Issue No. 90 | June 18, 2024

Hey,

Whew. Where do we even begin?

How about here …

On Friday evening, a collection of 30 or 40 of us, the Corrupt Golf Media, gathered at a U.S. Open rental house and held our own satirical awards show. Pinecones were painted gold and divvied out to many of the writers and podcasters in attendance. The categories were humorous and bit biting with enough truth in there that made you say, "Well, it's funny because it's kinda true."

I won the "most likely to be in a codependent relationship with a former No. 1 player in the world" award, to which I responded "I didn't know you guys knew about me and Luke Donald."

The entire thing was silly, but more importantly it was fun. A smaller group of us were talking after the gathering about how refreshing it was to be galvanized around our own ridiculousness as well as the absurdity of this sport. Covering golf is often not unlike playing it. There is loneliness. There is imposter syndrome. It is harder and less fun than it probably seems from afar.

So I left Friday evening's soiree grateful for a collective group of men and women — whose ages probably spanned 35 or 40 years — who have a legitimate spirit of togetherness and thankfulness for the jobs we have and the work we get to do individually but also together. It hasn't always been like that out there, but it is now. It's how it should be and hopefully will be from now on.

Unless, you know, the PIF gets into niche golf media companies.

Two reminders before we get to some thoughts.

1. We gave away a Garmin watch to whoever was the closest to guessing how many steps I would take at Pinehurst. I took 132,973 – somebody guessed 132,986! Thanks again to Garmin for doing the giveaway!

2. We're also giving away two bags of U.S. Open merch. You don't have to do anything to be eligible if you're reading this via email. You’re already entered. We will just randomly select two subscribers like we did with the Masters and give the merch away in an email later this week.

Onto the news.

But first, a thank you to this week’s sponsor, Holderness and Bourne. I got to see some of the good folks of H&B during U.S. Open week, and we had a blast talking golf and life. Also, as you can see below, they’ve recently gotten into the kids attire game, which rocks. Check it out here!

16 Thoughts on the U.S. Open

1. The back nine on Sunday was a total Tilt-A-Whirl. I’ve now covered 26 of these in person along with three Ryder Cups, and I’ve never before felt whatever it was that I felt over those last two hours. Venues matter, and this one helped. Because of the way the back nine is structured, there was no outlet for the tension. Nowhere for it to go. It just kept building and building until it manifested in Bryson’s fists and on Rory’s face.

The back nine at a major — maybe especially at a U.S. Open — is barely about golf. Oh sure, there are shots and putts and yardages and scores, but like any 5th set late in a grand slam, the last nine holes of a classic major like this one are less about what you’re doing and more about who you are. Not to go full Zinger, but the last handful of holes at a major with that much history on the table disclose in dark and sometimes desperate ways what it is that’s happening inside your head and your heart.

That sounds saccharine and overworked, and in some ways it probably is. But there is a specific buzz, a certain air about the back nine at majors for the leaders that everyone can feel. It does something to you. Maybe it makes you more of what you already are. Maybe it just serves to disrupt what you’ve been doing.

Regardless, it is different, and it asks you questions that you must be prepared to answer. Questions that you didn’t see on the first 85 percent of the test. Do you have the shots, yes, but also … do you have the stones?

To make 4s from inconceivable spots. To hold serve with the tournament on your putter. To get up and down from a place you cannot get up and down from with your national championship on the line. I’ve never hit those shots — probably none of us have — but it seems to me that at some point, your skill can get you halfway home and then your spine and your guts must provide the rest.

There is no better viewing experience in sport.

2. I thought Rory’s miss on 16 made him human. A thousand times, with a major championship on the line, I have looked at a 3- or 4-footer and thought, “I would definitely miss that.” Pros never do, though. Not even when they’re rippling with fear. And then, of all the people to put in that moment, it was the guy presumed to be the biggest badass and the fulcrum of entire Ryder Cups. With the United States Open on his putter and three pars between himself and his most important trophy in 10 years, what happened is undeniable.

Rory shook.

In some ways, it’s unnerving: He’s not who I thought he was! 
In others, it’s endearing: Oh, he is just like us.

He’s not, but the putt certainly made it feel that way.

His mind must have been a tidal wave.

The sound emitted on No. 17 was ghoulish. If you closed your eyes, it must have sounded like 3,000 people passed out at the same exact moment. They knew what Rory would soon find out — what I wrote about for CBS Sports.

3. But really, he lost it on 5. Let’s pretend like the ones on 16 and 18 fall but the ones on 10 and 12 do not. That would have made far more sense.

If that happens — it didn’t, which means he still has to live with the truth that he kicked away a second U.S. Open — but if that happens, then 5 must be the one he’ll rue the most.

He was, what, 3 or 4 or certainly 5 yards from safety and a 25- or 30-foot slider for eagle. That’s a guaranteed 5 and probably a 4. It couldn’t climb the hill, and he made a 6 instead.

Pinehurst giveth and Pinehurst taketh away.

4. That was why it was great, though, right? The shots were there, but buddy you had to hit them. Here’s the quote I’ll think about for a while.

