By Alex Myers
Scott Gregory introduced himself to golf fans around the world at this year’s U.S. Open with a disastrous first-round 92 at Shinnecock Hills. But if you thought that was the last you’d hear of the young Englishman, then think again.

On Thursday, Gregory finished T-11 at the final stage of European Tour Qualifying School to become one of 27 players to earn European Tour cards for next season and cap one of the year’s best redemption stories. The 24-year-old and 2016 British Amateur champ made it through all three stages of qualifying, including a six-round marathon finale in Spain.

“It’s been a tough year with injury and I didn’t have my best day at the U.S. Open,” an emotional Gregory said after. “I probably came under some unfair criticism so to do this not only proves it to myself but it proves it to them. It keeps a lot of people quiet.”

But Gregory, understandably, wasn’t keeping quiet on social media after earning his tour card for the first time. After saying he’d word any message to his critics “carefully,” he tweeted this:

For the people who said I should learn my trade at the Tower Bridge.. I’ll learn it on the European Tour if that’s okay? @CorhamptonGolf @cobragolfuk @pumagolfuk @Eurocams1 @markdiment @simonandrews8 @SMMindOdyssey @Fortius_Perf @GrahamWalker18 https://t.co/ZfJlAIhbO0

— Scott Gregory (@ScottGregory5) November 15, 2018

Sounds okay to us, Scott.

The post Golfer who shot 92 at the U.S. Open earns his European Tour card, fires back at his critics on Twitter appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

How familiar are you with back-to-back U.S. Open champion, and now PGA Championship winner, Brooks Koepka? Here are a few things you need to know about the 28-year-old:

1. Brooks Koepka didn’t have a great track record at Erin Hills
Though the 27-year-old’s breakthrough major title came at Erin Hills, he competed at the 2011 U.S. Amateur and failed to make it to match play.

Sports Illustrated

2. Koepka’s great uncle, Dick Groat, is a legend
Groat won two World Series as a shortstop with the Pittsburgh Pirates, earned the 1960 National League MVP award and earned a spot on eight National League All-Star teams. A multi-sport athlete, Groat was also drafted third overall in the 1952 NBA Draft by the Fort Wayne Pistons. Grout, who is now 86 years old, is a radio analyst for Pitt basketball.

3. The love of baseball is in the family
His father, Bob, also played baseball; he was a pitcher at West Virginia Wesleyan. And he passed that passion onto his son, Brooks, who told our Jaime Diaz of his love for baseball: “If I could do it over again, I’d play baseball—100 percent, no doubt.”

Brooks Koepka (middle) seen in high school.

4. At age 10, Koepka fractured his nose and sinus cavity when his babysitter’s car was hit at an intersection
That summer, he couldn’t play any contact sports, so he spent most days at West Palm Beach’s public Okeeheelee Golf Course.

David Cannon
Brooks Koepka with his father (middle) during the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, seen here at Carnoustie.

5. Koepka made his high school golf team as a sixth grader
And at age 13, ended his father’s five-year club championship streak at Sherbrooke Golf and Country Club in Lake Worth, Fla., by taking him down in the finals.

Harry How.

6. Before his win at Erin Hills, Koepka had excelled on the big stage
Koepka finished inside the top 25 in the previous seven majors and recording four top-10 finishes since 2014.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY

7. Koepka was a huge component to the winning USA Ryder Cup team
Koepka went 3-1-0 in his Ryder Cup debut last year in the U.S. victory over Europe at Hazeltine National.

Anadolu Agency.

8. Before earning his PGA Tour card, Koepka played a ton of golf in Europe
He won three times on the Challenge Tour before winning in Turkey on the European Tour. He says of his time abroad: “I think it helped me grow up a little bit and really figure out that, ‘Hey, play golf, get it done, and then you can really take this somewhere.’ I built a lot of confidence off that.”

Chris Graythen.

9. Koepka’s younger brother, Chase, is also a professional golfer
The brothers teamed up at this year’s Zurich Classic to tie for fifth in the team event. Chase is taking a similar road to pro golf as his brother, playing the Challenge Tour primarily this year.

Courtesy of Florida State Athletics.

10. Koepka says seeing his mother, Denise Jakows, beat breast cancer while he was in college gave him added perspective on life:
“It made me figure out that life can go pretty quickly, so enjoy it,” he says. “Make people laugh, make the best of things. Maybe not take things as seriously.”

Brooks Koepka (middle) helped lead Florida State to a semifinal run at NCAAs. (Photo courtesy of Florida State Athletics).

11. The Florida State graduate earned ACC Golfer of the Year honors two times, holds the school record for career stroke average (71.85) and single-season stroke average (71.09).

12. Koepka has worked with Claude Harmon III on his swing since 2013.
He credits Harmon, son of legendary instructor Butch Harmon, for making his driver swing more repeatable—instead of favoring a draw and missing both ways, Koepka now hits a power fade. And for the past two seasons, Koepka has improved his short game under European coach Pete Cowen, who also works with Henrik Stenson, Louis Oosthuizen and Sergio Garcia.

