UNIVERSITY PLACE - Nine-time Major champion Gary Player slammed as a "tragedy" this week's US Open site, adding his name to the growing list of critics of the links-style Chambers Bay layout.

Speaking on Golf Channel's Morning Drive programme on Saturday, the 79-year-old South African said that the 115th edition of the year's second Major had been "the most unpleasant golf tournament" he had ever seen.

"I'll tell you what - there have never been so many people that missed the (second-round) cut that are so happy to go home," he said. "We're playing the US Open, this great championship... but this has been the most unpleasant golf tournament I've seen in my life. I mean the man who designed this golf course had to have one leg shorter than the other."

Designed by famed golf course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr and opened for play in 2007, par-70 Chambers Bay stretches along Puget Sound and features the biggest elevation changes ever seen at a US Open.

Player, who won the 1965 US Open to complete a career Grand Slam of the modern-day Majors, applauded previous decisions by the United States Golf Association to take its championship to public venues, but not this year's. "What they did at Bethpage (2002, 2009) was tremendous. But you don't bring (the US Open) to golf courses like this. This is devastating."

REUTERS