What goes on inside a U.S. Open media center? | Rogers Report

OAKMONT, Pa. — Hello friends and welcome to the latest edition of the Rogers Report! I’m writing to you from inside the media center at the U.S. Open and am pleased to share with you all that I have received a new pair of glasses after dropping mine in the Oakmont rough on No. 18 at some point on Monday afternoon.

It’s been a great start to the week so far, and I did something on Wednesday morning that I wasn’t expecting: I thoroughly enjoyed the USGA’s press conference.

The USGA press conference

I wasn’t originally planning on attending the USGA press conference on Wednesday morning at Oakmont. I wanted to go walk a few holes before lunch, but when Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig asked me to walk over to the interview area with him, so I decided to go. And I’m really glad I did, because it got me very excited for the start of play at Oakmont.

By the time Wednesday rolls around at major championships, there’s often a feeling of restlessness. We’ve been here for three days, let’s get the show on the road already! But what Mike Whan, Fred Perpall and John Bodenhamer said about the championship on Wednesday morning encouraged me to slow down and enjoy every moment of this week, even if I was feeling a little eager for play to begin.

So what exactly makes the U.S. Open so special? Let’s take a look.

Whan, Perpall and Bodenhamer weren’t afraid to answer the tough questions during their press conference, either. Whan explained driver testing, a process that has always sort of confused me, perfectly.

Same with the rollback debate. I’ll admit I haven’t really known what to make of the whole thing. Whan and Perpall’s explanation helped me really understand (for the first time) just how tricky it is to be the ones calling the shots.

Whan: “The reality of it is governance is hard. I knew it when I got here, but it is hard. These other stakeholders are my friends and they’re passionate about the future of the game just like us, and I get that. What the anxiety comes from is every time I open my computer and read 100 emails, 50 people say ‘I can’t believe you’re changing the ball’ and 50 people say ‘is that all you’re doing on the ball?’ Nobody says ‘I think it’s exactly right.’ That’s the hard part about governance, you’re trying to find the right — even to Alex’s point, I sat in Jack’s table last Wednesday with other governance, with other stakeholders of the game and listened to a lot of really talented leaders of our game say to me ‘That’s not enough,’ and with people sitting next to me that have said ‘That’s too much.’ So I think they probably got to see the world of governance. Yeah, if you don’t think that’s hard, a little anxious, you’ve just got to come hang with us for a couple days. We know that’s hard. But the worst thing would be to bail and do nothing just because it’s hard.”

So thank you to the USGA’s press conference for getting me to think about these issues! And thank you to Bob Harig, who is the only reason I ended up attending this presser on Wednesday morning.

Chatting with other media members

As I was scrolling through Twitter (ahem, X) I came across a post asking what I do when I’m at golf tournaments. I’m not sure if it was a snarky remark or not, but it did get me thinking about just how many moving parts there are in golf media.

There are a few hundred media seats in the media center at Oakmont this week, and everyone is working on something completely different. There are endless storylines at golf tournaments. You’ve got people writing about course conditions. Others are focused on equipment. Somebody will write a profile on a specific player. The history of the course is always covered as well.

Player press conferences offer up endless opportunities for storylines, and then you’ve got people on the content side. You’ve got people making hype videos for players’ social channels, videographers capturing the grounds crew, interviewers prepping to ask questions and more. I asked various media members to share what their day looked like on Wednesday, and there was so, so much variety in their responses.

There truly is something for every kind of golf fan out there. A lot of people see the final product when it comes to articles, videos and social posts, but media centers at major championships allow those with credentials to get a sense of the depth of content that comes out of tournaments like the U.S. Open.