ESPN Golf Online: 1999 U.S. Open: Love would love to win on favorite course

Thursday, Jun. 17
Love would love to win on favorite course

By Tim Dahlberg
Associated Press
PINEHURST, N.C. -- In a depression surrounding the 15th green at Pinehurst No. 2, Davis Love III learned how to chip. Just off the 16th fairway he mastered the art of fading an iron around trees.

Davis Love III best U.S. Open finishes were a tie for second in 1996 and a tie for fourth in 1995.
Those kind of childhood memories of golf under the towering North Carolina pines will always be special for Love.
Creating some new memories in the U.S. Open would only make them better.
"This was always my favorite place to come," Love said Wednesday. "This is a special U.S. Open and a special place. I think anybody that's been here is thrilled to be back."
The first U.S. Open ever held at Pinehurst brings Love back to a place where he would come with his father, a golf instructor, as he was growing up.
It's a place where Love played while in college, and a place where he won the long driving contest on the 14th hole three years in a row in the North-South tournament.
It would figure to be a place where Love might have an advantage of sorts as he tries to win his first U.S. Open.
But he insists that's not the case.
"Nobody has an advantage when it's set up for the U.S. Open," Love said Wednesday. "And I don't think sentiment is going to save you any strokes or knowledge of the golf course."
Dinners at the Pinecrest Inn and time with friends at the Carolina Hotel this week have revived pleasant memories of long ago times for Love, whose father brought him here from the age of 10 while he taught at Golf Digest schools.
So far, it's been a fine week. That could easily change once play gets under way Thursday.
"When you start playing, you better start hitting the fairways and the greens or sentiment is not going to help you very much," Love said.
Love never actually played the No. 2 course at Pinehurst much when he was here. He mostly played the No. 4 course, but did get out and play 15, 16 and 17 many times because it was around the driving range.

“ Nobody has an advantage when it's set up for the U.S. Open. And I don't think sentiment is going to save you any strokes or knowledge of the golf course. ”

— Davis Love III

It was there that instructor Jack Lumpkin taught him how to get the ball up from a deep greenside depression and how to hit the fade that has served him so well as a pro.
That Pinehurst was a different course than the one the players will face this week, however. The greens have been rebuilt with even steeper slopes around the edges, and the United States Golf Association always grows the rough deeper and narrows the fairways more for an Open.
"At the time I knew the golf course very well," Love said. "But now the U.S. Open levels the playing field, turns it into more of a patience test."
Patience means hitting the ball in the fairway and setting up the proper shot to hold the unusual domed greens that tend to funnel mis-hit shots into shaved collection areas where making par is difficult.
Hitting fairways is one thing Love has been doing well this year, in a season that has seen him finish in the top 10 in nine of his 14 tournaments. He's 35th on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy and 21st in distance, just the things needed on a long, tight U.S. Open course.
"With my length being an advantage, this golf course is set up for my game," Love said.
One thing Love hasn't done this year is win, although he finished second to Jose Maria Olazabal at The Masters.
Olazabal never really gave him a chance to win The Masters, unlike the 1996 Open, where Love would have been in a playoff with Steve Jones had he not 3-putted from 20 feet on the last hole. That miss still seems to haunt Love.
"Yeah, I would have liked to have won more, but all I can do is try to win this one right now," Love said. "I've gotten to the point where I feel like I have the game to win, but it's going out and beating the other 50 guys that have the game to win."