Andrew Redington.

13. On the bag for Koepka is Ricky Elliott, a former mini-tour player and teaching pro from Northern Ireland.
Elliott caddied for Ben Curtis for three seasons before starting to work with Koepka at the 2013 PGA Championship at Oak Hill.

14. The newly-crowned U.S. Open champion lives in Jupiter, Fla.
He practices quite a bit at The Floridian with top PGA Tour pros like Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson. Koepka credits pep talk from DJ before the final round at Erin Hills as helping him break through.

Richard Heathcote.

15. Koepka is currently dating Jena Sims, a former Miss Georgia Teen USA winner who has also been in several movies.
Sims made headlines when FOX’s Joe Buck misidentified her as a former girlfriend of Koepka’s.

The post 15 Things You Need To Know About Brooks Koepka appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
Mike Davis and the USGA have taken their share of body blows for losing Shinnecock Hills, again, at this year’s U.S. Open. Judging by Tiger Woods’ roundabout jab on Sunday, those punches aren’t stopping anytime soon.

Following his fourth round at the Quicken Loans National, which doubled as his final tune-up for the Open, Woods was asked his thoughts on the upcoming championship at Carnoustie. The 42-year-old shared his experiences with the venerable links—he has finished 3rd and 12th at two previous Carnoustie Opens—which led to the following on commentary on the R&A, and what could be interpreted as an indictment on the USGA:

“One of the neat things about playing about the Open Championship, they don’t care what par is,” Woods said at TPC Potomac. “They let whatever Mother Nature has…if it’s in store for a wet Open, it is, if it is dry, it’s dry. They don’t try to manufacture an Open.”

? @TigerWoods discusses his week with the new putter after his Sunday 66 @QLNational. https://t.co/4AnYTnp8vU

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 1, 2018

When asked a follow-up if that was a shot at the USGA, Woods replied, “Come again?” and when the question was repeated, a handler escorted Woods away, saying, “I heard ya,” with a smile.

He’s not wrong, and certainly not alone in his USGA assessment. Still, bold move, considering Woods might have to rely on an exemption into the Pebble Beach field next year.

The post Tiger Woods jabs USGA: The R&A doesn’t manufacture an Open or care what par is appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
Recently, I made all my colleagues jealous got to play one of the country’s top golf courses, Shinnecock Hills out on Long Island. The U.S. Open was still a few weeks away, so the greens weren’t yet major-championship slick, although the rough was already starting to resemble James Harden’s beard.

Long story short: The course humbled me. My score contained three digits and no decimal point. I made an 8 on the par-4 13th hole, and no that wasn’t adding two extra strokes for hitting a moving ball. Fact was, I was having trouble hitting a non-moving ball. And still, I had a fantastic time. The golf course was beautiful, the clubhouse iconic, the weather ideal, the traffic bearable and the setting superb. It was a great day … except for my game.

Naturally, upon my return to the office my still rather jealous colleagues were curious how things went. I needed to figure out how to best tell my tales of woe, and wow. Which, in turn, caused me to ponder something a bit more existential:

How do you tell a story about your own golf exploits, anyway?

More to the point, a good story. We’ve all sat through a friend droning on about a recent golf outing, leaving nothing to the imagination (literally nothing) as they start live blogging the entire day/week of their journey. Somewhere between “We wolfed down a breakfast sandwich on the ride in” and “I couldn’t believe it took me three minutes to get the ballwasher unjammed on No. 6” you slowly twist your wrist to catch a glimpse of your watch just to make sure the minute hand isn’t actually moving backward.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t want to be that guy. Not with the score I was about to lay on them, anyway. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the faint voice of my Mom and a lesson I swear she once offered: “Don’t tell somebody else a golf story you wouldn’t want to have to hear yourself.”

So I vowed to stick to a few rules that, after consultation with a couple of my Golf Digest peers, can travel nicely as you prepare for a summer of incredible golf—and subsequent story-telling.

Be original
When first asked “So, how was it?” I could have gone for the hackneyed opening line of “Well, the course record is still safe!” However, the first response to how you played should never, ever, EVER be “The course record is still safe!” Make an effort to entertain your listeners, lest they start turning their wrists 10 seconds in.

Be brief
I’m an optimist, so I believe my friends genuinely want to know the answer to “how was it?” But I’m a realist, too, and appreciate they don’t want to know how was everything. The key is to come up with three to five quick, relatable nuggets that provide details without needing to clear out calendar space: I made two pars (honesty is the best policy). … The layout was very cool, how you can see the entire course without any trees there. … The par-3 11th hole is so wicked, but easily my favorite. … Somebody at the Open is going to go lose their mind on the greens.

