10 things I’ll miss from the U.S. Open (and 5 I won’t)

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’re mowing the rough. U.S. Open week is in the books! To the news…

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Viktor Hovland’s mojo.

The last thing that Viktor Hovland said into a microphone before leaving this year’s U.S. Open was, to me, the most interesting.

For context, let’s go back a couple months to the Valspar Championship. Hovland won that tournament despite being so disgusted with his swing that he almost withdrew beforehand. One exchange stood out to me that week, when a reporter asked Hovland if he thinks he’s too hard on himself and he said essentially that he thinks he has to be.

“I am hard on myself, yeah. But that’s also why I’m good,” he said. “If I wasn’t hard on myself I probably wouldn’t be out here.”

It was interesting, then, to hear him strike a slightly different tone on U.S. Open Sunday as he weighed the satisfaction and disappointment of a third-place finish. A reporter noticed he’d been talking with more confidence throughout the week, and Hovland said that’s been a conscious decision.

“I’ve been working on that a little bit. I’ve been tearing myself down a little too much,” he said.

“Even though I do know I need to work on some stuff and get back to where I used to be in a way, in a way, mechanically. But in the interim, I can still perform at a really high level, and there’s a lot of good stuff. Just got to take that with me and be a little bit kinder to myself.”

He’s still the same guy he was at Valspar, the hard-to-satisfy tinkerer who loves executing shots and pounded drivers on the Oakmont range deep into Saturday night, searching for something a little better. But all week at the U.S. Open Hovland reminded the world that he belongs at the top of the game. Finally it sounds like he believes it, too.

Hovland getting his mojo back — that’s golf stuff I like.

10 THINGS I’LL MISS FROM THE U.S. OPEN…

1. Championship significance.

The energy at a U.S. Open is electric. Practice rounds feel fun, festive; the USGA has gotten better and better at dialing in all the little stuff to make it clear you’re at a big event. Thursday and Friday are action-packed — even when that action gets a bit glacial. But once the weekend hits and players are re-paired, things really get momentous. Saturday is for positioning and Sunday is for crowning a champion. The aftermath of J.J. Spaun‘s ridiculous walkoff 65-footer was so captivating because you could see him processing the moment’s significance in real time. Everybody knows what it means; being on the ground you get to experience a little taste of how that feels. (I have also now decided I would like to win the U.S. Open.)

2. Championship chaos.

That entire finish was nuts, huh? I detailed some of the specifics on Sunday night if you want to relive ’em all, but the weather plus the rough plus the crowded leaderboard plus the pressure of the moment made for an inward nine that tested soul as much as swing. On the ground it was nearly impossible to keep track of who was leading and where the winner would come from, especially after contenders ran into one catastrophe after another. Fun to watch. Probably exhausting to compete in.

3. Hard golf.

We can debate the specific merits of rough length, fairway width, green speed and what this U.S. Open setup meant big-picture for the game of golf — but instead let’s stay small. It’s fun and interesting to watch the best golfers in the world get their teeth kicked in. I wouldn’t want every PGA Tour course to look or play like Oakmont did this week, but it’s great seeing these guys tested.

4. Adam Scott in the mix at a major.

I wrote Saturday night about why so many people were rooting for Adam Scott, specific in the context of sports’ greatest genre: The Old Guy’s Still Got It. With five holes left Scott still had a shot — but then he played those five holes in five over par. Another major, another question of what could have been. He spoke to Brendan Quinn of the Athletic post-round for a story that included this vulnerable exchange:

“You know, when I won that Masters,” he said, looking around like a man in an empty room, “I really thought, ‘Here we go, the floodgates are going to open.’”

The floodgates have not yet opened. Here’s hoping for another chance.

5. That 17th hole.

It’s where J.J. Spaun won the tournament, it’s where Tyrrell Hatton lost the tournament, it’s where Viktor Hovland hit a couple of the cleverest shots of the tournament, one each on Saturday and Sunday. It’s where players could catch respite from the barrage of bogeys — or get in weird trouble. No. 17 delivered again.

6. Cuts.

This week’s Travelers Championship will not have a cut and I think it’ll be a less interesting event as a result. Cuts are dramatic, they’re satisfying, they add urgency, they make for great stories and they improve the viewing experience — particularly at the majors. I get the theory behind no-cut events, but the reality is that events with cuts are better.

7. The dentist.

Matt Vogt made plenty of early-week headlines as the local qualifier with the most fun story, even if reality hit once they started keeping score. Two others made the cut. And several sectional qualifiers made noise in the tournament itself, including Cameron Young. The U.S. Open’s mix of exemptions, Tour-pro qualifiers and Cinderellas makes it feel big and, well, open.

8. Tyrrell Hatton.

He’s a terrific golfer who said he considers this his first time in Sunday contention at a major — and he really gives you the full experience.

9. Major championships.

You’re telling me we only have one men’s major left this year?!

10. Smart golf people.

One of the joys of attending these big-time events in person is spending time with others doing the same. It’s a chance to get the team at GOLF together for a week of big-time work but it’s also a chance to catch up with others from around the industry, from players to coaches to caddies to agents to media types. To my right in the media center were Matt and Will, the two brilliant, unassuming brothers who run DataGolf — it’s no surprise that they’re interesting guys and good hangs. Directly behind me were Brendan, Brody, Hugh and Gabby, the writers behind some of golf’s best feature reporting at the Athletic. Walking the course and following specific players or groups means the chance to chat with other golf media types, to kick around half-baked ideas, to sanity-check ideas, to make jokes that wouldn’t otherwise be funny. Writing can be a solitary enterprise — these weeks make it feel much less so.

