When I was sports editor of The Courier-Journal, I tried to cover the U.S. Open golf tournament every year. I did it mainly because I believe Louisville and southern Indiana is a golf hotbed. Of course, it helped that I loved to play the game, one of Dan Jenkins “dogged victims of inexorable fate.”

So I was at Pebble Beach in 1982 when Tom Watson holed it out of a sand trap on No. 17 to steal the title from Jack Nicklaus. I was there in 1984 when Fuzzy Zoeller and Greg Norman executed their little pas de deux at Winged Foot. And I was there in 1986 when Raymond Floyd overcame the dunes and marshes at Shinnecock to win his first Open at 43.

If the Binghams still owned The Courier-Journal, and if I were still in my former job, I promise you I would have been at Torrey Pines to see Rocco Mediate push Tiger Woods to the limit – and 19 holes past it — to win this year’s Open. It was riveting sports theater, played before records crowds and a huge national TV audience.

Only three months from now, after all, Louisville will become the world capital of golf when it plays host to the Ryder Cup. It will be the biggest international sporting event ever held in Kentucky – bigger than the Derby, the Final Four, the PGA Championship, and the Breeders Cup.

So somebody will have to explain to me why the Courier-Journal didn’t send a soul to cover the Open. I honestly can’t think of a good reason. It couldn’t have been money, even though the sports department’s budget took a big hit by over-covering Big Brown’s ill-fated Triple Crown bid in the Belmont Stakes.

A top-flight newspaper doesn’t pinch pennies or count beans when it comes to covering the events most important to its readers – and even a Big Brown Triple Crown wouldn’t have been as huge as the Ryder Cup will be. At least, that’s the way it was before Gannett bought the C-J in 1986 and began jacking up the annual profit margin at the expense of staff and coverage.

So what was it? Why didn’t the C-J send golf writer Jody Demling and one of its two columnists to San Diego to cover the Open from a Ryder Cup perspective? They could have gotten to know the players, especially the Europeans. They could have filled their notebooks with background information.

At least, they could have tried to fool the golf world into believing that Louisville still has a first-class newspaper instead of a provincial USA Today clone that relies on the Associated Press to cover the big events.

Had college basketball been involved, of course, it would have been a different story.

Had Kentucky or Louisville been in San Diego to play the mighty Aztecs of San Diego State, the C-J and every other Louisville media outlet would have been crawling all over the place. Maybe the way for a writer to have sold the trip to his boss was to say, “Hey, how about letting me go to California to interview Derrick Jasper about why he’s transferring, and, oh, by the way, I could also drop in on the U.S. Open? You know, the big golf tournament? The one with all the guys who’ll be coming to Louisville for the Ryder Cup?”

Of course, there was a bonus local-interest story involving college sports. The problem was, it was a golf story, not basketball. University of Louisville senior Derek Fathauer, one of three amateurs who qualified for the Open, made the 36-hole cut and tied for 69th place by shooting 73-73-78-75—299.

The C-J can say it had no way of foreseeing that Fathauer would make the field. I say that’s as lame as Tiger looked at times. The paper should have planned to be there long before Fathauer qualified. Asked once what it took to be a great sports writer, the immortal Red Smith said, “Be there.” You can’t do it off TV and do it justice.

The unfolding drama starring Woods and Mediate was a writer’s dream. Here was Tiger, human for a change, struggling to overcome a balky left knee still sore from surgery the week after the Masters. And here was Mediate, in the twilight of a mediocre career, finally having his moment in the sun.

Interestingly enough, as you look back over Tiger’s 14 majors, two of the most memorable came when he went head-to-head with an unknown. In the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla, the same course outside Louisville that will host the Ryder Cup, it was Bob May who forced Tiger into a playoff. Last week it was Mediate. Both always will be remembered not for any victories, but for the day they forced Woods to reach deep and prove why he’s the greatest ever to play the game.

I don’t expect the C-J to staff the next major, the British Open, although there will be a lot of good stories to be found at Royal Birkdale. I wonder what the European fans know about Valhalla and what they think about the Ryder Cup being there. Plus, it would be interesting to see how the Europeans play on their home turf.

Surely, however, the C-J will cover the final pre-Ryder Cup major. That would be the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills outside Detroit. If necessary, the C-J writers and photographers could go by Greyhound. They could double or triple up in a Quality Court. They could really rough it by taking all their meals at White Castle.

Since the opening of Valhalla, Louisville has been a destination city on the international golf map. The media needs to understand that the golfers and golf fans in these parts deserve more than AP stories and network feeds. If we want to be viewed as big-league, we need to start acting and thinking like it.