Given the pitiful nature of my play, the brevity thing was easy. Where this gets tricky is when you actually have a round to remember. Last fall, I played really well on another trip to Pinehurst No. 2. I was ready to have everyone jump in the cart and ride along with me through all 18 holes. But you’ve got to resist that urge. The better you played (particularly compared to your potential) or the better the course you played, the more leeway you have to offer a little more. Still, mind your pace of play.

Pick a highlight and run with it
No matter what you shoot, there is likely a high point of your golf game. Go ahead and stick your chest out a little. For instance, I made a par on the par-3 second hole. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was pretty sweet at the time. The key, again, is to pick one (maybe two) moments and keep things rolling.

Ted Levine

Limit the photos, please
You probably already posted a bunch on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, so your friends have already seen them. Try then not to show more than one or two. Exceptions: You played Augusta National and have created a montage of you walking over the Hogan Bridge. Ditto St. Andrews and the Swilcan Bridge. (Maybe any famed course with a famous bridge.) The Committee will also consider pics of you standing next to famous bunkers or outside memorable clubhouse entrances on a case-by-case basis.

Bragging is good, but don’t overdo it
Did I mention I got to play Shinnecock Hills?!? Yep, once is enough.

Self-deprecation is good, but don’t overdo it
I mentioned the rough, right? Well, I made sure my colleagues knew how difficult it was, coming up with three or four knee-slappers to try and reiterate the point. In hindsight, I probably needed to reign this in. Have you heard of the adage “beating a dead horse”? Don’t do it.

If there’s something iconic about the course, it’s OK to indulge
Everybody remembered the seventh green at Shinnecock from the 2004 U.S. Open. So choosing this hole makes sense (made a nice bogey). But, as previously mentioned, keep it short and sweet.

Don’t make it all about the golf
This part was easy, since some of my favourite moments had nothing to do with the golf. The Shinnecock locker room was fantastically old school, living up to the hype. If I wasn’t afraid of being banned from returning, I might have camped there overnight.

Follow these steps and you should be able to get in and out in 5 to 10 minutes, keeping your colleagues jealous while selfishly getting to relive the experience one more time. And as for anybody who wants to hear more, take them to lunch.

The post What they REALLY want to know: How to tell everybody the story of your golf trip without boring them appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Luke Kerr-Dineen
The saga surrounding Phil Mickelson’s U.S. Open antics at Shinnecock Hills has stretched well beyond last Saturday afternoon. Five days later, there’s still a fascination with what the heck Mickelson was thinking when he ran after his moving ball and hit it back towards the hole before it rolled off the 13th green. The latest development comes by way of Mickelson sending out an apology through a select group of reporters, including Golf Digest’s Dave Shedloski.

“My anger and frustration got the best of me last weekend,” he said. “I’m embarrassed and disappointed by my actions … and I’m sorry.”

The apology, no doubt, was aimed to quiet some of the grumblings over Mickelson’s misdeeds and the stain they might leave on him, the USGA and the game. At the same time, it might have perpetuated the divide between traditionalists who took offence at Mickelson’s actions and others who related to Lefty temporarily losing his mind on the course.

The former group has been given the majority of the airtime throughout the week, but I think the golf world has collectively slept on the presence of the latter. Scan social media and you’ll see plenty of casual golf fans who couldn’t be less offended by what Lefty did. On the contrary: If anything, this entire thing has only endeared him more to so many fans.

Why? Over the years, Mickelson has managed to develop an image in the minds of many as an everyman-made-good. Not unlike the rest of us hacks, he misses fairways and greens, and his decision-making ranges from questionable to bizarre. It’s been defined, in part, when compared to the man he has stood opposite throughout his career. Tiger Woods wasn’t a golfer as much as he was a superhero. A generational talent with an aura of invincibility (which made his fall from grace all the more startling).

In contrast, even at his best Mickelson looked nervy under pressure, and the primary job of his sheer creative brilliance was to cover for other flaws in his game. “Phil Mickelson hits the shot of his life from behind a tree in pine straw while going for a par 5 in two during the final round of the Masters.”

I mean seriously, what was he thinking?

Where Tiger’s public persona tends to be disciplined and polished, Phil’s is raw and honest. “I can’t believe I just did that,” Mickelson said famously after a series of unforced errors on the final hole of the 2006 U.S. Open ended his best chance of winning the only major that eludes him. “I’m such an idiot.”

After his third round, Mickelson said he had always thought of using the Rule 14-5 like he did that day but only now decided to actually do it. Suspend for a moment any desire to see this as an excuse to cover up a fit of anger, and take it on face value. Don’t many of us think about doing things along similar lines? Marching into your boss’ office and telling them off, or firing off that angry email? It’s only when your emotion gets the better of you that people plunge into the irrational.

Now, consider it not as a calculated attempt at using the rules to distort the competition, but rather a momentary loss of composure from a man who was tired, annoyed and sick of making bogeys. Well, isn’t that just a variation of something stupid we’ve all done. Snapped a club or thrown a club or taken your ball and marched home. As much as we love this silly game and all the beautiful moments within, it’s at times completely and utterly infuriating. Often you can laugh it off. Sometimes it drives you a bit mad.

