win it. A links-style golf course like Chambers Bay (a first for a U.S. Open) is considered the great equalizer for professional golfers, especially players whose better days might have passed them by.

However, there's a catch. Most links courses are relatively flat. Chambers Bay is a virtual roller coaster of hills and slopes, which includes lots of climbing on a course that will play as long as 7,700 yards on a couple of the tournament rounds.

If you are an older golfer, you better be in shape.

"Yeah, 100 percent," said 2013 U.S. Open champion Justin Rose, a fit 6-foot-3, 195 pounds at age 34. "I think there's a big fitness element this week. There are a lot of us who have been here preparing harder for this championship than many others, because there's an even bigger physical demand."

Rose, who won this year at New Orleans two weeks after finishing tied for second at the Masters, said he had a plan coming into Chambers Bay, realizing the physical challenge.

"One of my keys was to practice hard Friday, Saturday, Sunday [last week], but conserve energy Monday and Tuesday," Rose said. "You want to be 100 percent prepared Thursday morning, but you need to have your best stuff on the weekend. You can put so much time and energy into preparation that you kind of burn yourself out a little bit."

Phil Mickelson hopes he doesn't burn out. Mickelson turned 45 on Wednesday and is hoping to win the U.S. Open for the first time. He would become only the sixth player in the Masters era (1934) to complete the career Grand Slam.

Hale Irwin was the oldest U.S. Open winner at age 45, but that was 25 years ago. He is one of only five golfers to win a major championship at 45 or older. But Jack Nicklaus is the only other man to do it in the past 30 years, winning the Masters in 1986 at age 46.

Mickelson won the Open Championship at Muirfield in 2013 at 43, which would seem to indicate his chances here are good if the physical demands don't take a toll on him. Mickelson feels he's in better shape today than he was when he won at Muirfield.

"For the last couple of years, my swing speed had declined significantly," Mickelson said. "That was because I didn't put the time in. Now my swing speed is back not only to where it was four or five years ago, but faster. I've been able to hit 400 or 500 balls a day where I had been limited to maybe 150 or 200.

"As you get older, you have to put more work in so your body can withstand the regimen that is needed to play golf at the highest level, as well as have the speed that's necessary to hit the shots you have to hit."

Age is just a number to Mickelson.

"I'm 45, but I still love golf and appreciate the fact that I'm able to do what I love to do,'' he said. "Some people don't want to do it that long, and I understand. It's each individual's own preference."

Miguel Angel Jimenez, the ponytailed, potbellied Spaniard who has a cigar in his mouth as he's playing his round, prefers to keep going at age 51. The colorful Jimenez finished fourth at the Masters in 2014 and ninth at the Open Championship in 2012.

If you doubt whether he can hold up at Chambers Bay, check out the video of his stretching routine, in which he looks ready to join Cirque du Soleil when his pro golfing days end.

Lee Janzen, 50, probably thought his U.S. Open playing days were over before he took medalist honors in a sectional qualifier last week at Purchase, New York. The two-time U.S. Open winner (1993 and 1998) is playing in the event for the first time since 2008.

Janzen, who won a Champion's Tour event this year, laughed Monday when asked if he had doubts about his chances.

"Like why would I try and qualify for an 8,000-yard golf course since I'm playing with old guys now?" Jansen said. "More than half the guys last week said, 'Hey, congratulations on qualifying.'

"And then added a comment like, 'What were you thinking? Why do you want to go play against all those flat bellies that hit it 350 yards on a course that you have to hit it 350 yards?' But I wanted to qualify all along. I am here on purpose."

Well, they say 40 is the new 30 and 50 is the new 40. If so, maybe one of the old guys can hold up physically and find U.S. Open paradise on the banks of Puget Sound.

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