I was okay with it but prefer to see the traditional narrow fairways and deep rough courses but the current length of the game has made most of those old courses obsolete. They can blow it down within 100 yards and sand wedge it out onto a green. Old days of hitting the deep rough 200 yards away, wedging out and hitting a 6 iron close to save par are history. Too bad. It was fun to watch that kind of talent.

US Open should be tough and require participants to be creative. I like it when they have to be creative off the tee and not always hit a driver. Course management at a major critical for me and one less mistake can be costly. It is about bringing out the very best in the winner. I guess it is survival of the fittest. LACC errant shots off the tee were costly in some cases. Lies in those bunkers game changers. Pin positions brutal on some holes. Not golf we are use to and not fun, but what it takes to be a true champion in a major. Why some winners do not play the next week, totally drained mentally and physically. Golf has changed since the old days, also. Longer because the new wave are more physically fit and do hit the balls farther. The conditions of the courses are more pristine due to improvement in equipment, training and chemicals. I do think they playing on the older courses is great but in the case of LACC is was not set up to accommodate crowds that are normal at a major. Allowing only 22,000 per day. With most of the tickets going to members. Did I enjoy it, absolutely and a great winner, for Team Titleist.

The last 3 holes were lame. Just long, bombs away, give the advantage to the long hitters kinda holes. I wish there were better finishing holes for LACC. The crowd situation was very disappointing. This is our national championship, the peoples championship!! There needs to be be crowds there.

And there was no way to get more people into that course. If you have ever driven up there you will see that it is just off Sunset Blvd in the Beverly Hills area. Even if they had parking at UCLA and ran shuttle buses, the bus drop off area and traffic problems would have been impossible, not to mention all the big-$$$ residents that would have used their influence to keep crowds away.

In 2017 I went to the Walker Cup and walked LACC for 3 days and found it to be a very good course and was always told it could host an Open. At that time, the rough was not what it was when I saw it on TV. The US Open appeared to have much thicker rough and fairways seemed a little tighter. There are areas where if you hit your tee shot off line, par will be a difficult score. After the Walker Cup, I thought the only defense the course had was to grow the rough higher, make the green speeds very fast and possibly mother nature (winds). From what the announcers said, the green speeds were about 13, which on those greens is about right. I was amazed at the run out on the greens when players would hit their shots into them. I have never been one to believe the winning score should be +1 or higher.
A friend of mine and I agreed the winning score would be -12. It was -10.

In 2017 after the WC, I firmly believed the max crowds the course could accommodate for a US Open would be in the mid 20's. It was a challenge to get around that course from a fan perspective and the WC had about 7-8 thousand.
When Merion hosted the US Open the crowds were about 22,000. I played Merion a few years before the US Open and that number made perfect sense. The USGA said it was one of the smallest venues to host a US Open in a long time.
All of this I speak from experience.

Up front, I have an axe to grind with the USGA. It is only lip service that they represent all golfers. First and foremost they represent a lot of old money before they represent me. They need fewer private courses in the rotation for starters. Well, only if they truly want to grow the game. LACC is the epitome of that culture. Corporate seating only around holes wasn’t even the worst abuse. Letting the LACC members buy up over 3/4 of the general admission tickets and bury them to keep the pond scum from entering the hallowed grounds was beyond belief.

This will never happen at Beth Page, Pinehurst, or Torrey Pines. Guess I won’t see you at the USGAOpen in 2039 - scheduled at LACC as a rotation site.

Oh, heck, while I’m steaming, wouldn’t a local rule to limit tees to 1.5 to 2 inches be cheaper than re-designing the ball? Even the 4 inch rough impacts these new athletes far less than me. They simply have gears I can only dream of. The rest of us need drivers just to play 6000-7000 yard courses. Not that the USGA listens to 99% of golfers.

Sorry, didn’t think I would need anger management as part of my retirement…

The US Open is supposed to be difficult, and they can't always be at Pebble or Oakmont. The USGA has the hardest job out there, that's for sure, keeping the Monday morning QB's happy! Guys that have never played a true 7,000+ golf course have no idea how hard it is when you're sitting at home watching the Shot Tracer. Those 500+ Par-4's are still hard because of the size of the greens, the angles, and the undulations. Maybe boring to some, but 120 guys got beat up last week. When only around 15% of the field breaks par for the week, it's a decent test, but never suitable for everyone.

I loved it personally

Yes, the US Open is supposed to test all parts of your game. If you ask the USGA I am sure they would tell you that they would love to play at more of the classic courses like Merion or The Country Club. But as mentioned a few times in this thread, technology is making these courses pitch and putts. Look back at Winged Foot in 2020 when Bryson won. He hit driver all over the place but had wedges into many par 4s. You can make the greens rock hard or super small if you want, if you are hitting wedges into these greens and at the height a lot of today's players are hitting them, balls are going to stop.

I have played are few courses over 7,000 yards, it's easier to make par on a 465 yard par 4 when you have wedge in after a 320+ yard drive than having to hit 6 iron from 190 to a tucked pin.

I think the issue with LACC was that on certain holes, no matter what you teed off with, you ended up in the same general that brought sand field divots into play. Not the best test.

The score is a representation of the conditions. Thursday and Friday the marine layer stayed around and the course regardless of set up played easier as it was softer. When the sun finally came out the course showed its teeth. You can't control mother nature and any touring pro will tell you, no matter how "difficult" you set the course up, if mother nature has a different idea, these pros are so good they will pick apart the course. At LACC you had two 62's (set Thursday) and a 63, where the player teed up in cooler conditions Sunday and watched.

Is there a person on this website who attended the US Open at LACC and was part of the general public?
I have a question for them. I was told by a third source of something incredulous that I want to confirm.