Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club, hosting the Open for the second time in five years, is as ready as any course has ever been. The mood is set, the USGA has all its people and data machines in place. And many area golf fans were getting in a sneak preview on Sunday as the first contestants began showing up.
The majority of the LPGA professionals were coming in on Monday or Tuesday to begin preparing their games for the USGA test that Pine Needles course superintendent Dave Fruchte has honed to perfection. A few of the players arrived early and some of the qualified amateurs took advantage of an early practice round.
But for the most part, the course was empty — a lady in waiting.
The favorites will be the usual suspects such as Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, Juli Inkster, Se Ri Pak and Dottie Pepper. But there will be others crashing the party with whose names fans won’t be as familiar. That’s the nature of a U.S. Open.
If the golfing world gets its wish, there will be a showdown between Sorenstam and Webb, the two top-ranked players in the world. Webb is the defending champion, but Sorenstam won here in 1996 and is having one of the greatest years in LPGA history. She has already won five times and more than $1 million this season.
Geddes: A Face in the Crowd
But, like any major golf tournament, there are 150 stories, and veteran Jane Geddes is one of them. Geddes is back, she’s focused and she’s hungry.
Geddes, who joined the LPGA Tour in 1983 and has 11 victories and more than $3.5 million to show for it, has been a no-show on the Tour for the past couple of years. But the hiatus is over, and she’s ready to regain the form that took her to the 1986 Championship.
Geddes, who is hoping her competitive edge is sharp enough to solve the intricacies of the Donald Ross masterpiece that is the Pine Needles course, wasn’t playing Sunday. She was wearing a pair of jeans, walking around the premises and soaking up some of the pre-Open atmosphere.
By Thursday, Geddes will have several practice rounds under her belt. But an LPGA Tour rule states that its members may not play a practice round on an Open course while a Tour event is being played if they were eligible to be competing.
That’s OK with Geddes. She’s just happy to be back in action. After a self-imposed exile during which she started her own Internet company, Geddes is feeling the urge to return to battle. She played a Tour event two weeks ago, but it was rain-shortened and left her still wondering about her game.
“It was sort of like a horse race,” she said, laughing. “I don’t even know how I finished.
“But being away from the game for a while was good. I was looking for a way to get away from golf for awhile, but now I’m ready to come back and start playing the way I did before. I’m refreshed and looking forward to it. Now it’s just a matter of getting back into the feel of it.
“I had been on Tour for 18 years and I was tired of the travel. It’s tough out here now.”
‘Expecting to Play Well’
The first professional victory for Geddes came in the 1986 U.S. Open at NCR Country Club in Kettering, Ohio. So perhaps it was fate that she qualified for this Open on that course.
“I was a little concerned about that,” the 41-year-old resident of Boca Raton, said, “because I didn’t know how weird it was going be out there. I hadn’t played the course since I won the Open there. But it was great. I remembered every shot I had hit.”
Geddes played at Pine Needles in 1996 and was third behind Annika Sorenstam and Kris Tschetter.
“I’m expecting to play well here,” she said. “I love Open courses and I really like Pine Needles. I’ll be prepared.
“I was concerned about the competitive edge, but not anymore. I’m hitting the ball very well, better than when I left the Tour. I’m hitting greens and I’m putting well.”
There is reason for the optimism. Geddes has a history of playing well in majors and driving the ball has always been one of her strengths.
‘Challenge of the Greens’
“The challenge in an Open is that you have to drive well,” she said, “and, of course, there’s always the challenge of the greens. You really have to be on your game; that’s the U.S. Open and I like that aspect. I seem to play better on courses where pars are a good score.
“I do consider driving the strong point of my game and I’m happy when I’m driving it straight and solid. There are a lot of girls who hit it farther than I do now, but I don’t give up that much to them.”
Geddes is coming back to the game with a slightly different attitude.
“Being away from it for a while changes your outlook,” she said. “It makes you realize how lucky we are. We’re in our own little world our here. Meanwhile, the world outside goes on. The stock market may crash and we don’t even know it.
“I appreciate what we have more now.”
