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    P.G.A. Championship: An Intimate Look at Quail Hollow

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    The pro Webb Simpson lives near the seventh hole and knows the ins and outs of the course where the P.G.A. Championship will be played.Webb Simpson has what many recreational golfers dream of.Simpson — who won the U.S. Open in 2012 and Players Championship in 2018, and has played on multiple Ryder and Presidents Cup squads — can walk out his back door and be on the seventh hole of the Quail Hollow Club, the host of this week’s P.G.A. Championship and an annual tour stop on the PGA Tour.Better still, Simpson, who has five children, can hop in his golf cart like any golf dad and take his children around the course at dusk to chip and putt. He admitted, “I might owe the club a cart fee or two.”Major golf championships have long gone to storied, private clubs — think Baltusrol, Oakmont, Oak Hill and Winged Foot. More recently, they have ended up at challenging public or resort courses like TPC Harding Park, Bethpage Black and Kiawah Island.But it’s rare that these events go to a top-notch private club that also has members living around its perimeter, let alone touring pros who can walk out their doors and tee up.Yet this is the third time that the club has hosted a major international competition: It put on its first P.G.A. Championship in 2017 (won by Justin Thomas) and a Presidents Cup in 2022.Simpson — whose best professional finish at his home club was a tie for second in 2015 at the Wells Fargo Championship, seven shots behind the winner and this week’s favorite, Rory McIlroy — appreciates what he has.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      J.C. Snead, Golfing Nephew of His Uncle Sam, Dies at 84

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      He knew he could never match the success of the great Sam Snead, but he won eight tournaments on the PGA Tour and four more on the senior circuit.J.C. Snead, who knew he could never match the golfing success of his celebrated uncle Sam Snead but who nevertheless won a combined 12 tournaments on the PGA Tour and senior tour, died on April 25 at his home in Hot Springs, Va. He was 84.Suzie (Bryant) Snead, his caregiver and former wife, said the cause was prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.When Snead joined the PGA Tour in 1968 at age 27, he understood that he would always play in the shadow of his Uncle Sam, nicknamed Slammin’ Sammy Snead, whose 82 victories on the PGA Tour were a record until Tiger Woods tied him in 2019.“There was no way I was going to live up to his reputation,” J.C. Snead told The New York Times in 1988. “With the late start I had, I didn’t have a prayer to be what Sam was. I wasn’t trying to be.”J.C. Snead won for the first time at the Tucson Open in February 1971. He followed that victory with another two weeks later at the Doral-Eastern Open, in Miami. During the final round at Doral, as Snead was preparing his approach shot to the 18th hole, someone in the gallery shouted, “Miss it!”Snead in June 1971. Earlier that year he had won for the first time, at the Tucson Open.PGA Tour Archive, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: A Masterpiece at Pinehurst Is Hosting Again

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      The No. 2 course at the country club is a gem by the architect Donald Ross. This is its fourth Open.Golf is a game where coincidence and chance can lift or deflate even the most skilled players. Those at this week’s U.S. Open at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s No. 2 course will certainly get good and bad breaks in the native areas off the fairways; the same holds true for the bounces their balls will take around the greens.But chance played a big role in the very creation of the course by the architect Donald Ross that became the United States Golf Association’s first anchor site in 2020 for the U.S. Open. (That means every five years the club will host the national championship.)In 1899, Ross was working at Royal Dornoch Golf Club in Scotland, wrote Lee Pace, the author of “The Golden Age of Pinehurst: The Story of the Rebirth of No. 2.” After hearing a golfer from Boston talk about how quickly golf was growing in the United States, Ross and another club employee decided they both wanted to go to America. But someone needed to stay in Dornoch to keep that club running.So the two friends figured there was only one fair way to decide who would go to America and who would stay in Scotland: a coin toss.Ross won the flip and emigrated, arriving in Boston. There he began working at a local golf course that was near the home of James Tufts, the founder of Pinehurst Resort & Country Club. In 1900, Tufts hired Ross to work at Pinehurst in the winter when the course in Massachusetts would be closed. With that chance assignment, so began Ross’s love of the North Carolina sandhills, which he said reminded him of his home in Dornoch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: At Pinehurst, the Caddies Are Key

