GRAND SLAM FEVER
Spieth wins second straight major
Move over, Doug Sanders. One side, Scott Hoch. Breathe easy, Ed Sneed. Jordan Spieth is your 115th U.S. Open champion — one-half of the way to the 2015 Grand Slam — thanks to an 18th-hole putting disaster the likes of which even those three much put-upon gentlemen never had to swallow.
None of them three-putted from 12 feet to go from outright win to outright loss, passing right by a playoff without even nodding hello.
Dustin Johnson, who surely had at least half the trophy in his grasp after hitting two magnificent shots to within 12 feet of the hole on the par-five 18th at Chambers Bay, could only watch it be handed to the 21-year-old golden child, instead — a fittingly goofy ending to a day of spills and thrills that ranks with the most dramatic in major championship golf history. Spieth, who two months ago won the Masters in a runaway, held a three-stroke lead with two holes to play after Branden Grace hit his tee shot out of bounds at the 16th en route to a double-bogey, at which point no sane person could have envisioned what happened next.
Suddenly, Louis Oosthuizen was rolling in a 10-foot birdie putt at the 18th — his sixth birdie on the last seven holes — to cap a round of 67 and move into second place at four-under-par.
Then Spieth promptly hit his tee shot at the par-three 17th in the deep hay and ended up making double-bogey to fall back into a tie, and when Johnson birdied the 17th, it was a three-way tie.
Spieth too, had a makable eagle putt at the last, but left himself only a tap-in birdie. Johnson ran his 12-footer to win five feet past, and his comebacker never even touched the hole.
“I was happy 18 was a par-5 first and foremost,” said Spieth, who had to gather himself after losing his lead. “I put the drive right where we wanted to. Had the perfect club (on the approach). Two putts later, I didn’t think it was good enough, but …”
It was just good enough for a closing 69, not by a long shot the best score of the day — that was Adam Scott’s 64 to finish in a tie for third with Grace (71) and Cameron Smith (68), one behind Oosthuizen and Johnson — but sufficient to make him the first player since Bobby Jones in 1926 to birdie the final hole for a onestroke victory.
The mighty Johnson, who had driven the ball so beautifully, was betrayed by his putter time and again, though never so bitterly as at the 72nd hole, behind which his fiancée Paulina Gretzky, and their baby, and the Great One’s clan, waited in anticipation of a celebration that never happened.
“On the last green, I was thinking, this is why I’m here,” Johnson said. “This is why I play the game of golf. It just didn’t work out.”
PGA Tour stats indicate that the chance of three-putting from 12 feet is roughly one in a hundred.
Johnson, who had come close at three previous majors but failed to finish, turns 31 today. That’s 10 years older than Spieth, the youngest U.S. Open champion since Jones in 1923, who now takes his Grand Slam bid onto the Old Course at St. Andrews for next month’s Open Championship.
“To go to the home of golf in the next tournament is the sole focus, we’re not thinking any further ahead than that,” Spieth said. “But you can’t win ’em all unless you win the first two, I guess. We’re going to go to St. Andrews looking for the Claret Jug and I believe we can get it done if we get the right prep in.”
Only five men in history — Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Craig Wood — had ever won both the Masters and U.S. Open in the same year, until Sunday.
Johnson was the first to break from the pack of four 54-hole co-leaders, but was the weakest of the four in back-nine performance all week, and was again Sunday.
While Oosthuizen, who shot 77 Thursday in the depressing company of Woods and Rickie Fowler, rebounded with rounds of 66-66-67 — including a back- nine 29 Sunday — Johnson came home in 37, Grace in 36 and Spieth in 34.
“Just one bad swing cost me at the end. A straightforward shot, just spun out of it and that’s costly,” said Grace, who looked like the steadiest of the bunch until his 3-wood at the 16th went so far right it might have been on the railroad tracks if not for a spectators’ fence.
The unsteadiest wasn’t hard to identify. Jason Day, who had gutted out a 68 Saturday after collapsing with vertigo on the course Friday, simply ran out of gas and finished with a fourover-par 74.
World No. 1 Rory McIlroy mounted a charge that looked to have him headed for a major championship scoring record of 63 — he was six-under through 13 holes and had a seven-foot birdie try at the 14th that would have put him one shot out of the lead. But he missed it, and ended the momentum right there.
“The last few holes of this golf course haven’t been kind to me all week,” said McIlroy, whose closing 66 tied him for ninth. “I feel like it’s sort of one that got away, especially the way I putted this week. I don’t think I’ve ever hit the ball as well in a major championship.”