In light of Mickelson’s apology, it seems more and more like he simply momentarily snapped. In that, it was an act so many people can relate to on a human level. It’s why, when most fans look back on this in the future, it won’t be with disdain. It’ll be with a grin and a shake of the head. We’ve all been there, and we know how it feels. And so does Phil.

The post Why so many regular golfers loved Phil Mickelson’s U.S. Open ‘rake-gate’ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
James Hahn wasn’t in the field last week at Shinnecock Hills and has only played in one U.S. Open in his career, in 2016 at Oakmont. That doesn’t leave him any less disenchanted with the USGA, the organizsation in charge of running the event.

The 36-year-old cited an example from his lone appearance in the tournament when, before teeing off in the second round after inclement weather had push its completion to Saturday, he said he asked an official what the Stimpmeter reading was for the greens.

“His response was the greens are really fast but we slowed them down for you guys,” Hahn recalled this week. “He didn’t know the Stimp. None of them knew.”

In between the second and third rounds Hahn said he continued to seek out an answer and was the told the greens were double cut or double rolled. Asking which one it was, he said, no one knew.

“To me, that’s amateur hour,” continued Hahn, now a member of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council, who went on to three-putt his first hole of the round that day, the 462-yard par-4 10th, and later had a four-putt on the 479-yard seventh. “They don’t know how to run a professional event because they don’t run professional events.

“Not only have we lost trust in the USGA as players, but I’ve lost trust in our national open to be in the hands of an organisation like that. For how well other tournaments are run, the U.S. Open has fallen to the worst major that we have.”

Speaking with several players in the wake of what happened Saturday at Shinnecock, where good shots still rolled off greens and the USGA admitted the setup had gotten too hard because of unexpected afternoon winds, the sentiment was similar.

“It’s a private fraternity and you abide by their rules,” one multiple major winner said. “[USGA CEO] Mike Davis is Dean Wormer, except the ending is not as good as Animal House.”

“It’s too big of a tournament to keep having issues,” added Justin Thomas. “It’s too big of a tournament to be talking about the setup afterward when we should be talking about how Brooks [Koepka] won the tournament and beat some of the best in the world on an amazing golf course. Instead, all that’s being talked about is the setup.”

“A lot of players are disenchanted with the organisation, the tournament and the setup,” said a former winner of the event. “No, I don’t trust them.”

“They don’t take opinions or comments from anybody,” said Pat Perez. “They don’t bring the PGA Tour in, Augusta, the R&A or the European Tour. Unfortunately this is the only tournament every year this seems to be a question.”

Officials from all of those organisations were in fact on hand last week at Shinnecock. Some, like PGA Tour VP of Rules Mark Russell and European Tour chief referee John Paramor, served in a rules capacity. But as one source within the tour said, it’s their championship and when it comes to setting up the golf course or seeking input, the USGA ultimately makes the decisions and does so with little to no input from the outside.

“Did anyone ever trust them?” reasoned 2006 U.S. Open winner Geoff Ogilvy. “I think for the most part their intentions are sound, there’s some pretty good golf minds there, but they just can’t get out of their own way. You never have a U.S. Open where they’re not the story. Augusta is never the story of the Masters — this year Patrick Reed was the story of the Masters. It has nothing to do with Augusta. It’s never the R&A, never the PGA Tour, never the PGA of America.”

And in the eyes of many, there is almost never NOT some sort of problem at one point during a U.S. Open. Players cited this year at Shinnecock, last year’s football field-wide fairways at Erin Hills, the bungling of the Dustin Johnson ruling at Oakmont in 2016 as well as pins on Nos. 10 and 14, the condition of the greens at Chambers Bay in 2015, the re-working of Merion in 2013 and of course the last time they went to Shinnecock, in 2004, a course many consider one of the best in the country.

“To some degree I am surprised it keeps happening,” said Zach Johnson, whose first U.S. Open was at Shinnecock in 2004. “If [our input] was important it would’ve happened, so it must not be. I’m all for having Nick Price on the board, he’s one of the model pros. But if controversy is something they want or feed off they’re doing a great job. Shinnecock is probably my favourite course in the United States. I can’t find any negatives about it. I think the people who make up the USGA are good people but good people have to be held accountable. There has to be a level of integrity just like with us and I don’t feel like there is.”

Why do these issues keep arising?

Theories abound on that, too.

“There’s a middle ground to be had somewhere,” said Rory McIlroy. “They could set it up tough and have 67 be a good score but not so tough guys can’t keep balls on greens. They have all this technology they didn’t have in the past and they’re trying to apply an exact science to an inexact game. Lot of guys [in the USGA] haven’t played [professionally] before and haven’t got a feel that, OK, this is good at 9 a.m. but what’s going to be like at 5 p.m.”