There aren’t a lot of PGA Tour courses where your second shot on a par 5 hits the green and rolls up to pin high but you end up with a 6. That is an unusual and merciless thing. But also … this isn’t the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

And honestly what struck me most about both Rory and Bryson all week was the marriage of two of the great drivers in the history of the sport with two of the best short games on the entire property.

They got up and down from staggering locations. Bryson’s par on 8 on Sunday nearly took me to my knees. I was 20 yards behind him and the hole looked like it was level with our eyes. There’s not even really a shot you can hit.

But he somehow saved par from there. And it seemed like both of those guys did this once every three holes for four consecutive days.

5. Bryson is the Big Thespian. He remains absurd. Changing driver heads 15 minutes before taking a three shot lead to the first tee box on Sunday at a U.S. Open is not normal stuff.

His reactions throughout deserve a look from the Tony Awards committee. After nearly every putt, he gathered his putter in his arms and turned his chest toward the hole. His eyes found the biggest audience in the general area, and if it fell, he gave them what they came for. It’s no wonder he’s become beloved.

He did this over and over again. On the first tee, he whipped them up like the hype man for a huge musical act. When they went quiet and still, he turned to them and delivered right and left hooks.

His Cal Ripken-like victory lap around the 18th after getting the trophy was hilarious. He called his shot, too. He told the fans who stayed he wanted them to get a sliver of how he felt, and he let them touch his history.

Is it insincere? Inauthentic?

I wrote about this for CBS Sports on Monday, but I think Bryson — in his own weird and bizarre ways — is actually fairly sweet and kind.

He, of all people, knows what it’s like to be on the outside looking in, and he desires for others not to feel the same.

He is the Big Thespian in that some of it must be an act but not in a nefarious way. More in a “man, I hope you really enjoyed this show” kind of way. To be honest, this is the most reasonable outcome of having a literal team of photographers and videographers following around the High King of Content.

Is the unintended (or intended?) benefit of all of this tons of adulation from those who watch him play? Sure, and it would be easy to conclude that this is actually the primary impetus for his preposterous behavior. But maybe it’s just the byproduct. Who can really say.

What I do know is that if other pros tried to do what he does, it would exhaust them and it actually would be insincere. I think our inability to differentiate him from the Jon Rahms and Collin Morikawas of the world is part of why it’s hard to believe all of this is not a total sham. But he is not other pros. He’s Bryson, a little sweet, a lot awkward. And somehow all of it kind of works, which makes almost no sense whatsoever.

But then again that’s fitting, because little of what he does — soaking his golf balls in epsom salts? 3D printing irons with a metal fabricator? sidesaddle putting? — makes any sense at all. But the end result is that he is now probably one of the 10 best golfers of the last 10 years.

6. A tweet I think about more often than I should. Probably in the pantheon of tweets I think about more than I should. Look at the timestamp.

7. One thing I ruminate on as it relates to Rory is what the day after the Masters must feel like. What a burden it must be to have 358 days in front of you before it’s the next Masters week. Now compress that feeling into like two minutes of walking from the 16 green to the 17 tee. Then imagine trying to get it to the house with a par-par finish at conniving Pinehurst.

After what happened at the 16th, that short putt on 17 felt like a minor miracle, and the miss at the last did not seem absurd.

How do you putt when you can’t feel your feet?

On Monday morning, I met Sean Martin for coffee at a lovely little place in Pinehurst Village called the Roast Office. Highest recommendation.

We talked about our weeks, our takes and that ending. We bro hugged goodbye, and I drove back to my hotel. It was in this moment that it hit me. It was in this moment that I began to feel some of the weight of what Rory had experienced.

I was listening to the Shotgun Start, and Porath mentioned something about how difficult it is to be a pro golfer, to have no shooting guard to turn to and no third baseman to clean up your messes.

I thought of his spinning tires in the parking lot on Sunday evening. There were dozens (or more?) people encircling his car and lining the road to exit the property. He must have been screaming internally.

He probably wanted to hit something with all of his might.

All these people staring at you, waiting for you to talk just after they watched you dance. Just after they watched you break your ankle on that last pirouette. Say something, Rory. Tell us about this excruciating pain.

Rory’s entire life has more or less been structured — for the last two decades — around dancing for people who he’ll never know. At the expense of friendships and anonymity and a regular life, he has striven for this.

That’s the price of admission, of course, the cost of the gift, and it all seems worth it when it bends in your direction.

But what about when it doesn’t?

When you know that so many people in golf — executives, other players, media members and most of all, fans — not only want you to get to No. 5 but expect that it will happen, your inability to do so because of something as innocuous as a 30-inch putt and then another one from 4 feet must be completely crushing.

8. Honestly, Johnson Wagner — not Bryson — might actually be the Greatest Showman. Has Golf Channel become must-see television because they threw somebody who missed 176 cuts in 362 starts on the PGA Tour into random bunkers and gave him a club and a camera?

It fits nicely with my theory that golf fans want to see the purest, most distilled version of golf you can deliver. The packaged stuff with a bow on top? Shoot it into the sun.  

The raw stuff, the stuff we can relate to because we are all golfers ourselves, that’s the stuff to turn to.

