By most accounts, the 2010 U.S. Amateur was a hit. Discounting some of the shell-shocked golfers who helped swell the average score to 79.247 strokes per round (and currently visiting their therapists and swing coaches) and some concerns about the hardness of the course’s surface, things are good: the crowds showed up, the best players made it to the last few matches, and, as The News Tribune’s John McGrath pointed out after the tournament, the finals were fun to watch. This was because the contestants, Peter Uihlein and David Chung, were enjoying themselves - an astounding concept for a USGA event, and maybe an occurrence not seen since Greg Norman waived his white towel of surrender to Fuzzy Zoeller on the 18th green in the playoff of the 1984 Open at Winged Foot, after having stepped to the 18th tee eight shots down and asking Zoeller, “Whatta say we play this hole for double or nothing?”

The 2010 Amateur was a good preliminary test of the brainchild of former County Executive John Ladenburg - the man who just looked at an abandoned sand pit, envisioned a golf course and said, essentially, build it and those men from New Jersey will come. Was it only 48 months ago that Ladenburg hired Kemper to get this thing off the ground?

Said USGA president Jim Hyler at the conclusion of the championship: “We were thrilled with the golf course.”

Enough said.

The next time the USGA graces Chambers Bay, it will be a completely different site - and sight. The U.S. Open, which is scheduled to be here in 2015, is the one week in June when the USGA makes essentially all the money that pays for its 12 other tournaments, its museum and its golf-equipment testing facility.

Consider that the estimated attendance for the week at the U.S. Amateur was about 33,000.

For the Open in 2015, crowds could be 50,000 or 60,000 a day, according to talk. The crowd was limited to 42,500 at Bethpage in 2009 and was only 35,000 at Oakmont in 2007. But the vision is that more could be accommodated over the wide-open spaces at Chambers Bay. People will pay between $100 and $150 a day to attend the event.

When the USGA comes to Chambers Bay next, think bigger. Think: golf-themed shopping mall with occasional bursts of shotmaking and the fine art of putting on display on the west concourse. Picture instead of three cash registers in the merchandise tent that you saw at the U.S. Amateur, there will be more of them than you see at Fred Meyer - somewhere between 50 or 60 of them will be set up in what will be the Merchandise Pavilion, which will be about 40,000 square feet - located just inside the front gate, where the selling of sweaters, shirts, hats, jackets, jewelry (yes, even hoodies - and just about anything else a U.S. Open-Chambers Bay logo can be stitched to) will take place.

There were just two VIP hospitality areas at Chambers Bay, a large tent near the pro shop and a modest beverage station across from the main scoreboard and practice green. Be thinking that for the Open in 2015 there could likely be about 50 or more corporate hospitality tents and decks, depending on how many corporations in 2015 can spring for the $100,000-to-$175,000 rental fees the USGA charges.

Regarding the setup of the course, there will no doubt be some tweaking for the Open in 2015.

The big concern during play last week was the severe hardness of the ground.

After complaints about the super firmness of the ground, especially during the afternoon rounds on Monday and Tuesday, the USGA’s Mike Davis told superintendent Dave Weinecke on Tuesday night to “flood the place.”

He was hoping to get enough moisture several inches under the surface of the greens to make them fairer for the match-play part of the tournament.

“We didn’t anticipate the water-management issues,” Davis said. “This is something that at least in my time with the USGA we have never encountered.”

Indeed there was, to borrow a phrase from horse racing, a “track bias” in play, as just seven of 64 players who were among those who played on the rock-hard Chambers layout on Monday afternoon, rather than the more conventional conditions at The Home Course, advanced to match play.

The 79.247 stroke-play average at Chambers Bay over Monday and Tuesday is pretty high, but comparable to Merion GC in Pennsylvania, where five years ago the stroke-play course average was 78.157 with six players breaking the par of 70.

But then there is this: during the championship match on Sunday, Uihlein, the No.1-ranked amateur in the country and a member of the winning 2009 USA Walker Cup Team, was the equivalent of eight under par with the usual match-play concessions through the match’s 34 holes. Chung, who won the 2010 Western Amateur and Porter Cup, was two under par.

Looking ahead to the Open in 2015, Davis said the million-dollar question is whether in the month of June when the tournament is held the weather will allow the conditions to be firm and fast enough.

There is likely to be some fiddling with some of the holes, perhaps shaving down the severe slope on the right side of the first hole where the green is elevated beside a dune on the right with a massive hill cascading down the left of the putting surface. The contours force players to aim right as the green slopes right to left. Even a good shot to the right side of the green often rolls off the left side, 20 or 30 yards away.

Davis will also discuss with course officials some work on the seventh and 13th greens to make them more receptive to long approach shots.

“With most of these things, it’s not necessarily change the architecture,” Davis said. “It’s just taking what they wanted to see happen and massaging it.”