'The greens will wreak havoc': Garcia and Mickelson lead criticism at US Open

Garcia made a string of comments on Twitter following his opening round of 70, saying that the greens were "exactly as bad as they look on TV", and that the US Open deserves better.

A wave of protest followed, chiefly from American golf fans with whom Garcia is enormously unpopular in the States following his racial slur on Tiger Woods a few years ago.

Garcia refused to backtrack or delete his original comments, and stuck to his guns.

The Spaniard is only partially right to say that nobody else has spoken up about the greens: Ian Poulter called the course "a farce" before even turning up at Chambers Bay, a comment which he made based on reports from friends on Tour who had played the course.

And on the even of the event Colin Montgomerie told Sky Sports News that the greens were simply not good enough for a tournament.

"The greens are very, very poor. The quality of the surface of the greens is extremely poor. That is going to take away the consistency of the putts," he said.

"The 10-footers that you see people hole all the time, that won’t be happening this week... A course of this demanding nature had to be in perfect condition and unfortunately it is not."

Following his superb opening round of 69, the Scottish veteran was far more complimentary about the course and suggested that organisers had softened things up a little - while the players who thrived shrugged off the conditions.

"It's firm and the greens are at a really good speed. I thought the conditions were favourable," said co-leader Dustin Johnson, for example.

Others were also critical, though more diplomatic than Garcia.

"They are not the best that I've ever putted on," said Rory McIlroy. "I still feel like if you make a good enough stroke and you have the right speed, there's a good enough chance the ball will go in."

Phil Mickelson went further, adding that putting downhill was a lottery: "The biggest challenge is that the green speeds are different from green to green. That's going to wreak havoc on our touch... they're not the most true surfaces downhill, because you can't hit it hard enough to hold the line. But uphill they seem to hold the line just fine."

Some fans backed up Garcia after his comments, with many horrified at how poor the putting surfaces look - and many others rather heartened that the best players in the world are playing in "real world" conditions as faced by amateurs across the world every day.

As many fans have pointed out, the greens are the same for everybody - and Garcia tried to cool things down in the end by saying he would muck in and make the best like the rest of the field.