ESPN Golf

MAMARONECK, N.Y. -- When the U.S. Open begins at 7 a.m. Thursday at the West Course of the Winged Foot Golf Club, it will be the third in the last five to be conducted in the metropolitan New York area.

As if the rest of the country doesn't resent the Big Apple enough.

Two years after Retief Goosen won his second Open at Shinnecock Hills on the east end of Long Island, and four years after Tiger Woods won his second Open at Bethpage Black in Nassau County, the United States Golf Association has returned again to the outskirts of New York City. Don't forget that three years from now, the Open will return to Bethpage Black.

USGA executive director David Fay said the USGA tries to move the Open around, but concedes that the organization has succumbed to a Northeast bias.

"While we are sensitive to the geographic issue," Fay said Wednesday, "we don't want to be overly sensitive to it."

In other words, as they sing in Yankee Stadium, start spreading the news. The USGA, born and raised in the New York area, will stay here every chance it gets.

"Golf is no longer a northeastern United States thing. It's the whole United States and the whole world," said Joey Sindelar, an upstate New York native playing this week in his 16th Open. "But you could stick a pin in the map here and swing 50 miles in any direction and find so many fabulous golf courses, it's a joke."

Winged Foot certainly qualifies. The "man-sized course" requested of architect A.W. Tillinghast in 1919 remains, at 7,264 yards, a test of brains and brawn. It will have the longest par 4 in Open history (the 514-yard, slightly downhill 9th) and the second-longest par 5 (the 640-yard 12th, which will play at that length for three of the four rounds). The Tillinghast greens, protected by his trademark false fronts, deep bunkers and unrelenting undulations, will continue to make par a desirable score.

The 106th U.S. Open is the 21st to be played or, as the USGA prefers, "conducted" in the New York area. The USGA tries to alternate between the East, the Midwest and the West. But history will spot geography two a side and win every time. Take Winged Foot itself. When the USGA left here in 1984, it appeared that it left for good. Mamaroneck, a bedroom community 30 minutes north of Manhattan, was overwhelmed by the demands of the Open.

"It was awful," Fay said. "Traffic's bad. You can come back two weeks from now, it would be bad. We had a gridlock alert [in 1984]. Players would be running through traffic. It was not a good scene."

Seve Ballesteros nearly missed his first-round tee time that year. Fay gave credit to the PGA of America, which figured out for the 1997 PGA Championship here that parking near the course is not a God-given right. Shuttles from nearby colleges, and shuttles from the commuter train station in Mamaroneck, and strict parking prohibitions on the streets near the course, have made the logistics simple again.

The same sort of solutions made possible the announcement Wednesday that the USGA will conduct the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, near Philadelphia.

Merion has been the site of four previous Opens, the most famous of which is Ben Hogan's victory in 1950, barely 16 months after an auto accident in which he nearly died. The USGA is returning to Merion for the same reasons it returned to Winged Foot. In a sport redolent with the bloom of history, neither Fay nor any of the volunteer presidents wants to be known as the executive who steered the Open away from its heritage. Merion is where Hy Peskin snapped the most famous photo in golf: Hogan, 1-iron behind his head, watching his approach shot at the 18th hole.

Merion is where Lee Trevino won his second Open in 1971, edging Jack Nicklaus in a playoff. A decade later, David Graham played one of the great Sunday rounds in Open history, shooting 67 to win by three strokes.

The explosion of length, as well as the explosion of interest in the game, appeared to make Merion obsolete. But the club lengthened a few holes and thinned out some trees, making enough room for 320-yard drives and more than 30,000 spectators.

"I think the short courses are going to prove that they still have plenty," said Tom Lehman, the Ryder Cup captain playing in his 16th Open. "Length is not the most important thing in golf. The setup is what's important. You can set up any course to be difficult. Reward a straight hitter. That's what the old courses do. The green complexes are amazing. You can have great pin positions requiring a lot of talent and imagination. It all goes backward from the greens."

It all goes forward on Thursday. Tournament favorite Phil Mickelson has his own history in New York. The fans love him. He loves the courses. But he would like to break a trend. At both Bethpage Black in 2002 and Shinnecock in 2004, Mickelson finished second. New York is a front-runner's town.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Ivan.Maisel@espn3.com.