Added Jason Day: “They don’t say [publicly] that even par is their thing but I think amongst themselves I think they want even par to win, which is why they have to change the course to make it so even par will win. It’s disappointing.”

“I think it was chasing score to par,” said Jordan Spieth, who won at Chambers Bay three years ago. “We had beautiful conditions with wide fairways so how they are going to get the score to par it’s going to become unfair with greens or pin positions or a combination of the two. They put pins where greens weren’t designed that way. As a golf course design nerd it was frustrating to look at. I was like what are you doing? I played poorly. Even with the setup, I thought it was fantastic for me but the course nerd in me was like I want to play this course at a different time.”

Spieth also said that he thinks the organization is trying to do its best.

What that is, though, seems be unclear when it comes to the tournament’s identity. For years the U.S. Open was about narrow fairways, hack-it-rough, and tough greens.

Now some seem to think it has been left searching in part because of its “obsession” with par and because modern players have become so good that the only place the USGA thinks it can toughen the course is on and around the greens. In the eyes of many players, that’s where many of the problems stem from.

“Courses aren’t meant for greens at that speed,” Perez said of Shinnecock. “We can’t have all these old courses then try to take down the modern player by making the course impossible. They need new venues. The Brooks Koepkas and Dustin Johnsons and Justin Thomases are phenomenal and to neutralize them they make the course unplayable. What’s the point of that?”

Koepka of course won the last two U.S. Opens, so it has worked out for him just fine.

And the USGA, for its part, continues to say it never talks about score. It’s main goal is to set up a stern test that’s fair.

Still, many players think the root of the problems at the U.S. Open are embedded in the fabric of the organization running it.

“They’re stubborn,” Hahn said. “I’ve heard Mike Davis talk and there’s an arrogance about him. He thinks he’s better off the way it is than how we see it.”

So much so Hahn said that after the Johnson ruling three years ago, a small contingent of players considered staging a protest and considered skipping the following year’s event. They didn’t.

“We have to play because it’s our National Open,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

And that is as frustrating as anything.

The post PGA Tour players’ vexation with USGA lingers appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
Another week, another tournament, though golf isn’t quite ready to move on just yet.

Three days after Phil Mickelson chased after a missed putt and whacked the ball back toward the hole to prevent it from rolling off the 13th green at Shinnecock Hills during the third round of the U.S. Open — a moment he would eventually admit to a few in the media as to not being his finest — his actions, and words, remain a hot topic. That included on the range for this week’s Travelers Championship.

“He should’ve been disqualified,” insisted one former major champion. “Why don’t these governing bodies just enforce the friggin’ rules? It was like Tiger [at the Masters] in 2013. That was a hard one, but this one Phil knew what he did and told everyone what he did, which was worse. It’s like robbing a place, walking out and saying to the cops ‘I did it,’ and the cops go, ‘It’s OK, it’s just you.’”

While a dozen players informally polled by Golf Digest all agreed that another player of less star power would’ve been disqualified for committing the same infraction, the vote was far more split as to whether Mickelson should have been.

By the letter of the law, his two-stroke penalty was appropriate, according to the USGA. Rule14-5, which says a player must not make a stroke while a ball is moving, was applied because that’s what happened. However other rules bring in other questions. Intent and the spirit of the game were also brought up.

RELATED: The USGA (still) got it wrong when it didn’t DQ Phil Mickelson

Rule 14-5 does not expressly permit what Mickelson did or expressly prohibit what he did. Then there is Rule 33-7, which allows for the committee to disqualify a player it if believes a serious breach has been committed but also to not do so under mitigating circumstances.

“He hit a moving ball and tried to use the rules to his advantage,” said Brandt Snedeker, who was among those who thought Mickelson should not have been DQed. “The USGA had a chance to disqualify him for being egregious and they didn’t, so no. The rules screw us over so many times, so more power to him for using them.”

Bryson DeChambeau took a similar stance, though he could see the grey in the situation.

“Personally I think he was playing within the rules,” he said. “Now his intentions absolutely [he should have been disqualified] but he was playing within the rules.

“This is where at times like this the USGA sees a loophole and they make a correction. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a great learning experience for everybody out there and will be beneficial for the game in the end.”

It’s also a conversation that doesn’t seem to be ending, at least for now.

In the eyes of some, it was as much about Mickelson as it was the USGA and another questionable Championship.

“It’s a testament to how frustrated guys get to playing setups like that,” another past major winner said. “To drive a guy like Phil, who is incapable of getting angry, to that point that was the first sign that something was going wrong on the course. We’ve all gotten mad and have our breaking points. The USGA found Phil’s breaking point. What he did was dumb but understandable. I’m not justifying it but it’s understandable.

“The mistake was his answer. It was ridiculous. But I don’t think you can get DQ’d for that. He didn’t gain an advantage. It was a kid throwing the toys out of the cart saying I’m done.”

