US Open Day 3: Saturday, June 16

My favorite US Open?  Easy, 1985 at Oakland Hills: "The Year of T.C. Chen"  as it will forever be known, even if the answer to the question, "Who is the 1985 US Open Champion?" is not, in fact, T.C. Chen.   Andy North won the '85 Open.  It  wasn't his Open, that's all. 

It all started late in the day Thursday, the day of the first round of the Open, of course.  The first threesomes went off at seven in the morning and it wasn't until almost four o'clock in the afternoon that the name T.C. Chen appeared for the first time on the leader board I'd been watching in the press tent since around the time those first threesomes had begun their rounds.

 T.C. arrived in style, too.  Big time.  Buzz in the Press Tent, that sort of thing.  We looked up at that leader board we'd been looking at all day long, a board which hadn't moved too much at all, and all of a sudden the leaderboard guys were making a change at the very top.  When they were done it said, right out of the blue: T.C. Chen (-3) thru 2 holes.  -3 was leading the damn Open.  T.C. Chen, then, whoever he was, was leading the damn Open.

The "whoever he was" part was somewhat problematic since we in the media,  we and my little circle of colleagues in the media, anyway, had no idea at all in the least who this guy is and now this guy's leading the Open and I'm going to be on the radio in a few minutes and I have to know something about who he is by then. The sheer pressure of it all.   Not to mention I had a hard time finding his profile  in the PGA Media Directory I'd been issued. We would get to know all about him, though.   That name, T.C. Chen, never left the leader board again.  It was T.C. Chen's US Open for all but the first nine hours of play on Thursday until the last three hours of Sunday.   

Playing in the last group of the day on Thursday, not teeing off until after three p.m., Chen made double-eagle, (which I learned only today is also known as an "albatross") scoring a two on the par-five second.  He did it the old-fashioned way.  He mashed a three-wood which was made of natural wood (they'd probably be going at it with a six-iron today) as hard as he could, landed it short, and watched it bounce onto the green and roll into the cup.

The miracle shot, much more rare than a hole-in-one, gave Chen, as unknown an unknown as any who ever led any Open, the lead in this Open--a lead he would hold, alone, for 57 holes:  from the second hold of the first round through the first four holes of the final  round.

That's when there was another miracle shot.  This time though, it was a miracle for the rest of the field. 

More later...