After watching the end of the Open and reading the articles this morning, I believe the news is not who won the US Open, but may be more about what is happening to the course setup for the major golf tournaments recently. AND the resulting impact on the major open winners.

Zach Johnson wins the 2007 Masters. Angel Cabrera wins the 2007 US Open. One of the things that I have always loved about golf is that it is a great leveler. The handicap system means that I should be able to play with any golfer on a competitive basis no matter how good they are. And the PGA golf season always has relative unknowns who pop up and win a big tournament while the big names struggle.

But if you read what was being said (although sometimes quietly) about the set up for Augusta National and Oakmont this year, these course were apparently set up to eat golfers up for lunch. And if you look at how the big names struggled to make par at both of the years' majors so far, it got me to thinking about why Johnson and Cabrera may have won. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to take anything away from these two golfers. But time will tell whether they have elevated their game permanently or where fortunate to win these majors.

But back to the point that I was thinking about. Have the "powers that be" that set up the golf courses started to make them so difficult to "Tiger proof" them that they have started to possibly create what I call the "train wreck" effect. In other words, have they in their zeal to do what the golfers themselves haven't been able to do consistently (tame Tiger), gone a little too far.

Both of the majors this year more than a little resembled a NASCAR race that has a huge pileup involving the big names up near the leaders and suddenly a guy you haven't heard much about comes zooming through the smoke and clears the finish line ahead of everybody because he dodged the flying bulllets so to speak. I think I mixed up my metaphors there, but hopefully you know what I meant.

Two golf tournaments don't make a definite trend. But I will be watching the PGA real closely (remember the British Open is over the big pond) to see if this "almost trend" continues continues in men's professional golf. If it does you may hear more than one of the pro golfers start to comment a little louder about the course set ups.

I would be interested in what the rest of you golf nuts out there think. Have I gone completely nuts or is there some merit to this line of thinking?