…AND 5 THINGS I WON’T

1. Mud.

When it rains a lot at a golf tournament and there are a lot of spectators at that golf tournament, the places those spectators are walking get very, very muddy very, very quickly. This is not a new thing; I remember the first two majors I attended (the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion and PGA at Oak Hill) both turned to mud pits. Oak Hill in 2023 was the same way, as was Valhalla last year. (Augusta National has some magic green pebble stuff they use to solve most of their mud issues, although if you remember the police officer that almost took out Tiger Woods, that was a muddy situation, too.) Anyway, I spent this weekend tiptoeing gingerly around the worst of Oakmont’s swamps, desperately hoping to avoid the sort of day-ruining wipeout I saw from a few unlucky spectators.

2. Wet shoes.

Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me. We’re definitely in “shame on me” territory when it comes to walking several miles a day at golf tournaments with non-waterproof shoes. Between dew, sprinklers, rain — there’s almost always something that’ll get your shoes wet, and that makes things far less pleasant when you’re typing in the media center later that evening, they crank the A/C and suddenly you can’t feel your feet. Note to self for Royal Portrush: Waterproof shoes. And extra socks.

3. Rory vs. the Media.

I know part (all?) of the job is to react to stuff that happens, but although I am fascinated by this latest chapter of Rory McIlroy vs. the media I do not condone the collective handwringing we’ve done as an industry around it. Is something up with Rory? Sure. But my instinct is that any over-the-top reactions we make in real time about his relationship with the media or whatever may age like a glass of milk. Let’s come back to this at some point when we know just a little bit more. In the meantime, here’s my favorite quote about athletes talking to media, from Andre Agassi’s biography, which I think about constantly:

“I can’t imagine all these people trying to be like Andre Agassi, since I don’t want to be Andre Agassi. Now and then I start to explain this in an interview, but it never comes out right. I try to be funny, and it falls flat or offends someone. I try to be profound, and I hear myself making no sense. So I stop, fall back on pat answers and platitudes, tell journalists what they seem to want to hear. It’s the best I can do. If I can’t understand my motivations and demons, how can I hope to explain them to journalists on deadline?

“To make matters worse, journalists write down exactly what I say, while I’m saying it, word for word, as if this represented the literal truth. I want to tell them, Hold it, don’t write that down, I’m only thinking out loud here. You’re asking about the subject I understand least — me. Let me edit myself, contradict myself. But there isn’t time. They need black-and-white answers, good and evil, simple plot lines in seven hundred words, and then they’re on to the next thing.“

(And that was pre-social media!)

ONE SWING THOUGHT

From U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun, out of the rain delay:

“The theme for how the day was going, [my coaches] were just like, Dude, just chill. If you were given four shots back going into the back nine [when you got here] on Monday, like, you would take that. They just said, Just let it come to you, be calm. Stop trying so hard.”

RYDER CUP WATCH

Movement!

Guess who’s gonna play on the U.S. Ryder Cup team?

That’s right, folks: It’s J.J. Spaun. He was a bubble boy (No. 13) and now he’s 10 spots better (No. 3). Sure, it’s mathematically possible for him to get bumped from the top six. But at this point it’d be a shock not to see him at Bethpage.

Other movement: Sam Burns (T7) improved from No. 15 to No. 14, while Cameron Young (T4) is trending way up and improved from No. 28 to No. 15. Jordan Spieth ticked up from No. 25 to No. 22. (Further down the list, just for kicks, Brooks Koepka jumped from No. 97 to No. 65 and Chris Gotterup from No. 86 to No. 71.)

On the European side Tyrrell Hatton (T4) jumped from No. 5 to No. 2. The bigger move came from Robert MacIntyre, who didn’t quite win the golf tournament but improved from No. 11 to No. 4 in the standings and went from “maybe” to “almost definitely” on our unofficial Make-o-Meter. Hovland seems extremely likely, too, although I was surprised he didn’t get a bigger bump than No. 13 to No. 10 with his solo third.

TEAM USA RYDER CUP RANKINGS

1. Scheffler 2. Schauffele 3. DeChambeau 4. Thomas 5. Morikawa 6. Henley 7. Griffin 8. McNealy 9. English 10. Novak 11. Harman 12. Cantlay 13. Spaun 14. Hoge 15. Burns

TEAM EUROPE RYDER CUP RANKINGS

1. McIlroy 2. Hatton 3. Lowry 4. MacIntyre 5.Straka 6. R. Hojgaard 7. Fleetwood 8. Aberg 9. Rose 10. Hovland 11. Detry 12. Wallace 13. Norgaard 14. Neergaard-Petersen 15. Olesen

Full standings here.

ONE THING TO WATCH

Chambers Bay, 10 years later.

The amazing thing about this job is that every now and then a story idea that I’ve dreamt of actually comes true. And folks, that’s what happened when, the week before the U.S. Open, I revisited the site of Jordan Spieth’s rollercoaster 2015 victory at Chambers Bay with Michael Greller, the man who caddied him to the win. We walked the final few holes, we relived those moments and we dug into why that week was so meaningful to Greller, his family and his friends. I really think you’ll like the video we made from that day and I hope you watch it, pass it along, etc. — would love to do more stuff like this.

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NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

That previous entry could have served as news from Seattle, too. (Again, you can skip the rest of this paragraph, go back up and watch that.) But something else is quietly happening: the Red Sox are coming to town, and they’ve won eight of 10. I take no joy in rooting against the Mariners, but if it’s a 1:10 first pitch on a Wednesday afternoon with the Sox in town? Don’t mind if I do…

Oh, and seriously — thanks to everybody at Oakmont who said what’s up. Loved chatting with you.

We’ll see you next week!

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.