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      With their knowledge of the course, they can save players “several strokes a round.”Willie McRae, a caddie who spent more than seven decades at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, the host of this week’s U.S. Open, was a beloved figure who did his utmost to help his players.“My dad would always tell the story that his job depended on what kind of tip he got,” said Paul McRae, his son who is a golf instructor at the Pinehurst Golf Academy. (His father died in 2018 at 85.) “He’d occasionally come home with holes in his pocket so he could drop a ball for a golfer. Those other guys would say, ‘Man, you sure play good when Willie is here, but you don’t when Willie isn’t around.’ He knew how to make players feel good.”Pinehurst is a cradle of American golf. Donald Ross, one of the most prolific golf course architects, lived in the town and tested out ideas about course design at the club. But it also has an underappreciated role in American caddying.What was once a profession that was looked down upon, caddying has gained respect over time. It’s now an integral part of the experience at golf resorts around the world. After all, there is no one else who spends five or six hours with guests as guides, psychologists and storytellers.“During the last U.S. Open, Justin Rose came in early and took my dad out on No. 2 so he could read the greens for him,” McRae said. No. 2 is the championship course. “My dad caddied for Ben Hogan. Hogan would ask him, ‘Where should I aim?’ My dad would say, ‘Aim at that tree.’ Hogan would say, ‘Which part of the tree?’”The caddie Willie McRae at the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst.David Goldman/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the British Open, a Mom’s Influence Looms Large for Many Golfers

