Olazabal's step for the Grand Slam

Jose Maria Olazabal has no delusions about winning all four of golf's major championships this year, although he is the only one who has a chance to do it.

"I truly believe that nowadays the closest thing to impossible is winning the Grand Slam in a single year," the 33-year-old Spaniard said Tuesday as he prepared to try to add the U.S. Open title to the Masters title he won in April.

"I might be wrong, but the level of the game nowadays is so high, and there are so many players who can win all the events, that it makes it really tough for just one player to win all four."

Olazabal was in this same position in 1994 after winning his first Masters, but he failed to even make the cut that year in the Open.

No golfer has ever won golf's "modern" Grand Slam -- the Masters, the U.S. and British Opens and the U.S. PGA Championship. The late Ben Hogan came closest in 1953, when he won the first three after coming back from a near-fatal car crash.

But Olazabal, who has come back from a career-threatening injury that had prevented him from even walking two years ago, just may be able to take the second step in the quest at this week's Open at Pinehurst No. 2 -- a course that may play to his greatest strength, chipping and putting.

"Well, at least this week I cannot deny that the short game plays a part in this tournament, which hasn't happened in the past few years at least," he said.

Pinehurst No. 2 is a unique U.S. Open venue because famed architect Donald Ross designed the greens and the areas surrounding them as the chief defence against low scoring -- and they have been kept that way for the Open.

"To hit a good shot, to judge the distance and the speed to leave the ball three, four, five feet from the hole, is going to be extremely tough," admitted Olazabal, whose Masters victories came on the strength of his game around the greens.

Olazabal admitted that Pinehurst's big, crowned greens and the closely cut areas around them are very similar to those of Augusta National, the permanent home of the Masters -- but the similarities stop there.

Unlike Augusta, which has relatively no rough, Pinehurst has three inches of thick Bermuda grass lining its fairways, which will make driving the ball accurately far more crucial.

"I still believe that driving plays an important part this week," the Spaniard said. "That's why the U.S. Open doesn't suit my game, because my driving is not all that accurate.

"I truly believe that the guy who hits the ball straight off the tee will have an easier job to score this week."

Having said that, he was asked when was the last time he drove the ball well for 72 holes.

"Seventy-two holes? Never in my life," he responded with a look of incredulity. "Seventy-two holes in a row? That would be a miracle."

Of course, a miracle just might be what it takes to win golf's Grand Slam.

Reuters