No one at the USGA has said it, but nine years after Pierce County-owned Chambers Bay hosted the 2015 U.S. Open, it’s pretty clear the national championship is not coming back to the University Place course.
A U.S. Women’s Open? The chance of that coming seems remote, too.
Future sites for the U.S. Open have been selected through 2042 and future sites for the U.S. Women’s Open have been picked through 2036, and no Chambers Bay.
Pierce County harbored hopes of being in the USGA’s rotation for both of those events. Instead it’s in the USGA’s rotation for the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. Two weeks ago, the USGA announced that the low-profile team event was returning to Chambers Bay in 2028 after previously being there in 2021.
That announcement didn’t even deserve a polite golf clap. It’s an event that only the participants care about. It’s why there were few if any fans at the 2021 event.
Chambers Bay deserves better from the USGA, particularly after it went through the long process of changing the grass on the greens that were a big part of the story of the 2015 U.S. Open.
It seems Pierce County might agree.
According to a report in the Tacoma News-Tribune, Don Anderson, the executive counsel to Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier, said the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour has reached out to the county about holding a tournament at Chambers Bay. Anderson told the News-Tribune the county was ready to listen.
That’s a long way from the controversial tour coming to Chambers Bay, and there would undoubtedly be a lot of opposition if the talks become serious.
Anderson and a communication spokesperson for Pierce County did not return messages seeking further comment, but the big news is that Chambers Bay seems no longer wed to the USGA.
When the PGA of America needed a new site for the 2022 PGA Championship, Anderson told the News-Tribune it wasn’t actively pursuing that, citing the relationship with the USGA.
Although there are a few courses that have hosted championships run by both the PGA of America and the USGA, most are aligned with just one of the organizations.
“I don’t think we would move forward (on a bid) without the USGA’s concurrence,” Anderson told the News-Tribune in 2021. “Our relationship with them is great. They’ve expressed interest in holding future events at Chambers. We wouldn’t want to do damage to that relationship, which is a real and ongoing one.”
Three years later, things have obviously changed.
Eight times since then, the USGA announced sites for future U.S. Opens and U.S. Women’s Opens. It surely had to pain Pierce County each time that Chambers Bay was bypassed.
Last year, the USGA announced that Chambers Bay would host the 2027 Junior Amateur and the 2033 U.S. Amateur. Both are big steps up from the Four-Ball event, particularly the U.S. Amateur, but they are clearly not the prizes Pierce County was hoping for.
Why is the USGA not bringing the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open to Chambers Bay, at least for the foreseeable future?
Most answers go back to 2015.
The U.S. Open at Chambers Bay had highlights and lowlights. It had a star-packed leaderboard and a dramatic finish, with Jordan Spieth winning by a shot after Dustin Johnson missed a four-foot birdie putt on the final hole.
It was played in front of enthusiastic crowds and records were set when it came to the amount of merchandise sold.
But it is also remembered for the bumpy greens that players criticized day after day and the lack of space where fans were allowed to watch.
Mike Davis, who led the USGA at the time, was a big champion of Chambers Bay. He said beforehand that it would be a “big failure” if the U.S. Open did not return to Chambers Bay.
“We feel it’s a great site, there is the excitement that we want, and we would like more U.S. Opens to come,” he told The Seattle Times in 2014. “As far as I am concerned, if it’s just one time and we are done, then it will be a big failure. It’s too special, and the course is too unique not to have more U.S. Opens. We want to come back.”
After the event, Davis called it a success, despite the players’ issues with the greens.
The problem with the greens was that unseasonably hot weather allowed the native poa annua grass to overtake the nonnative fine fescue greens, even with workers handpicking the poa annua grass from them.
But any issues with the fine fescue greens became moot when in 2018, Chambers Bay closed for several months to change the greens from fine fescue to poa annua.
The USGA gave great reviews to the changes when Chambers Bay hosted the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball and the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2022.
Top executives with the USGA have raved about its relationship with Chambers Bay, but the answers get evasive when they are asked about a U.S. Open coming back or a U.S. Women’s Open coming for the first time.
John Bodenhamer, the Lakewood native who has been overseeing the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open since Davis left the USGA at the end of 2021, gave a typical answer when asked about it at U.S. Amateur Four-Ball in 2021.
“I don’t know whether they will get a U.S. Women’s Open or a U.S. Open, but I know the relationship (with Chambers Bay) is something we feel very strongly about,” he said.
Anderson told the News-Tribune that Chambers Bay’s best chance to host another U.S. Open is to be a substitute for a previously scheduled site.
“I think our best shot is being the attractive cousin who’s a backup date when your prom date can’t go,” he said.
That surely wasn’t what Pierce County was envisioning when it began its relationship with the USGA, and was quickly made the host of the 2010 U.S. Amateur and the 2015 U.S. Open.
The time is right for Pierce County to look for a new partner because the USGA is getting a lot more from Chambers Bay than it’s giving.