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      Golf has long had a tradition of fathers and sons, but when the British Open was last held at Royal Liverpool in 2014, Rory McIlroy put golf’s moms on equal footing.In the beginning, there was Old Tom Morris and his son, Tommy, both of St. Andrews. The father won the British Open — the only championship then — four times and his namesake son won it four times, too. Yes, wet wool, 19th-century golf, in all its paternalistic glory. The men marched off the first tee and into a heavy sea wind and nobody knew when, or if, they would come back.And ever since, fathers have been raising sons in the game, both generations dreaming of hoisted trophies. O.B. Keeler spilled barrels of ink writing about Bobby Jones and his little-boy-blue start in golf at the behest of his golf-loving father, Robert Purmedus Jones (also known as ‘The Colonel’) who was a prosperous Atlanta lawyer.If Arnold Palmer said it once, he said it a thousand times: his father, Deacon, the course superintendent and head pro at Latrobe Country Club in western Pennsylvania, taught young Arnold how to grip a club once and only once. Palmer never changed it.Jack Nicklaus’s pharmacist father, Charlie, a three-sport athlete at Ohio State, started his son, Jackie, in golf as an oversized 10-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 1950, at their club, Scioto Country Club. Mid-country, midcentury — middle class, at its most northern tier. Donald Hall’s “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons” is largely about baseball but Charlie and Jackie on the course in the 1950s could have fit right in.Twelve years later, Jack Nicklaus defeated Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff at Oakmont Country Club and claimed the first of his record 18 major titles, the 1962 U.S. Open. It was Father’s Day. Since then (after a date change) most U.S. Opens have concluded on Father’s Day and most years the father-son relationship is an elemental part of the winner’s life story.This next phrase is known throughout golf: Tiger and Earl. The green-side hug between father and son after Woods won the 1997 Masters Tournament is one of the iconic moments in golf history. It was Tiger’s first major as a pro and he won by 12 shots. Nine years later, Woods fell into his caddie’s arms, after winning the British Open at Royal Liverpool, 10 weeks after Earl Woods died at age 74.Tiger Woods and his father Earl after Woods won the 1997 Masters.Associated Press Photo Dave MartinBut in 2014 Royal Liverpool became the scene of an evolving narrative when Rory McIlroy, 25-years-old and the lone child of working-class parents from outside Belfast, won the British Open. It was his third major title and in a lovely, old-fashioned gesture at the awards presentation, with thousands of fans ringing the 18th green, McIlroy dedicated the win to his mother.“This is the first major I’ve won when my mum has been here,” he said. “Mum, this one’s for you.”Rosie McDonald McIlroy, who helped pay for her son’s overseas junior-golf travel by way of her shift work at a 3M plant, was beaming. Later, she tentatively put several fingers on the winner’s claret jug as her son grasped it tightly.Five years later, Woods won the 2019 Masters. It was kind of a shocker: he hadn’t won a major in 11 years. In victory, his mother, Kultida, born and raised in Thailand, was standing in a grassy knob about 10 yards off the 18th green. She couldn’t see her son’s winning putt, but she could hear the thunderous response to it. Her face was painted in pride. In victory, Woods spoke in a soft voice about how his mother would rise at 5:30 in the morning to drive Tiger in a Plymouth Duster to nine-hole Pee-wee tournaments, 90 minutes there, 90 minutes back.Last year, when Woods was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, ‘Tida,’ known within Woods’s tight circle for being tough and direct, was in the first row, beaming just as Rosie McIlroy was in 2014.Kultida Woods smiled as Tiger Woods made his way toward his family after winning the 2019 Masters.Mike Segar/ReutersWoods talked, without notes, about the many times his mother brought him to a par-3 course near Tiger’s boyhood home in Southern California, giving him 50 cents for a hot dog and 25 cents for the end-of-day call home. Woods staked his early and successful putting contests with those quarters his mother gave him. Tiger, telling personal stories about his mother, and Tida, laughing with cameras on her, was a rare personal moment for both.This year at the Los Angeles Country Club the final round of the U.S. Open fell, as usual, on Father’s Day, but the day belonged to a mother and her son.The winner Wyndham Clark had heard Woods talk about his own mother at Augusta National during the Masters and at the Hall of Fame induction. It stuck with him.Breast cancer had ended his mother Lise Clark’s life 10 years ago, when Wyndham was still a teenager. He nearly quit golf after she died. He said his mother had a nickname for him — ‘Winner’ — and had a two-word mantra for him: “Play big.”The technical aspects of the game were not her forte. They weren’t for Rose McIlroy or Tida Woods, either.When Clark was in high school, his mother came to one of his matches. She watched him make an eight-foot putt and clapped enthusiastically for her son.“Mom,” Clark told mother as he came off the green. “I just made triple bogey.”Mom didn’t know and mom didn’t care. Her son had holed a putt.Minutes after winning the U.S. Open, Clark said, “I just felt like my mom was watching over me today.” Mother’s Day, in a manner of speaking. A wistful one.“I just felt like my mom was watching over me today,” Wyndham Clark said after winning the U.S. Open in June.Matt York/Associated PressAnd now the British Open was once again at Royal Liverpool. After two rounds the English golfer Tommy Fleetwood was alone in second place, five shots behind the leader, Brian Harman. Everywhere Fleetwood goes on the course he is greeted as “Tommy-lad.” Even McIlroy went out his way to find Fleetwood, after an opening-round 66, to give him a “Tommy-lad!” of his own.Fleetwood, one of the most likable players in the game today, grew up in modest circumstances about 30 miles north, in Southport, where his mother was a hairdresser. Fleetwood has a distinct look, an upturned nose that is often sunburned, blue eyes that look almost plugged in, and long, flowing hair. Sue Fleetwood longed to cut her son’s hair but Tommy-lad wouldn’t have it. Sue Fleetwood died last year at 60, two years after a cancer diagnosis.“She took me everywhere,” Fleetwood said Friday night, on the one-year anniversary of her death. Rain was starting to fall and the air was cooling.“She was always the driver. She would always take me to the range. To the golf course. To wherever I wanted to go. She was always a very supporting influence. She was a very tough woman but she never said no to taking me anywhere. She was great to me.”There was nothing maudlin about his tone. Fleetwood was talking about golf and his mother and he was smiling. Another mother’s day, in a manner of speaking, was coming. Win, lose or otherwise, another mother’s day was coming for another golfing son. More

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      Rory McIlroy Just Misses a Hollywood Ending at the U.S. Open

