OAKMONT, PENNSYLVANIA | If notorious authors Marquis de Sade and Leopold van Sacher-Masoch had been born a century later, they surely would have been golf writers – or at least USGA officials.
The men from whom the terms “sadism” and “masochism” are derived would have loved Oakmont. They would have begged to be members. They might have married into the Fownes family and fit right in at Sunday dinner.
When ChatGPT was asked to “write a story about the U.S. Open difficulty at Oakmont in the style of Marquis de Sade,” here is what AI spit out faster than a Justin Thomas four-putt:
“Ah, Oakmont – a sadist’s playground cloaked in manicured civility, a verdant altar upon which men’s hopes are exquisitely dismantled. One does not merely play the U.S. Open there; one is invited to suffer, exquisitely, methodically, until the last putt becomes a confession of impotence whispered to the green.
“The fairways, narrow as a Puritan’s conscience, seduce with false promise, only to whip the soul with unrelenting rough – thick, unrepentant, like a flogger soaked in morning dew. Bunkers yawn like the mouths of pitiless dominatrices, eager to devour errant ambition. But it is the greens – those undulating, glassy beasts – that offer the truest ecstasy. … They reward only discipline bordering on the masochistic.
“At Oakmont, the Open is not won. It is endured. Survived. No champion emerges unscathed – only bloodied artisans of restraint, whose agony has been refined into triumph, one punishing inch at a time.
“Oh yes, my dear – Oakmont does not test a man. It unveils him.”
Well, that’s terrifying.
Oakmont unveiled J.J. Spaun last week with one of the most beautiful finishes you’ll ever see. It exposed so much more.
BIRDIE: Sunday drama. Just when you thought you knew which direction things were heading, a downpour and 96-minute suspension turned the final 2½ hours into a madcap free-for-all with eight players having a reasonable shot to win.
BOGEY-FREE: J.J. Spaun. The Players runner-up deftly scrambled to a clean-sheet 4-under 66 to start – one better than the opening 67 eventual champion Dustin Johnson posted as the only bogey-free round in the entire 2016 U.S. Open. He never flinched all week, valiantly rallying after bogeying five of the first six holes Sunday to seize control down the stretch. Spaun’s was just the eighth unblemished scorecard in Oakmont Open history. His messier finish was even better as he joined Ben Hogan (1953) and DJ among those eight as eventual winners.
BIRDIE: Robert MacIntyre. The man from Oban very nearly became the first left-hander to win the U.S. Open with a charge from nine shots behind after two quick bogeys Sunday to walk off 18 with a share of the lead. His rally to shoot 68 began with an eagle on the fourth and only ended because Spaun said so.
BOGEY: Sam Burns. He’s flashed the pedigree to be a major champion without anything to show for it in major championships except a backdoor T9 in last year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst. This year’s trophy looked like his to lose with a two-shot lead on the back nine Sunday, but he lost it playing Nos. 11-16 in 6-over.
BIRDIE: Viktor Hovland. The young Norwegian looked like his old gregarious self with some swashbuckling play to post his fourth top-four major finish. Now pleeeeeeease don’t change anything, Viktor, before Portrush.
PAR: Adam Scott. Making his 96th consecutive major championship start (since the 2001 Open Championship), the 44-year-old Aussie played textbook “old-man par” before a Saturday 67 put him into the final pairing in his third U.S. Open at Oakmont. Unfortunately, the magic and the pars ran out down the stretch. Only Jack Nicklaus (146 straight from 1962 Masters through 1998 U.S. Open) made more consecutive major starts.
DQ: Wyndham Clark. Only a month after the 2023 U.S. Open champion promised “to better the way I handle my frustrations on the course going forward” after getting caught on camera smashing a T-Mobile sign on the 16th tee at the PGA Championship, Clark may need anger management after reports accused him of caving in the front of two lockers in Oakmont’s historic locker room after he bogeyed his last hole to miss the cut. Perhaps a tour timeout is in order while he thinks about what he’s done.
BOGEY: Rough. Old-fashioned USGA/Oakmont punitive gouge-out rough – the way hell intended golf to be played. If you hit in it, you paid the price. The phrase “saved bogey” never seemed so ubiquitous. There were more rounds in the 80s (31) than 60s (17) the first two days.
