Barring a playoff, today marks the final day of this year’s U.S. Open. There’s no doubt that today’s round will add to the Open’s rich history of great stars and clutch golf shots.

Even so, nothing about today will rival the best moment in U.S. Open history. That moment came not on the course, but in a conversation.

One year, the course was so brutally tough that one of the golfers complained to Sandy Tatum, the man largely responsible for the course setup.

“Are you,” he asked Tatum, “trying to embarrass the best golfers in the world?”


“We’re not trying to embarrass the best golfers,” said Tatum. “We’re trying to identify them.”

Get it? You don’t identify the best golfers with easy courses. You don’t identify great students with easy classes. Great mountain climbers want Mount Everest. Great surfers want the biggest waves.

If you want to become great, ask a big question and spend your life trying to answer it. Take on a strong foe and beat the odds.

Dream big dreams. Set big goals.

As Tom Hanks famously said in “A League of Their Own,” “The hard is what makes it great.”