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      Despite briefly sharing the lead with the eventual champion, Wyndham Clark, McIlroy settled for second but vowed he would get a fifth major title.It might have been fitting if someone from Holywood won this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. But Rory McIlroy, born in the Northern Ireland town of Holywood, is not having that kind of year.On Sunday, McIlroy was chasing his first major championship title in nine years, a drought that continues to shadow a luminous career that began with four major titles from 2011 to 2014. In April, he missed the cut at the Masters Tournament. A month later, he finished tied for seventh at the P.G.A. Championship.Then, on June 6, McIlroy, the most vociferous loyalist supporting the PGA Tour in its feud with the Saudi-back LIV Golf circuit, learned only a few hours before news broke that the two tours had shockingly formed a business partnership.McIlroy, like almost all of the PGA Tour’s players, felt blindsided.But on Sunday, a buoyant, smiling McIlroy, 34, was again enthusiastically chasing another major title, in the final round of the 123rd U.S. Open. He birdied the opening hole and for most of the next four hours seemed poised to reel in the eventual tournament winner, Wyndham Clark, the third-round co-leader with Rickie Fowler.McIlroy, however, never birdied another hole, and in the end, Clark, after some nervous closing moments, outlasted McIlroy by a stroke as both golfers shot even-par 70s. It was McIlroy’s third runner-up finish at a major and his 10th finish in the top five of a major since 2014.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said Sunday of his chase for a fifth major title, adding: “I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”McIlroy said he felt a link between his performance on Sunday and his second-place finish at last year’s British Open at St. Andrews.“The last two real chances I’ve had at majors have been pretty similar performances,” he said. “Not doing a lot wrong.”McIlroy’s pursuit went down to the final strokes of the event, as Clark, playing in the final group of the day, was forced to execute a two-putt from 60 feet on the 18th green to clinch the championship.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said of his chase for a fifth major championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConMcIlroy conceded that he was hoping for a miscue.“You don’t want to wish bad on anyone, but you’re really hoping for a three-putt,” he said. “You’re hoping to somehow get into a playoff to keep giving yourself a chance. You’re rooting for one guy, and that guy is yourself at that point. A mistake can give you a glimmer of hope.“But Wyndham was pretty much rock solid all day, and that was a great two-putt at the last.”McIlroy’s fourth round began auspiciously as he reached the green on the par-5, 585-yard first hole with his second shot and two-putted for an opening birdie that briefly moved him into a tie for the tournament lead.But he struggled to capitalize on that early momentum even as he registered par after par — a streak of 12 in all. He showed nerve in sinking several tense four-foot par putts but failed to get his approach shots close enough for easier birdie attempts.McIlroy was hanging on but could not convert any putt longer than seven feet throughout the middle of his round. On the eighth green, he pulled an eight-foot birdie putt well left of the hole, a missed opportunity that McIlroy specifically mentioned in his post-round news conference.At the par-3 ninth hole, McIlroy’s towering approach shot with an iron came to rest 14 feet from the flag. As he walked onto the green, fans in two packed grandstands implored him to make a fairly straightforward putt that would have put him in a tie with Clark, but again McIlroy could not seize the moment.McIlroy’s run of consecutive pars ended at the par-5 14th hole after his tee shot bounded into the rough left of the fairway. He was forced to lay up short of the green with a second shot, although he then faced a short wedge shot to the green.McIlroy later said he was choosing between two clubs for the shot, but he felt a wind gust just before he began his swing, and that impeded the shot’s momentum.“I had the right club, but I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle,” he said.McIlroy caught a break on No. 14 when his ball embedded in a grassy bank.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMcIlroy’s golf ball landed about a foot short of perfect and failed to clear a large bunker protecting the front of the 14th green. The ball embedded in a grassy bank between the sand and the green.He was granted free relief in the grass to the right of the bunker, but his dicey, downhill chip to the green rolled 26 feet from the hole. That led to bogey, and McIlroy fell to nine under par, which extended Clark’s lead to two strokes.McIlroy closed with four routine pars.He was asked at the conclusion of his Sunday news conference if he was growing weary of answering questions about the nine-year wait for a fifth major championship victory. He conceded that it was exhausting but added: “At the same time, when I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.” More

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      Wyndham Clark Captures the U.S. Open

