THE Shinnecock Hills Golf club in Southampton, New York, proved too tough for both the present and future stars of the game entered in the just-ended US Open.
OK, include also the past stars. Wasn’t Phil Mickelson, 48, the most prominent among them?
So frustrated was Mickelson on the last day that he chased a wayward putt set to swoosh out of the 13th green, swatted back the moving ball and ended up with a 10 on a two-shot penalty.
Historically, while the Masters is the most prestigious and the British Open the grandest of the quartet, the US Open takes the exclusive stature as the majors’ most difficult test of will.
It is because courses alternating at staging the US Open seem always bent on punishing participants for 96 straight hours to include sleepless nights for the weak of hearts.
As I keep saying here, golf is not a sport to be taken for granted.
It looks crazily easy to play but, hey, watch it.
Lazy is its firm form but be forewarned. Try playing it and you will know what I mean.
Jack Nicklaus, owner of the all time record of 18 majors, has had a hip replacement. And he’s just one of golf’s many famous casualties.
Two days before the “Mickelson Meltdown,” Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods—all past US Open champions like Mickelson—missed the cut on various vagabond-like reasons.
Spieth birdied four holes on the back nine. Big deal. But how about this? He bogeyed his last two holes. Result? He missed entering the weekend by one shot.
McIlroy pruned 10 shots from his first-round 80 with his even-par 70. Still, he missed the cut.
And Woods, finally a thoroughbred again as many had believed, finished birdie-birdie in Round Two. But, like Spieth and McIlroy, Woods also fell short and remained stuck at 14 majors. His last majors win came 10 years ago—also in the US Open in 2008. Be not surprised. Woods has had four back surgeries and two knee operations the last five years or so.
He is thankful he’s back—not exactly in top form yet but good enough as he termed it.
“My putting just couldn’t come together,” said Woods, 42, who missed many putts he would have easily made in his heyday.
Putting was also Dustin Johnson’s waterloo in the final round.
Firing the only two sub-par rounds in the first two days with his 69-67, to erect a four-shot lead at the halfway mark, Johnson would fade with a disastrous 77 in Round Three.
He managed a two-way deadlock with Brooks Keopka going to the final round, but ran into a disobedient putter coming home, settling with a 70 to Koepka’s 68 to drop to third overall behind Koepka and Tommy Fleetwood.
Ah, Fleetwood with the flying mane. He singed Shinnecock with a flaming putter and shot a course-record 63 to dislodge Johnson, the 2016 champion, at second.
Thus, as always, the one hoisting the trophy after four days of the US Open isn’t actually a winner. To be more precise, he is just a survivor.
Uncannily, unbelievably, Koepka survived two straight years, duplicating the 1988-1989 victories of Curtis Strange.
Another of golf’s yet another queer moment.
THAT’S IT Arwind Santos and Marcio Lassiter of San Miguel Beer and Terrence Romeo and Anthony Semerad of TNT KaTropa getting thrown out for rough play last weekend was a Philippine Basketball Association record in player banishment in a single game. At least this year. But if truth be told, spotty officiating yet again fueled that ugly incident. Haaay naku!