SIMON DYSON will face the sternest of tests at San Francisco’s Olympic Club today – a course nicknamed a “graveyard of champions”.

The 34-year-old York-born European Tour ace returns to action in the US Open after a three-week lay-off nursing a stressed pelvis, and he could not have picked a harder track at which to make his return.

Hosting the US Open for the fifth time, and for the first time since 1998, Olympic’s Lake course is renowned for posing problems from tee-to-green and, after Rory McIlroy destroyed Congressional last year, a more traditional set-up – with brutal rough, super narrow fairways and extremely fast greens – will be in place.

Accuracy is essential on a course which, at 7,170 yards, is short by Major championship standards, but the first six holes are rated as being among the most difficult in golf. Olympic opens with a 520-yard par four with a fairway just 29 yards wide.

It’s tight frame is made to look even closer on the eye because of the 30,000 trees around the course and it is wood, rather than water, which forms the primary challenge. The course has no water hazards.

With holes dog-legging in one direction, but with the green leaning in another, the eventual winner will be an accurate player who can shape shots both ways and has a fine touch around the greens.

For Olympic is a course which has humbled the very best.

In 1966, Arnold Palmer lost a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play, going down to Billy Casper in a play-off, and Payne Stewart suffered agony on the 18th hole as Lee Janzen pipped him to the title in 1998.

While Dyson has a fine record in the USPGA Championship, having finished sixth in 2007 and 12th in 2010 in the final Major of the season, he has had little success in the Open, despite similarities in the course set-up for the two events.

In the three times he has qualified for America’s national championship, he has never made the weekend – missing the cut on each occasion.

That’s a situation that has puzzled the Malton & Norton GC star and if he can overcome his main concern, which will be the rusty state of his game having endured his enforced lay-off, it is a career statistic he will be keen to change.

Bitterly disappointed to miss the PGA Championship at Wentworth and the Welsh Open at Celtic Manor, two events he has described as among his favourite European tournaments, he will be hopeful of finding quick momentum as he looks to restart his season and pushes to make the European Ryder Cup team in September.

Dyson tees off today with Belguim’s Nicolas Colsaerts and South Korea’s Charlie Wi.