The Tide is Turning for the USGA

I know that the Open is over and we should be talking about the Travelers Championship - yeah, right. But I wanted to have one last post on the entire Open experience.

Geoff Shackelford has a couple of nice posts with reviews of his experience and they seemed largely positive (not talking about course design here).

Here's his post on the experience, and one the Championship Vision mini TVs provided by American Express (or at least sponsored by them). The TVs are very similar to the ones used at the Players Championship, but are by RCA instead of Kangaroo TV.

You've heard me, the players, and the media in attendance rave about the course setup. Mike Davis has really set the bar for major championship setup. In fact, I think he is the inspiration behind a second set of tees that I bet will be coming to Augusta National for next year's Masters. I would also mention that the PGA Championship was really the gold standard for setup until Davis came along - fair, but tough. Davis borrowed from that setup, added his own elements (tiered rough among them), and had the Open setup at his disposal to create a great experience.

I came into the Mike Davis era ranking the US Open as my least favorite major to watch. After this year, it has skyrocketed to second place. Nothing is going to change my mind about the Open Championship, sorry.

How about you? Is the USGA changing your mind about their feature championship?