Oosthuizen eyes second major title at Olympic

Reuters/San Francisco

Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa (right) talks with his caddie during a practice round prior to the start of the 112th U.S. Open at The Olympic Club on Monday in Daly City, California. (AFP

Two months after the bitter disappointment of losing a playoff for the Masters, South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen is hoping a recent dip in form will not derail his tilt at a second major title at this week’s US Open. The 29-year-old has triumphed twice worldwide this season but has not been at his best in recent weeks, missing three cuts in his last four PGA Tour starts. “I’m probably not where I want to be going into the US Open but I feel like I am really close,” Oosthuizen told Reuters on a sun-drenched afternoon at the Olympic Club on Monday. “The season has been good, it’s just the last month that I haven’t really felt comfortable over the golf ball. I’ve worked on a few things and I feel a lot better now.” He launched his 2012 campaign with a successful title defence at the Africa Open, then rebounded from his Masters disappointment in April with victory at the Malaysian Open. “Overall, I am very happy with the season,” the South African world number 16 said. “I’ve just got to take it on from here and try to do the same that I did in Houston and Augusta.” Oosthuizen, who won his only major title with a commanding seven-stroke victory at the 2010 British Open, finished third at the Houston Open in April, a week before his playoff loss to American left-hander Bubba Watson at the Masters. The compact South African, whose swing is widely regarded as one of the best in the game, thrilled the Masters galleries with a rare albatross at the par-five second in the final round to grab a two-shot lead. However, he was eventually caught by a charging Watson, who went on to claim his maiden major title with a par at the first extra hole after conjuring a miraculous shot from pine straw that hooked 40 yards onto the green.  “I played well at Augusta and I’m not feeling like I threw it away or anything,” Oosthuizen said. “I just got outplayed and I think that’s the way you want to lose a major - if there is a way. “You are always disappointed knowing you came that close but it makes next year at Augusta just a bit sweeter to go back and try to win it.” This week, Oosthuizen faces a challenging par-70 Lake Course at Olympic which will host the US Open for a fifth time. Though the hilly layout has no water hazards, no out-of-bounds and only one fairway bunker, on the par-four sixth, its first six holes constitute possibly the toughest start to any major championship. “You’d probably rather have those six holes early out rather than looking up to them at the end of the round but there are a lot of tough holes there,” Oosthuizen, who played all 18 holes in practice on Monday, said with a grin. “There’s not really any hole where you can stand on the tee knowing you can birdie it or feeling like you’ve got a very good chance you’re going to birdie it. “It’s one of those stretches where you’ve just got to keep patient and know that everyone is going to make bogeys.” Simply “making pars” was the biggest challenge at Olympic, he said: “It’s just a tough golf course. You need to hit the fairways off the tees and then the greens are really, really firm and really fast.” A unique aspect of the Lake Course is the number of dogleg fairways which slant in an opposite direction, but Oosthuizen preferred to focus on the upside to this quirk. “It actually gets you to hit shapes,” he said. “I like seeing shapes off the tee ... where you’ve got to hit a draw into a fairway that sits left-to-right.” The 112th US Open starts tomorrow when Oosthuizen will tee off from the ninth hole in the company of Australian Jason Day and American Jason Dufner.Martin enjoys ride 14 years after cart controversyFourteen years after his use of a cart in the 1998 US Open helped make him a lightning rod for controversy, Casey Martin will again test his game against golf’s best at The Olympic Club. Martin, now 40 and the golf coach at the University of Oregon, came through qualifying to book his spot in the second major championship of the year. Although he rarely plays full rounds of golf nowadays, Martin said the fact that the Open was returning to Olympic’s Lake Course stirred him to attempt to qualify. “I had a wonderful experience here in ‘98 and I thought it would be fun to try to maybe get back,” Martin said. “And here I am.” Once again, Martin will use a golf cart to negotiate the course, which now plays to 7,170 yards and a par of 70. He was born with a painful circulatory disorder that affects his right leg, which he could still lose one day to amputation. “I think I’m going to keep it as long as something drastic doesn’t happen,” Martin said. “That’s always been the fear. It’s still pretty fragile.” Martin, a onetime Stanford University teammate of 14-time major champion Tiger Woods, made history in 1997 when he filed a federal lawsuit against the US PGA Tour for the right to use a cart in competition. After a six-day trial the following year, a judge ruled the tour failed to validate its stand that waiving the must-walk rule would fundamentally alter competition.