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      Clark, with only one PGA Tour victory to his name, seemed to come out of nowhere to dominate the field at Los Angeles Country Club.Two Tuesdays ago, as the golf world erupted into chaos and fury, Wyndham Clark did not rush to write a shock-and-awe Twitter post. He did not fume in a meeting with the PGA Tour commissioner about the surprise pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. He did not moralize or criticize or, really, do much of anything other than play golf.His chosen course that Tuesday was the Los Angeles Country Club, which would host the U.S. Open, its debut major tournament, nine days later. A member of the club was Clark’s caddie, a friend turned tutor who knew some of the secrets of a North Course that only a handful of the game’s biggest stars had ever seen: how a putt might break here, how the speed might vary there, how firm the fairways might become.The payoff came Sunday evening, when Clark, 29, outlasted Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open by one stroke and lurched into the hallowed fraternity of major championship winners.”I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long.”Soak it all in, @Wyndham_Clark! #USOpen pic.twitter.com/0LO1hgyocV— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 19, 2023
      Until Sunday, Clark’s best finish in a major had been a tie for 75th at a P.G.A. Championship. His two previous Open appearances were even worse, ending with missed cuts.But his mother, his “always there supporter” who died nearly a decade ago, used to offer an ambitious admonition: “Play big.”This tour season, he has, emerging as a perilous foe and suggesting that he, despite his major record, could soon be a power on the game’s greatest stages. With his irons adjusted a few degrees and his swing monitored and finessed not by a platoon of advisers but only by Clark and his caddie, he arrived in Los Angeles having won the Wells Fargo Championship and having earned four other top-10 finishes since early February.That Wells Fargo win, in May at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., had come against a foreboding list of rivals whose surnames — McIlroy and Spieth, Scott and Day — were bywords for golfing brilliance even before Clark finished college.The victory at Quail Hollow, a past and future P.G.A. Championship site, emboldened Clark. He had, he reasoned, beaten major champions on a major-tournament-caliber course.“I just feel like I can compete with the best players in the world,” he said last week, “and I think of myself as one of them.”Now he most certainly is.“There’s been so many times I’ve visualized being here in front of you guys and winning this championship, and I just feel like it was my time,” Clark said during the trophy presentation near the stately clubhouse.By the time Clark waited on Sunday afternoon in the first tee box with Rickie Fowler, the other half of the Open’s final pairing and a prince of golf’s close-but-not-quite club, he had been adhering to his mother’s creed all week. He had fired a six-under-par 64 on Thursday, better than many major champions in the 156-man field, and followed it with a 67 and a 69.It was good enough for a share of the lead heading into the final round, with Fowler and Clark both at 10 under. McIlroy, a four-time major victor mired in a nine-year drought, trailed by a shot at sunrise on Sunday. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, was three back from Clark and Fowler.Clark after sinking his final putt on No. 18.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockClark required only four strokes to assume the lead. The first hole, with its wide fairway and a view toward the Beverly Hilton, had been one of his favored spots all through the tournament, ever since he started his Open with a putt of nearly 33 feet for eagle. He did not achieve the same feat on Sunday, but his birdie was enough to take lone control of first place after a McIlroy birdie had allowed him to snatch briefly a share of the lead.Clark’s time on top ended swiftly, when he bogeyed the second hole for the second time this week. Fowler also slipped with a bogey, the beginning of a flameout for a player who on Thursday shot a 62, a single-round record for an Open.Clark made a birdie on the fourth hole, the first of five par-3 tests on the course along Wilshire Boulevard, to take him to 11 under. McIlroy was at 10 under, and Fowler at 9. Scheffler, steady but not spectacular, had not changed his score in either direction.The sixth hole had unnerved players for days, a par-4 concoction with a blind tee shot and demanding terrain. Clark had managed a birdie there on Thursday, before making par on Friday and Saturday.On Sunday afternoon, seeking a slightly larger gap between himself and everyone else, Clark stood at the tee and sent his shot soaring 266 yards. It came to rest in grass that was thick but, by the standards of some other locales on the course, not prohibitive. He cocked his head to the left, peered toward the pin about 54 feet away, looked down and swung. The ball crashed onto the green, rolling past the cup but setting up a short putt for birdie and a two-stroke lead.It took Clark two attempts to get his ball out of a tangle of foliage on No. 8.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIt was on the eighth hole where Clark’s advantage could have fully unraveled, when his second shot landed in green-vicinity foliage that looked more receptive to a scythe than a club. Clark’s first escape attempt went all of eight inches, according to tournament officials — a sum that seemed about eight inches too high. He escaped by lifting a shot over the green into the right rough and ultimately saved bogey, his lead shaved to a stroke.Clark and McIlroy both played the front nine to 34, one under. For both, though, the back nine had typically been more bruising. Their positions on the leaderboard were static until the 14th hole, when McIlroy’s wedge shot sent his ball thumping into the side of a bunker. Granted free relief, he dropped into the fescue near the hole but could do no better than departing the green with a bogey.Clark’s experience was far more comfortable, his second shot leaving him less than two dozen feet from the par-5 hole’s pin, setting up an eagle opportunity. Clark’s putt went just to the right of the cup, but a subsequent birdie attempt dropped, building his margin to three strokes.It was brief. Clark missed a par chance on the 15th hole when his putt did not sufficiently break, and then his tee shot on No. 16 wound up in a bunker. Despite dazzling wedge play with his third shot, a short putt soon enough lipped out for Clark’s second consecutive bogey.Down by a stroke, McIlroy, who struggled on the greens for much of the day, barely missed a birdie putt on the 17th hole, his familiar anguish reappearing.“I’m right there,” he would say in a television interview afterward. “It’s such fine margins at this level, and I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”Finishing at nine under, McIlroy recorded a par on the final hole, where Clark had made par or birdie during each of the first three rounds. If Clark could stick to that history, the galleries knew, he would be a major champion — just as he concluded last month he was all but ready to be.Par, to stay at 10 under, to finish at 10 under. His eyes glistened.“Your mom was with you,” Fowler soon told him. “She’d be very proud.”He had played big.Clark said his mother, who died 10 years ago, always told him to “play big.”Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images More