Despite the tournament being over, the conversation around what happened, both with Mickelson and at Shinnecock Hills, doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

“Instead of us talking about Brooks Koepka winning the U.S. Open, we’re still talking about this,” one player said. “And that’s the shame of it.”

The post Phil Mickelson’s U.S. Open controversy still a popular topic at the Travelers Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Tragedy sometimes infringes on the world of golf, but within the confines of the course, there is little room for it. Golf is supposed to be a game, after all, though in 2018 the game comes with a good deal of history and enforced politesse and fussily manufactured gravitas—perhaps more so than any other sport.

With its unceasing demand for excellence at the microscopic level, golf can be like a watchful spouse with a talent for spotting everything you do wrong. This unbearable scrutiny can yield only failure and frustration, and the ensuing anger—over something so small, so avoidable—is a perfect human rendition of absurdity.

The USGA, god bless it, has become experts at transcending the self-image golf has manufactured for itself and exposing the sport’s absurdity in its most naked form. As a governing body, it elicits anger, censure and failure, and does so with a kind of brazen incompetence all its own. I will not try to claim the USGA is run by a group of comic geniuses, because I’m all but certain they aren’t acting intentionally. But I would pose this question: If they were a cabal of impish trolls with the mission of undermining the sport and all its players … well, how would they behave differently?

The melodrama at Shinnecock Hills was the cherry on top of a four-year performance-art piece that began in 2015 at Chambers Bay. When USGA CEO Mike Davis appeared on television at the end of Saturday’s round on Long Island to apologize for the course conditions—hasn’t someone told him that in modern-day America, the worst thing you can do is say ‘I’m sorry’?—it represented the beautiful culmination of thousand-plus days of entropy.

Let’s revisit:

• At Chambers Bay, the greens appeared to play like they had been perforated by a thousand rogue forklifts, which may have contributed to one of the more gut-wrenching finishes we’ve ever seen, hamstringing one unlucky career (Dustin Johnson) while galvanizing the legend of another (Jordan Spieth). Also, there was nowhere for the spectators to watch unless they wanted to free climb the perilous blasted rocky face of the reclaimed quarry.

• At Oakmont a year later, not content with the pain they’d imparted on Johnson the year before, officials couldn’t resist sending one of their own out mid-round to tell him he was playing under a penalty. He won anyway, but once more the story was about the organization.

• At Erin Hills a year later, the promised wind never blew, and the same people who get angry when a course is too hard now became angry that it was too easy, setting itself up for a cruel bludgeoning by Brooks Koepka.

• Finally, at Shinnecock, the conditions on Saturday were so hard that the sensitive souls tasked with navigating it felt compelled to go on television and issue dire proclamations about how the USGA had “lost the course.” Phil Mickelson acted out by chasing down and hitting his own errant putt before the ball stopped, which became a bigger story than Koepka’s repeat win. Eventually, it forced the Davis apology.

Nick Price (right) and Mike Davis (left) thought they had a handle on the course set-up until they didn’t. (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

The interesting parenthetical here is that there’s an interpretation under which the USGA is mostly blameless. Look at Shinnecock: If it truly wasn’t a fair test, why were some of the best players in the world at the top of the leaderboard? Why did it come down to a battle of some of the exact players you’d expect to be hashing it out on Sunday? Could it be the case that Patrick Reed was right and that even in the depths of Saturday’s depravity, there were only two unfair pins, and the rest was a product of the weather? Could it be the case that someone like Zach Johnson, he of the “lost the course” brigade, was actually being a baby? Could it be the case that professional golfers, on the whole, tend toward the entitled, the hypersensitive and that the ones who routinely compete for major championships are significantly tougher and more resilient than the ones who finish early and complain to the media?

Of course, it’s true. But that, too, is the brilliance of the USGA. Without intending to, the association exposes these mental weaknesses. Not content to merely highlight the flaws in a player’s game, they go so far as to reveal their emotional deficiencies.

What did we learn, for example, about Mickelson? Reading between the lines, you could infer all of the following from his bizarre putt-chasing episode:

1: That he deals with frustration by acting out against those who dare challenge him.
2: That he has a compulsion to make every story about himself.
3: That he revels in his larger-than-life image and is constantly seeking to stoke it.
4: That he tends toward brinkmanship—it would never be enough for him to merely complain about the course; he must push toward conflict in the most public way possible (see also: Tom Watson, 2014 Ryder Cup).
5: That there’s a fundamental lack of self-control at his emotional centre.
6: That he’s not afraid to use his status to intimidate, knowing that he is mostly untouchable.
7: That the U.S. Open has rented out space in his head after too many near-misses.
8: That he will never forgive them for it.

Who else but the USGA could make these truths manifest in one telling moment? And who else could choreograph such an exquisite ballet of well-meaning buffoonery? As I said, Davis’ apology was the coup de grace—it fixed nothing, it wasn’t truly necessary, and it only ensured that the golf world would live and breathe USGA for the next 24 hours. How could it be otherwise?