DOUBLE-DOUBLE: Phil Mickelson. Three days shy of 55 playing his 34th U.S. Open and fourth at Oakmont, Lefty was sitting tied with the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm at 4-over through 32 holes with a chance to complete his career slam intact. Instead, he doubled 15 and 17 to miss the cut and walk away from the U.S. Open for potentially the last time. Man, that ending sucked.
BOGEY: Bryson DeChambeau. Oakmont didn’t let the defending champ get away with the scattershooting nonsense off the tee like Winged Foot (41.1 percent accuracy) and Pinehurst (5 of 14 fairways on Sunday) did. He missed more than half the fairways and hit only 20 greens in regulation and paid for those misses almost every time, making 13 bogeys and a double in becoming the first reigning winner to miss the cut since Gary Woodland in 2020.
BIRDIE: Hermanos. Mexican brothers Carlos and Alvaro Ortiz both qualified their way into the field at Oakmont. LIV Golf’s Carlos took advantage of the enhanced odds and made a strong run in contending deep into Sunday and his T4 finish guarantees his return next year at Shinnecock Hills as well as a spot in the Masters.
BIRDIE: LIV Golf. Tyrrell Hatton and Ortiz fought down the stretch, Jon Rahm set the early clubhouse lead with a Sunday 67 and four LIV golfers finished among the top 12 even without DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann making the cut.
QUAD: Daniel Berger. Putting together a strong second round and in contention at 1-under through 29 holes, Berger posted a snowman on No. 3 without hitting into the church pews to ruin his hopes.
BIRDIE: Pete Cowen. The swing coach knows when to bring the fire to Brooks Koepka, “scolding” the five-time major champion for 45 minutes in a bunker during practice on Monday. Koepka said the last time he got such a lashing from Cowen was in 2017 ahead of his first major win at Erin Hills. “I want someone to call me out,” Koepka said, “and he did a helluva job on it.”
BIRDIE: Brooks Koepka. After missing the cut at Augusta and Quail Hollow and not being relevant at any majors since his 2023 PGA Championship win, Koepka contended and finished T12. Hopefully that changes his mood going forward. “I would say from the first weekend in April until about last week, you didn’t want to be around me,” he said. “It drove me nuts. It ate at me. I haven’t been happy.”
BOGEY: Rory McIlroy. He eked out a made cut with two late birdies mixed in with a thrown club and a smashed tee marker. A Sunday 67 gave him a backdoor top-20. But McIlroy seems most intent on burning all of his sugary post-Masters press and long-standing media goodwill by declining post-round interviews (he went six in a row at majors before grudgingly speaking Saturday) and giving snippy answers to simple and legitimate questions when he does talk. The upside is unclear.
BIRDIE: Paul McGinley. The former Ryder Cup captain is a must-see element of Golf Channel’s “Live From” set, and he had this to say about golf’s widening epidemic of mum superstars: “I think the mistake lies not so much with Rory or (Collin) Morikawa or anyone else who doesn’t [talk to the media]. The mistake lies with golf and why isn’t golf mandating these guys to [talk]? They’re playing for ridiculously high price points. They’ve got to give a little bit back. And good, bad or indifferent, it needs to be mandated that they [talk] for the good of the game and the good of the tournament.” Amen.
PAR: Xander Schauffele. Thanks to a Sunday 69, Schauffele has STILL never finished worse than T14 in nine career U.S. Opens.
BIRDIE: Squirrel! The nameless Oakmont squirrel has served as the club’s logo since the 1962 U.S. Open. With the help of artist Lee Wybranski, the squirrel logo changes every major at Oakmont, and it absolutely crushes it with patrons in the merchandise tent. This year’s squirrel, perched once again on a colorful tam o’shanter, proudly holds what must be an old Acushnet balata ball – which is more likely to be uncovered foraging in Oakmont’s rough than an acorn.
BOGEY: Shane Lowry. The runner-up to Dustin Johnson in 2016 at Oakmont flamed out fast with a 79-78 effort. His weird week included the first eagle by anyone on the church-pew third hole, his only birdie on his 35th hole and a brain-lock moment when he picked up his ball without marking it on the 14th green. He’ll head to Portrush, where he won the Open in 2019, with a head full of exceptional play spoiled by dark moments in 2025.
