Golf Channel analyst Chamblee previews U.S. Open: Brooks, Bryson, Phil, COVID vaccines & more

The U.S. Open’s return to San Diego this week is one former PGA Tour winner Brandel Chamblee endorses, without disclaimer.

“Good gracious, I see why so many people live here,” he said. “Man, what a place.”

Chamblee, a Scottsdale, Ariz., resident who provides refreshingly candid and historically rooted analysis for Golf Channel, a broadcast partner of NBC Universal, said Torrey Pines Golf Course seems poised to deliver another exciting U.S. Open 13 years since Tiger Woods won the 2008 event after sinking a 12-foot putt to force a playoff.

(Golf Channel’s “Golf Central Live from the U.S. Open” will air from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. Monday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and before and after Golf Channel and NBC’s coverage of all four rounds.)

In a recent chat, Chamblee sized up the event. In addition, he commented on other topics.

What will it take to win this U.S. Open?

Chamblee: It’s a funny thing about Torrey Pines South. It has a reputation of being a very difficult golf course, it’s the longest course on the PGA Tour — but it has given us great scrambling more than anything else. Some incredible scrambling. Tiger Woods in 2008 winning here is the most obvious example to that. But if you look at all of Tiger’s wins here — 2005, ’06, ’07 and ’08, that stretch right there — he finished 68^th, 55^th, 55^th, 75th in driving accuracy. When he won in 2003 he was 67^th in driving accuracy. When he won the U.S. Open in 2008, he was 56^th in driving accuracy.

So, the golf course has allowed for some great scrambling.

And if you look at the annual PGA event at Torrey Pines?

It has given us some incredible scramblers (who won a recent Farmers Insurance Open). Maybe Patrick Reed is the best scrambler in the game. Maybe Jason Day is the best scrambler in the game. Maybe Brandt Snedeker. But they’ve all excelled at this golf course. Marc Leishman is an incredible scrambler. Justin Rose is one of the best chippers on the PGA Tour. (Chamblee noted that this week’s set-up could discard that comparison; the course’s rough, in fact, will be deeper than it was for the Farmers Open in January.)

(On ball strikers or scramblers this week)

In general, I would say the golf course is hard and long. You would think that would lean towards the best ball strikers, but that’s not been the history of Torrey Pines South. It doesn’t differentiate off the tee so much. It differentiates with second shots, as all golf courses do, but more than that, great scramblers.

Which players do you think will be in the hunt on Sunday?

You look at this golf course, and you think, if the golf course is set up with any semblance to what it was in 2008 — or even any semblance to Winged Foot in 2020 — then it’s going to give wiggle room off of the tee. All of sudden then, you do look at a Jordan Spieth. You look at a Patrick Reed.

But beyond that, I look at a Xander Schauffele. And I look at a Patrick Cantlay. Xander Schauffele is a marvelous scrambler, and really has no weaknesses. So, ordinarily, I don’t normally look at scrambling as a huge component of a U.S. Open. I certainly give it more credence at the Masters, or more credence at the Open Championship.

Historically, the U.S. Open was meant to be about great ball striking, and that’s what it has been since 2016. Incredible ball strikers have separated themselves. But there is the potential this week for more great scramblers to work their way to the top of the leader board.

What would a Phil Mickelson victory mean?

To state the obvious, he would be, by a wide margin, the oldest player to win the U.S. Open, supplanting Hale Irwin at 45 years of age. He would give us something new to aim at.

Beyond that, it would give strong credence to Phil Mickelson being considered one of the top-10 players of all time. I wouldn’t put him in that top-10 category now, and those that try, if you actually sit down with them and list names one by one by one, of the players in the top 10, it gets pretty tough for even them, once they realize who they would have to kick out of the top-10.

But to have won two majors after the age of 50, to have won seven major championships and 46 golf tournaments with all of his close calls in majors, a strong argument could be made that we have witnessed a top-10 player of all time.

Since the 2008 U.S Open, is the PGA Tour game substantially different because of changes in equipment?

I wouldn’t say so. The parameters for equipment were established 2003-2004.

How has golf evolved since the ’08 Open here?

By and large, what’s happened is you have an increase in great athletes. Somebody recently put a post out … about how much taller the average golfer on the PGA Tour is getting, closer and closer to 6 foot 2 inches. When I played the tour, golfers were 5-foot-10, 5-11.

Since 2008, there have been more bigger, stronger, faster golfers come into play. The last five U.S. Opens demonstrate that. Dustin Johnson won in 2016. Brooks Koepka, 2017, 2018. Gary Woodland, 2019, Bryson DeChambeau, 2020.

These players demonstrate not that the game has gotten out of hand from a power standpoint but that athletes have come along that are so good at combining power and accuracy that the game has changed dramatically. And it’s not because of equipment.

Bryson DeChambeau is the best example of that. He was nowhere near the player or the physical specimen in 2018 that he was in 2020. That’s a great example of what sort of athleticism has now completely pervaded the game.

On criticism that the PGA Tour style has become “bomb and gouge” golf:

Those who want to criticize the way the game is, which is pejoratively to say ‘bomb and gouge,’ if they look closer, those players I mentioned averaged 24^th in driver accuracy. OK. They were hitting it nine miles, and they averaged 24^th in driver accuracy.