The powers-that-be at the USGA have so fully enshrined themselves into our consciousness that there is no longer any possibility of a well-run U.S. Open. We won’t allow it. We will watch 156 golfers lean forward into pounding wind and rain at some glorified coastal sheep pasture at the British Open, and we’ll smack our hands together in credulous applause because we can shut our eyes and see the game’s origin. We will stomach the ceaseless treacly brand-advancement from Augusta, and only a few of us will have to stifle a gag reflex. We will watch the PGA Championship, and strain against our own apathy.

But the USGA? These folks are the unforgiven black sheep of the major world, and we would find fault in paradise if they were the architects. They are irredeemable, and thus they are also indispensable. Confession: I can’t live without the USGA. I know the truth, which is that deep down the players just hate being made to play on tough courses, and American golf fans are so conditioned to serfdom that we recoil in anger alongside them when conditions result in their humiliation.

Despite everything, the U.S. Open had marquee players fighting to the finish on Sunday, with Koepka repeating as the champ. (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

We shouldn’t—we should embrace their humiliation. It’s coming for us all, believe me, and humiliation is never funnier than when it happens to the powerful. That is the heart of absurdity—to see the defences and pretences and affectations we’ve built up shatter and crumble in the face of an indifferent universe. And the rage it spawns, that raw indignation when the world won’t cater to the self-image we’ve so carefully constructed, is the stuff of true comedy.

Once per year, I crave it. I want players to vanish bodily into brutal bunkers. I want putts to run for miles. I want to discover skeletons, weeks and months later, in the tall clumpy grass of the rough. I want the USGA to reign for one thousand years.

And—incidentally—there’s also this: When a certain player survives with his dignity more or less intact, and when that player escapes the dual temptations of capitulation and complaint, and when he soldiers on while his peers are dropping all around him, and the conditions fortify rather than defeat him because he possesses a mettle that cannot be destroyed by the rigor of adversity or the softness of privilege, do you know what you’re left with?

An honest-to-god champion, that’s what.

The post U.S. Open 2018: How many more lives does the USGA have, anyway? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

UPDATED, June 17

For the second straight major, Tommy Fleetwood has made noise. Sunday at Shinnecock Hills, the Englishman shot just the third 63 in U.S. Open history to get himself into the clubhouse at two over for the championship. He now must wait to see how Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed finish up the event.

Like at the Masters, we realize that there are basically three things Fleetwood—Golf Digest’s April cover boy—is truly known for in golf circles.

• He was born and raised in Birkdale, England (remember all those stories last year about Fleetwood being a lock to win the Open?)

• He won the 2017 Race to Dubai

• He has a tremendous head of hair. A head of hair that would make Jared Leto jealous. Or Jennifer Lawrence. A head of hair that conjures up hirsute Hall of Famers as Samson, Fabio and Johnny Deep.

There was a time, however, when the third truism had yet to be. A quick Google search of “Tommy Fleetwood Short Hair” will show you the days when the Englishman used to own a razor and visit the barber. And it’s really rather fascinating.

Here is Fleetwood when he played on the 2009 Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup team. (David Cannon)

Kind of reminds you of Keegan Bradley here, no?

Here he is with former European Tour chief George O’Grady. (Andrew Redington)

Dean Mouhtaropoulos

Fleetwood decided to go for the long look just as he was turning pro in the early 2010s, and the signature look hasn’t hurt his golf career in the least. Should he pull off the upset and win the green jacket on Sunday, his long locks will become the stuff of legend.

Photo by Levon Biss

The post These photos of Tommy Fleetwood without his long hair and scruffy beard are amazing appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

A day after balls was repelled from the baked-out yellow-brick greens of Shinnecock Hills like pesky mosquitos to a can of Raid, and Phil Mickelson was driven to a breaking point of intentionally hitting a moving ball, Tommy Fleetwood had a putt for the lowest score in U.S. Open history. He settled for tying the mark, becoming just the sixth player to shoot 63 in the 118 editions of the championship. A birdie fest had broken out in Sunday’s final round, at least relatively speaking, after the USGA had doused the course with enough water to fill Peconic Bay. Never mind that the hole locations looked like something out of a Wednesday pro-am.

Still, when it came to Brooks Koepka becoming the first player to go back-to-back in the national championship since Curtis Strange in 1988-’89 and just seventh overall to successfully defend, it was a tried-and-true method that paid the biggest dividend. Not being afraid to settle for pars helped carry the 28-year-old to his second career major title.

“I think this whole thing of everyone said Erin Hills was set up for me, it was set up for a lot of guys that bomb the ball,” Koepka said of last year’s football field-wide U.S. Open venue. “I just happened to play a little bit better that week. This week it was just back to a typical U.S. Open, where one over par wins the golf tournament. It’s just a lot of grinding. But I couldn’t be happier with the way I played.”

And why not. This one had reason to feel more satisfying.