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      It’s Sunday at the U.S. Open, and the Leaders Are Tied

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      Los Angeles Country Club has sometimes seemed forgiving. But the final round could pose a formidable test for the contenders.The LatestThe U.S. Open, one of golf’s most fearsome tests, is headed into its final round at Los Angeles Country Club. Although the course has sometimes seemed more forgiving than past Open venues, any championship round has the potential to become excruciating — especially when the final round starts with a tie atop the leaderboard.Rickie Fowler, who shot an even-par 70 in the third round, left the course Saturday evening knotted with Wyndham Clark, who birdied the 18th hole to go to one under on the day. Both men are at 10 under for the week, leaving them with one-stroke advantages over Rory McIlroy.Golf is expecting its third major tournament champion of 2023, with Jon Rahm, who won the Masters Tournament, and Brooks Koepka, who won the P.G.A. Championship, far down the leaderboard.Wyndham Clark ended the third round of the U.S. Open tied for the lead.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockWhy It Matters: Someone will earn a(nother) place in sports history by sundown.Of the players in the top five, only McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have won majors.McIlroy’s last major victory was in 2014, and a win on Sunday would be his fifth major title. Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player, won the Masters in 2022; he rocketed up the Los Angeles leaderboard when he holed out from 196 yards for an eagle on No. 17. He ended Saturday at seven under, putting him three strokes off the lead.But Fowler is a perpetually popular talent with a long history of close-but-not-quite major finishes. On Thursday, he, along with Xander Schauffele, shot a 62, an Open record. Fowler elicited gasps on Saturday when he sank a 69-foot birdie putt on the 13th hole. He provoked groans later when, at No. 18, he missed a par putt of less than five feet.Clark is playing his third U.S. Open, and this is the first time he has made the cut. His best showing in a major before this one? A tie for 75th at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship.Harris English, who trails Fowler and Clark by four strokes, came close in that year’s U.S. Open, finishing third.Rickie Fowler missed a putt for par of less than five feet on the 18th hole on Saturday.George Walker Iv/Associated PressBackground: The U.S. Open is taking place during a period of turmoil in golf.With the major tournaments offering some of the biggest prizes in golf and the surest paths to greatness — Koepka noted this past week that a golfer’s tally of major victories is what his career is “judged on” — players ordinarily like to focus on golf, and golf alone.That has not been so easy at this Open. On June 6, the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf circuit that divided the sport, announced a plan to form a partnership. The deal, if it closes, could end golf’s most bruising clash in generations, but it has already led to widespread uncertainty about the future of the game.In public and in private, players have spent much of the past two weeks mulling what that future might look like.For what it’s worth, the PGA Tour and LIV are knotted at one major victory each this season: Rahm plays for the tour, while Koepka is a headliner for LIV.What’s Next: 18 holes for everyone — and, perhaps, the first playoff since 2008.NBC will air final-round coverage beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern time. The tournament’s presence on the West Coast means the Open will not be settled until well into the evening in much of the United States, with the championship expected to be decided by about 10 p.m. Eastern time.All bets are off, though, if there is a tie at the top after everyone has finished 72 holes.The Open has not reached a playoff since 2008, when Tiger Woods won at Torrey Pines. The format has since changed: If the leaders are tied after regulation play, there will be a two-hole aggregate playoff, contested on the first and 18th holes. If the leaders are still knotted after those two holes, a sudden-death competition will commence. The idea is to have a winner on Sunday evening, not Monday, as has happened in past Opens. More

