The U.S. Open will return to Winged Foot Golf Club in 2006, the U.S. Golf Association
said.
It will be the fifth time the West course at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y.,
has held the U.S. Open. The last major at Winged Foot was the PGA Championship
in 1997, when a rainbow graced the skies as Davis Love III won his only major.
``The West course at Winged Foot has long been noted as one of the toughest
and fairest tests of golf in this country, so the USGA is delighted to accept
an invitation return,'' said Fred Ridley, chairman of the championship committee.
Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open in 1929 at Winged Foot. Other U.S. Open champions
at the A.W. Tillinghast course in Westchester County were Billy Casper in 1959,
Hale Irwin in 1974 and Fuzzy Zoeller in 1984 after beating Greg Norman in an 18-hole
playoff.
Winged Foot also will play host to the 2004 U.S. Amateur.
The U.S. Open will be played next year on the Black Course at Bethpage State
Park in New York. Other future sites include Olympia Fields outside Chicago in
2003, Shinnecock Hills in New York in 2004 and Pinehurst No. 2 in 2005.