Unlike a year ago, when Koepka bashed his way to matching the lowest total score in championship history on a course where 31 players broke par, the buffed bomber’s victory on Sunday required the kind of game that belied his bulging biceps and broad shoulders. There was nuance in dissecting the William Flynn masterpiece—a word that no one would use to describe much-criticized Erin Hills—especially when it mattered most.

Koepka’s length off the tee helped offset any wayward driving. (David Cannon/Getty Images)

Leading by two and with his ball stuck in the thick rough behind the green on the par-3 11th, Koepka purposely pitched across the putting surface and into a bunker, then got up and down, draining a 13-footer to save bogey on the 160-yard par 3. One hole later, and again in a tricky spot behind the green, he did one better, getting up and down for par after knocking in a nervy six-footer.

Then on the most difficult hole on the course, the par-4 14th, Koepka drove into rough too heavy even for his might, forcing him to chop out and leaving a delicate 67 yards into the green on the 512-yard hole. He flighted the shot into a front hole location made difficult by a false front and stopped it eight feet from the cup before sinking the putt to keep a two-stroke advantage.

“That was huge,” Koepka’s caddie, Ricky Elliott, said of the bogey on 11. “It’s hard to believe a bogey can keep your momentum, but it did. He’s been one of best putters on tour and hits it a long way, but his short game is so good.”

“I can’t really pick one of those because they were all kind of at different times,” added Koepka, who closed with a two-under 68 to finish at one-over 281 and a stroke clear of Fleetwood, who had polished off his historic round a few hours earlier. “I felt like I could have been very easily derailed, making double or triple. You’ve just got to keep plugging away.”

That same mentality had kept him going earlier this year when Koepka missed three months due to a partially torn tendon in his left wrist and was admittedly down in the dumps about a suddenly uncertain future. The injury kept Koepka out of the Masters, and that only motivated him further. The day after Patrick Reed slipped his arms into the green jacket, Koepka got clearance to start hitting balls again. He started with wedges and a 9-irons and looked like he hadn’t missed a day. By the end of the week, he was getting after it with full shots.

“For someone who’s never been a golf nerd I think he fell in love with golf for the first time in his life,” said Koepka’s coach Claude Harmon. “He wasn’t that guy, not a guy who’s going to follow golf or watch golf. When he came back there was a definite something about wanting to play again that I hadn’t seen before. I really believe he fell in love with golf again and fell in love with the game of golf and playing and hitting shots.”

All of them were on display at Shinnecock Hills, where after playing his first 22 holes of the week in seven over something clicked. Koepka closed out his second round with six birdies over his final 11 holes and shot 66.

“He started hitting good shots into the right sides of the greens,” Elliott said. “We were really sloppy the first 27 holes, and then he was hitting driver good and hitting his irons good.”

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

And grinding, too. Koepka carded a third-round 72 on a day when the scoring average soared north of 75 as USGA officials admitted the course had gotten away from them. By the following morning, the setup had done a 180 and players were taking dead aim.

Close friends Koepka and Johnson—Koepka lived with Johnson for six months last year in South Florida while his house was being finished—started Sunday like a lot of other days, in the gym. Johnson noted the easy hole locations and good scoring opportunities. In between conversation, they threw around some weight, too, with Koepka knocking off 14 reps of 225 pounds on the bench press. He couldn’t quite get the 15th and lost a bet to his trainer. It didn’t matter. He’d pay him back a few hours later. It would also be the last of the conversation for the day between Koepka and the top-ranked player in the world as each pursued a second U.S. Open title in the day’s second-to-last group.

“I think he was a good pairing for [Brooks] today,” Harmon said. “They want to beat each other. Brooks sees that as motivation. That’s where he wants to get to.”

He played like it.

Given the soft conditions, birdies came by the bushel with Fleetwood making four in his first seven holes, and Reed charging up the board, too, with four birdies in his first five. Koepka did his part, too, with three over the first four holes.

Then came the test of the back nine. Koepka—whose Open track record now includes a T-4, T-18, T-13, 1st and 1st—passed with just two bogeys, one of which coming on the 72nd hole with the outcome already in hand.

“If you could design what this test throws at you, they’re very good at that,” Harmon said of Koepka and Johnson, who ended up finishing third two strokes back. “It used to it was the characters like Raymond [Floyd] and Curtis [Strange], who were tough and mean. Brooks has a similar demeanour in that nothing bothers him and he’s able to not get too high or too low. We saw his guts and determination with the up-and-downs on 11 and 12 and the putts he had to make.”

It also gave him one more major trophy than Johnson, who has 15 more career wins.

“I don’t know if it evens it up,” said Koepka, who admitted that he has often felt overlooked among the games other young stars. “You see how talented he is. He’s physically gifted. In my mind, he’s probably one of the most talented guys to ever play the game.”

With a second straight U.S. Open title, Koepka’s well on his way, too.

The post U.S. Open 2018: Brooks Koepka shows he’s more than a bash bro, can play U.S. Open-style golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.