Severe test creates traffic jam at top
Four-way tie for lead as tough conditions at Shinnecock Hills tighten the field
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — The only way to get ahead at this U.S. Open was not to back up too far. Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka went about it the conventional way, putting together skeins of pars to mitigate the damage, and then there was Phil Mickelson’s what-the-hell approach, whacking at his moving ball as it was about to roll off the 13th green. It was either a meltdown or a subversive bit of commentary on a golf course that has been destroying the dignity of the best players in the world. Maybe a little of each.
A stiff northerly crosswind made the long fescue grass whip around and turned the sloping greens at par-70 Shinnecock Hills slicker and browner than varnish. The U.S. Open likes to style itself as the toughest test in golf, but the third round of this tournament became a test that nobody could pass.
Put it this way: Johnson shot 41 on the front nine and 77 for the day and still had share of the lead. “I don’t feel like I played badly at all,” he said. “Seven over is usually a terrible score.”
Rickie Fowler didn’t believe like he played badly, either. He began the day just 2 over par. He finished it plus-17. “You start to kind of laugh at it,” Fowler said.
Johnson and Koepka, who have combined to win the past two Opens, were in a four-way tie with two unwitting lurkers, Daniel Berger and Tony Finau, who all but accidentally found themselves in the hunt, climbing the leader board by default. Berger and Finau started the day so far back that they had morning tee times, both before 11 a.m., when Shinnecock was at the calmest it has been all week. They each shot a 66, the low rounds of the tournament. But by the time the leaders went off, a 20-mph wind had kicked up and the greens, which the U.S. Golf Association has mowed cruelly close, were baked.
“Sometimes in a U.S. Open, you’ve just got to take your medicine,” said Koepka, whose 72 was actually a round of superb control. “If you can eliminate double, you’re fine. Bogey, you’ll be all right. That’s kind of the goal, to be honest with you.”
Only one player was without a bogey through the first nine holes Saturday, Henrik Stenson, but even the smooth-putting Swede couldn’t sustain it, bogeying four of his next six holes. He shot 40 on the back for a 74 to trail by two strokes at 5 over.
Balls bounded across greens like marbles on a ballroom floor. Patrick Reed called the 18th green “glassy,” as Johnson discovered when he tried for a 10-foot birdie putt, which slid seven feet past the hole. He lipped out the comeback. “I don’t mind it being fast, and I don’t mind it being tough, but it was a little inconsistent,” Johnson said.
Nobody looked good. But few looked worse than Mickelson, who snapped in mid-round and breached the decorum of this overly solemn event, for which absolutely nobody could blame him. Mickelson, who turned 48 on Saturday, has had his share of painful Open experiences with six runner-up finishes and was undoubtedly frustrated to see another year slip away on a course that was unjust. He was 4 over through the first 12 holes and stood over another bogey putt on the par-4 13th. He barely tapped ball on the slippery downhill and watched it pick up speed and begin to run off the green toward a bunker.
Suddenly, Mickelson darted after the ball and began chasing it down the slope. He caught up to it, reached out with his putter and hit the ball back toward the hole. It was polo, not golf.
As he left the green, his stunned playing partner Andrew Johnston burst out laughing. “I looked at him, like, is this actually happening?” Johnston said afterward. “I said, ‘Sorry, but I can’t help but laugh.’ It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Mickelson began to laugh, too. The USGA assessed Mickelson a two-stroke penalty for striking a moving ball, a violation of Rule 14.5. That gave him a 10 on the hole. He went on to an 11-over 81, 17 over for the week.
Afterward, Mickelson claimed he had intentionally broken the rule and accepted a two-stroke penalty in a calculated bit of strategy to avoid what could have been a much worse score. “I just didn’t feel like going back and forth and hitting the same shot over,” he said. “I took the twoshot penalty and moved on.”
“I might’ve saved a shot doing it the way I did it,” he said. “I don’t see how knowing the rules and using them is a manipulation in any way.”
But couched in Mickelson’s remarks was a subtle indictment of a course that the USGA had clearly lost control of and that had become absurdly penal. “I didn’t feel like continuing my display,” Mickelson said. “It’s just easier to take the two shots and move on. I don’t feel like it was frustration. I just took the two shots because I didn’t want to keep hitting it back and forth. I’d still be out there, potentially.”