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What: “Tiptoeing Through Hell: Playing the U.S. Open on Golf’s Most Treacherous Courses”

Author: John Strege

Publisher: HarperCollins, $23.95

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Ben Hogan, it turns out some 50 years later, was wrong. After shooting a memorable final round of 67 at Oakland Hills to win the 1951 U.S. Open, Hogan said he had tamed “the monster.” Oakland Hills, perhaps. But in John Strege’s words, the real beast, the United States Golf Assn., was just getting started.

In 1951, the USGA made its first effort at setting up its Open courses to rigorously defend themselves against assaults on par. It was Hogan who inspired the change with his victory at Riviera in 1948, when he shot 276, breaking the Open scoring record by five strokes. This was accomplished with the Riviera rough trimmed to three inches, a virtual putting surface compared to the condition of the roughs that would follow.

The USGA is the obvious and easy target for Strege as he examines its strategies for tweaking the Open courses: pinching fairways, leaving rough to grow untended and drying out greens. It is a combination that has given the USGA its intended result. Winning scores have routinely soared over the last 51 years. In 1963, Julius Boros won a three-way playoff achieved after 72-hole totals of nine over par.

The torturous nature of the courses makes for a colorful and long list of jabs.

Art Wall: “The Open is the World Series of golf, and the baseball people don’t put rocks in the infield at the World Series.”

And from late Times columnist Jim Murray: “Playing in the U.S. Open is not a privilege, it’s a penance.”

Strege efficiently weaves through the Open’s battered history and brings it to the doorstep of Bethpage, site of the 2002 event won Sunday by Tiger Woods.

Said Sam Snead, who won seven major titles but never a U.S. Open: “Everybody cusses the Open. Then they can’t wait to qualify the next year.”