The biggest thing golf has going for it as an entertainment product is that every single person watching is likely a player themselves. Caddies sort of bridge this gap when they talk to pros about what shot to hit.

Wagner bridges it even further by showing you what it looks like for somebody who kind of seems like a normal low handicap player¹ to hit the shot an out-of-this-world pro just tried.

When we read or watch or listen to anything (not just in sports), most of the time we’re simply looking for something about which we can say “somebody understands me, somebody gets it, I’m not alone.”

In a weird, weird way that’s exactly what Wagner provides.

9. One of my takeaways from this week — and it probably should have been a bigger takeaway from the Masters and PGA — is that Bryson, if he’s even within striking distance of playing good enough to be on the Ryder Cup team, needs to be on the Ryder Cup team.

I’m pretty disinterested in necessarily taking the 12 best guys (which is why I was so pro-JT last October), even though Bryson is easily inside that top 12 right now and honestly probably inside the top two or three.  

What I’m more interested in is finding a showman who’s also great at golf. Bryson was outrageous at Whistling Straits. The biggest winner of the week. This was back when it felt like he got a one-week detente from golf fans (and his teammates), but now that’s the reception he gets everywhere he goes all the time. He has to be at Bethpage. Has to be.

I think he’s a more mature teammate than he probably was in the past and mature enough to understand when to push and when to back off. He is the perfect Ryder Cup golfer. The Big Thespian on the biggest stage. Broadway Bryson. It will be insane.

10. I thought it was slightly reductive but also a wonderful explanation of why Pinehurst is great.

11. My friend Kevin Van Valkenburg suggested that at some point the USGA should change the par of its U.S. Open to 68 just for fun. Par is such an effective means of manipulating emotion and perception. It staggers me.

It took 274 shots for Bryson to win this Open. It took 277 for Scottie to win this year’s Masters. And yet. And yet Pinehurst was mickey mouse — according to some — and Augusta is a proper course. Is it because of par? Par, that which is arbitrary and made up and could be 18 or 90 or anything in between and is simply a way to keep score for folks in attendance and viewers at home?

While we’re here, I want to applaud the USGA for its work with golf courses of late. The more modern setups, as Garrett at the Fried Egg pointed out here, have been excellent and not absurd, and while they maybe didn’t find as much of The Line as I would have liked, the entire test was fair and difficult and wonderful. Planning majors 40 years out is totally bonkers, but playing one at Pinehurst every five years is very much not.

12. This is tough to look at.

It also reminded me that Rory is like four putts from seven majors.²

1. The one on 16 at this year’s U.S. Open.

2. The one on 18 at this year’s U.S. Open.

3. Cam’s on 17 at the 2022 Open. Rory surely birdies 18 instead of taking a run at eagle and wins in a playoff.

4. Wyndham’s 50 foot lag on 18 at last year’s U.S. Open. Three putt there, and Rory wins in a playoff.³

Obviously that’s all conjecture and alternate realities,⁴ but not many people have that clear of a path to an Arnold Palmer number of major championships.

13. An appreciation post of the Pinehurst lighting. Here are two very amateur photographs I took on the weekend that show it off. Man, what a place.

14. Here’s a take: I think congratulation culture is totally absurd and out of hand. People were mad at Rory because he didn’t shake Bryson’s hand and tell him good job and pat him on his bottom? Did they want him to drape the medal around his neck as well?

I just don’t care about that at all. He’ll see him when he sees him and give him his flowers. There’s no need to make a production out of it. I think it’s such a bite-sized clip or moment that’s easily shareable. The Instagramafication of our culture. No, I want guys to be pissed about losing the United States Open. They can break bread later. I don’t need them to bro hug and exchange Twitch account handles all over my television.

15. That having been said, I thought Rory’s ignominious exit was pretty weak. I know nobody cares about the opinions or desires of the Corrupt Golf Media, players sometimes least of all. And I think quotes in general are broadly overrated as a writing tool (although Rory’s are usually pretty great and useable).

But more than needing to hear his answers about what he was thinking after 16, I thought the way he rolled out was emblematic of his inability to handle the pressure of the last 90 minutes with any kind of aplomb.

Rory has banked a lot of player-media capital over the last 15 years so I’m not sure it’s anything to get worked up over, and I liked Shane Ryan’s line about how it “would take a superhuman constitution to overcome the urge to escape” after giving away the Open. But the way it went down — in a total huff and the semi-peel out and everything that went along with it — was not great.

Rory has always been grace personified, but this was not that. Not even close.

16. The best things I read or saw in the aftermath of whatever that was that happened between Rory and Bryson.

👉️ Shane Ryan on Rory: This must be what it feels like for Peter Malnati to watch Bryson bang balls on the range. Why are we playing the same sport?

👉️ Jamie Kennedy on the ridiculousness of Bryson’s bunker shot: Jamie is smart, actually great at golf and does a good job of marrying having played at a high level with now talking about it at an even higher level. If you don’t already follow him, you must.

👉️ Dylan breaking down Rory’s putting stroke on No. 18 with a quote from this year’s Masters is amazing. Incredible pull from him, and I’ve watched where he hits it on the face about 372 times.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.

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