Time for LIV Golf chat to stop and US Open to get its proper place

Let’s call a LIV Golf truce. Just for the next four days because, quite frankly, the 122nd US Open deserves to take place at The Country Club at Brookline without the level of background noise that has been evident around the game’s breakaway series in the build up to the season’s third major.

Yes, of course, Greg Norman’s Saudi-backed project remains the biggest talking point in the game and isn’t going to go away just because some people are vehemently against it, but right now isn’t the time for it to be commanding the spotlight.

No matter what happens in the game going forward, the majors are always going to be the pinnacle and that’s why the US Open - the 150th Open, too, when it comes around at St Andrews in a few weeks’ time - deserves the full attention of everyone who feels passionate about the game for the rest of the week.

For starters, it’s a mouth-watering venue. Formed in 1894, The Country Club is one of the five founding members of the USGA, the organisation that runs the US Open and now has Mike Whan, the LPGA’s former commissioner, at its helm.

This is the fourth time that the Massachusetts venue has hosted the tournament, having first done so back in 1913, when Francis Quimet, an amateur who had grown up across the street from the course and had caddied there, famously pulled off a Cinderella story.

Its second visit in 1963 resulted in American professional Julius Boros topping the leaderboard before Curtis Strange made it a hat-trick of home wins for the venue’s most recent US Open chapter in 1988.

It might be worth noting that all those previous tournaments were decided in play-offs, though, if history does repeat itself, the event is now decided by a two-hole shoot-out as opposed to an additional 18