ALBATROSS: Patrick Reed. The former Masters champion hit a 3-wood from 286 yards that landed gently on the green and rolled like he read the break to drop into the cup for a 2 on the 611-yard par-5 fourth hole in the first round – the fourth albatross in recorded U.S. Open history and the first since Nick Watney in 2012 on Olympic’s 17th. It was prettier than his splotchy shirt. To everyone’s surprise, a new tee was not built overnight to lengthen the hole another 50 yards.
EAGLE: Maxwell Moldovan. After a perfect start with a hole-out eagle on the downhill first hole, the former Ohio State star never had a par breaker the rest of the way in shooting 76-76. To his credit, Moldovan has qualified his way into four consecutive U.S. Opens – the only major he’s yet played in.
BOGEY: JDay couture. After seeing Jason Day’s American flag swim trunks from Malbon he sported in the practice round, we can state that Augusta National made the right call telling him to tone it down.
BIRDIE: James Nicholas and Philip Barbaree Jr. The only players to make it through local qualifying all the way to the weekend at Oakmont. The sweet moment Barbaree, a PGA Tour Americas player, shared with his wife/caddie Chloe after draining his par-saving putt Saturday morning to grab the last spot on the third round tee sheet epitomized the Open dream.
BIRDIE: John Mahaffey. His Oakmont major scoring record of 8-under in the 1978 PGA Championship remains safe. While Johnny Miller’s closing 63 in the 1973 U.S. Open gets all the love, Mahaffey’s 66 to rally from seven behind Tom Watson with 14 holes to play before winning with birdie on the second hole of a three-man playoff deserves more credit. It deprived Watson of collecting a career slam.
BOGEY: Turf dentistry. Matt Vogt seems like a perfectly nice man for a practicing dentist, but he might have preferred giving himself a root canal to playing Oakmont, where he hit the opening tee shot of the tournament and drilled down on a couple of doubles in his first seven holes en route to an opening 82. “Your head starts spinning out here, and it just gets away from you,” said the first-time U.S. Open qualifier and former Oakmont caddie. “I’d say in the moment you feel like you get punched in the face, but ultimately, yeah, I’d say it was fun.” He is obviously the one out of five dentists who would recommend it.
BIRDIE: Gil Hanse. For the fourth time in six years, the U.S. Open was staged on a venue restored by the new “Major Doctor.” Hanse’s recent “major” work includes Winged Foot (2020), The Country Club in Brookline (2022), Los Angeles Country Club (2023), Southern Hills (2022 PGA) and now Oakmont, where he used vintage photos to restore original Fownes family elements and expand greens by a collective 24,000 square feet. We’ll see his nip/tuck work again in upcoming majors at Aronimink (2026 PGA), Olympic (2028 PGA), Baltusrol (2029 PGA), Merion (2030 U.S.) and Oakland Hills (2034 U.S.).
BIRDIE: ’Burgh concessions. Oakmont shaved kielbasa (with kraut, onion and mustard), Steel City dog (with capicola, provolone, vinegar slaw, potato sticks and mustard on a potato roll) or Strip District pepperoni roll, whole dill pickle and a smiley cookie were excellent representative regional options.
BOGEY: Turnpike traffic jams. Although Oakmont long ago fulfilled the USGA demand to build a second pedestrian bridge across the interstate that bisects the course, it took GGP’s Ron Green Jr. 29 minutes to make the 100-yard walk across from the eighth green to the ninth tee following Phil Mickelson. Might be time to widen the lanes before the anchor site hosts again in 2033.
BOGEY: Hoppy. Global Golf Post’s John Hopkins has been covering majors for nearly five decades, so he should know better than to misplace his wallet in Heathrow Airport before his trans-Atlantic flight. “I don’t deserve a bogey. I deserve a double or even a triple for stupidity,” he insisted.
BIRDIE: Gov. Josh Shapiro. The commonwealth executive stopped by for a nice PR chat about the benefits of golf in Pennsylvania and ended up fielding questions from golf scribes about immigration protests and the Israel-Iran conflict: “We went from golf to protests and now we’re going to go to the Middle East here? Anybody from the USGA want to take these?”
47: Will Chandler and George Duangmanee. We’ve all had front-nine 47s like the ones the PGA Tour rookie from Georgia and aspiring pro from Virginia had on Friday – just not on such a prominent stage. Chandler started double-double-quad-bogey but recovered his poise to shoot only 84 – a million miles away from his T6 in front of the rowdy inmates at the WM Phoenix Open in February. Duangmanee went 86-89 at Oakmont and might be rethinking his career options.