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      Few Birdies, but One Double Bogey, on the Shortest-Ever U.S. Open Hole

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      The 15th hole at Los Angeles Country Club on Saturday was only 81 yards long, but the field struggled mightily.At 81 yards, the par-3 15th hole at Los Angeles Country Club on Saturday was the shortest hole in the history of the U.S. Open.Only a golfer can fully grasp the mental torment that such a bite-size challenge poses, but here is one way to understand the situation: No one likes a hole where it’s easier to throw the ball onto the green than it is to hit it there with a golf club.Add to the third-round setting a severely sloped 15th green; three massive, menacing bunkers surrounding the target area; and knotty, knee-high grass all around. And — oh, yes — the approach shot is uphill, and there is a gusty wind at the players’ backs.Step right up, who wants to go first? How about you, Brooks Koepka, five-time major champion?Didn’t Koepka suggest earlier this week that L.A. Country Club might be too easy? He said he worried about a “birdiefest.” Maybe he had a hole less than 100 yards in mind. (The old record for shortest U.S. Open hole was 92 yards, at the 2010 event.)Koepka was three under par for his Saturday round and firmly in the top 10 when he stepped to the 15th. But his tee shot had none of the touch required and soared to the back of the green. His first putt was way short. His next putt was way long. The third putt just plain missed the hole. Koepka tapped in for a double bogey and is now extremely unlikely to win a sixth major at this year’s Open.Brooks Koepka needed four putts to finish the 15th hole on Saturday.Warren Little/Getty ImagesWho’s next? Don’t be shy.Next came Tom Kim, the hottest golfer in the early wave of players on Saturday, to the 15th tee. Kim made seven birdies as he tamed 5,637 yards of L.A.C.C. terrain in his first 14 holes. He had just made par at the fearsome 627-yard, par-5 14th hole.So, really, how hard could an 81-yard hole be?Trying to play with finesse, Kim deftly flipped a tidy little wedge. One problem: It was about two yards short of the green and trundled backward in a yawning bunker. His blast from the sand bounded to the back of the green, 22 feet from the hole. Two putts and one bogey later, Kim walked away shaking his head as he glared over his shoulder at the 15th green.After his round, Kim summed up the diabolical, tiny test presented on Saturday by the historic 15th hole.“If you’re long, you’re dead,” he said. “If you’re short, you’re dead. You don’t want to bail out left because then you have a 40-footer down the hill. A bogey from 80 yards isn’t great stats-wise, but, you know, a double bogey is definitely in play there.”Kim finished the day at three under par for the tournament and is still in contention.Bryson DeChambeau, golf’s mad scientist, looked very determined during his time on the 15th tee. He did not even flinch when he was almost beaned by an errant shot from the 14th fairway by a fellow competitor, Keith Mitchell. DeChambeau pitched a wedge to 10 feet and made par.“I’m the happiest man alive that I hit that green,” he said. “Super happy.”“If you’re long, you’re dead,” Tom Kim said of the 15th hole. “If you’re short, you’re dead.”Matt York/Associated PressDeChambeau said he chose a 60-degree wedge and teed his golf ball extra high to create more spin and loft.“Very difficult, demanding shot,” he added. “Par is a great score.”Even if it’s only 81 yards?“I’d rather it be longer tomorrow,” said DeChambeau, who finished at three under par.The 15th hole did not play as one of the most difficult holes on the golf course on Saturday. But it seems a surprise that the scoring average on the hole was 2.92 with 11 birdies, four bogeys and one conspicuous double bogey in the field of 65.Forty-nine of the best golfers in the world made par, and no better, on an 81-yard hole. Then again, as is often said, golf is a game of opposites. For example, you must hit down on the ball to make it go up. So in that way, the 15th hole in the third round of the 2023 national golf championship was, perhaps, perfect.Shane Lowry, the 2019 British Open champion, may have said it best.“It was different, and that’s interesting,” he said with a smile. “Different is OK. But I had a plan. The plan was par.” More