Tiptoeing Through Hell

Veteran golf writer John Strege gives you the history and takes you behind the scenes of the US Open, considered the most difficult tournament in golf.

The US Open Golf tournament, one of the four 'Majors' together with The Masters, The British Open, and the PGA, is widely considered the most difficult of the four tournaments. Each year the tournament is played on a different course. Fifty years ago the US Golf Association, whose tournament this is, decided the condition of the courses had to be toughened. The fairways on the designated course narrowed, the rough was allowed to grow tall and the greens were mowed close and rolled frequently, producing surfaces whose slickness the pros have compared to billiard tables.

In Tiptoeing Through Hell, John Strege has chronicled the last 50 years of the tournament when these punitive conditions have held sway.