I wasn't very familiar with it before this week- but man, what a great course. Tough, but fair. Just the way a US Open course should be. I've always thought that you can judge a course by the quality of the players at the top of the leaderboard- and through 54 holes, the leaderboard speaks for itself (Tiger's absence notwithstanding). Should be a great final round today.
But why has the US Open been absent for 32 years? Is it because it's too short by today's standards?
Two reasons:
1) It is "too short" for modern golf equipment
2) it is "too small" of a property to host a major tourney.
The second is probably the main reason, it is a very small piece of land, which if you look at how often a player putting has to wait on the players on the next tee box to tee off you can see.