“I would hope it would be teed up pretty good"

Tim Sullivan in the San Diego Union Tribune talks to David Fay about the prospects for a return to Torrey Pines and it seems it has to get in line behind Oakmont and Erin Hills. (Now, I'm no accountant, but if I'm looking at the numbers from last week I'm making a case for Erin Hills waiting a few more years...like, after Tiger has retired.)

The USGA will consider those courses at its October championships and executive committee meetings in New Jersey. Based on the commercial and theatrical success of the 108th Open, however, Torrey Pines could also be considered for fast-track approval.

“It's unusual, but not unheard of, to select three U.S. Open sites at one meeting,” Fay said yesterday via e-mail.

Site selection, Fay cautioned, is only a first step. The USGA customarily withholds announcing its decisions until a formal agreement can be negotiated with prospective tournament hosts.

Given the additional complexities involved in haggling with city government as well as the various private enterprises that operate at Torrey Pines, those negotiations could turn tricky. Still, the success of this year's tournament was so great that the USGA may want to ponder pushing another site back a year in order to accelerate its Torrey Pines timetable.

After all, a PGA Championship in San Diego in August has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Whether auditors will conclude that the city broke even on the 2008 Open will depend on the size of their imagination. The city stands to collect only $500,000 in cash for an event that could be worth up to $50 million in profits to the USGA, according to Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal.

Though Fay says that estimate is a distortion – “the guy who parsed the numbers together for Sports Business should receive an advanced degree for making accounting a creative art!” he wrote – the USGA typically books enough profit to pay millions to the Open site.

And this is nice to read since despite his great intentions and hard work, the appearance of a conflict has not been a positive...

The Friends of Torrey Pines, the donors who made the Open possible by funding the renovations that raised Torrey Pines' South Course to USGA standards, should have no role in the next round of negotiations. Eliminating these middlemen – well-intentioned though they were – means the city should be able to deal directly with the USGA and therefore reap a larger piece of the proceeds.

“I would hope it would be teed up pretty good,” said Jay Rains, who spearheaded San Diego's Open initiative before becoming a USGA vice president. “I'm not personally aware of why the city wouldn't directly contract (with the USGA).”