Let me give you a period of time — 1986 to 1993 — in the U.S. Open that had a run of short hitters win. Raymond Floyd. Scott Simpson. Curtis Strange. Hale Irwin. Payne Stewart. Tom Kite. Lee Janzen. They averaged about 50^th in driving distance, and they averaged 22^nd in driving accuracy. So now, you have players that are averaging around third in driving distance and 24^th in driving accuracy. So, what is the better sport? They’ve lost very little ground in driving accuracy, and they’ve picked up enormous ground in driving distance. That is the athlete.

On diagnostic tools and data (on launch angle, spin rate and, club speed) raising performance levels in recent years:

The technology that’s changed the game has been to change the technique, not the equipment. Because players now have a clearer understanding, a road map, to power but also to accuracy. Also because of high speed video, they’re able to hone in on what used to be the magic of a great pitch or a chip, and they can look at that and sort of anatomically reverse engineer it and then go out and duplicate it.

So, what we have is just the sport being played at a much higher level across the board. As opposed to one or two people being able to blow our mind, now there are a dozen people that can just literally blow our mind.

For example?

You think about Gary Woodland’s 3-wood in 2019, on the 14^th hole up the hill to that little green at Pebble Beach. That blew our mind. We’d never seen anybody hit a shot like that there. But that’s not just because of power. That green is a hard green; that portion of the green is hard to hit with a wedge. It was hard to hit with a wedge in 1955. For him to pull a 3-wood out up that hill and get it to as close to the hole as he did, was mesmerizing.

Bryson DeChambeau’s finesse, touch, scrambling and putting at the U.S. Open in 2020 was the larger story than his distance.

Your commentary sometimes includes unflattering critiques that aren’t typical in rights-partner broadcasts. Have you received pushback from the USGA or PGA Tour for deviating in that regard, such as your critique of Lexi Thompson’s putting (and steep wedges) in the recent U.S. Women’s Open’s final round?

No. If you go back and look at my week there, I would’ve lauded Lexi Thompson every day and rightly so. She’s an extraordinary talent. But ultimately, it’s my job to explain why someone won or why someone lost.

Just the way most people are, they have negative biases, and they remember negative comments more than they remember positive comments. That’s the way criticism or commentary works. At the end of the week, people remember that I said Lexi needs to work on her putting. That’s my job as an analyst.

You can’t say everything is great, because when something comes along that is great, you can’t properly elevate it to its rightly place. You’ve weakened the superlatives. … Where is your commentary coming from? It needs to be coming from a place of fairness and accuracy and to the degree I’m inaccurate, I hope people hold me accountable.

Do you miss working with former broadcast partner Frank Nobilo (a former PGA Tour winner with whom Chamblee had spirited exchanges)?

Nobilo, there was always some creative tension on the set, I’ll give you that. I’d like to think he has deep respect for me, I certainly have a deep respect for him. With (player and broadcaster) Justin Leonard, it’s a different dynamic, but it’s equally enjoyable. Justin has a sense of humor that I wasn’t aware of, and, unlike a lot of people that still have a toe in the competitive water, Justin is all in. So, Justin can counter and bring up things I’ve never thought of.

What do you make of the public spat between PGA stars Koepka and DeChambeau?

I’m not a fan of the profanity that Brooks Koepka uses in post-round interviews. He’s done it two or three times now. I certainly wasn’t a fan of his post (on social media) where he was encouraging people to heckle and in my view bully Bryson DeChambeau. I don’t think there’s any place for that. In my view, that’s cyberbullying. As a parent who raised a couple of kids at some schools that had some bullying issues, I’m sensitive to it. I don’t think we need to encourage that type of behavior. That does not represent the highest comportment or aim that golf has or its traditions.

Was Jon Rahm’s disqualification from the Memorial Tournament a fair result? (Rahm, leading through three rounds, had to withdraw after testing positive for COVID-19. A fully vaccinated player would not have been subject to daily testing after close contact with someone who tested positive.)

Well, it was an unfortunate result. But it could have been avoided. He knew the rules. Everybody feels differently about the vaccine. That’s a personal matter. And I’m willing to listen to arguments on both sides of that, but if you play on the PGA Tour, you well know that if you’re not vaccined under current parameters that the worst possible scenario — that you’re leading a tournament through 54 holes by a wide margin and you could test positive and have to withdraw — you would’ve known that was a possibility. It was unfortunate but it was avoidable.

On Rahm’s return this week, after meeting PGA Tour testing guidelines:

I will look at what he did (at the Memorial) as a win. He was blowing the field away.

On his excitement for professional golf:

Golf has become a pastime for many people that didn’t consider it a pastime. So, golf has picked up not only participants but viewers in the last couple of years. As they tune in, they’re watching a sport that has been greatly improved athletically in the last decade or so.

We still look back at the Big Three — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player — and they were notable for considerable skills that were pretty unique to that area. I’m not going to put anybody in that class of player beside Tiger or Phil of this era. But, to put it in baseball nuance, you have a lot of flame-throwers in this business now who can get the ball in the strike zone and sort of pick the corners of the plate.

It’s an incredibly exciting time to watch golf.