The U.S. Open was this weekend. Did you miss it?
That’s OK. You’re busy, and in this semiquincentennial summer of sports surplus, not everything can stand out.
Here are four takeaways from the week that was at Shinnecock Hills, with Wyndham Clark outlasting the field on Sunday for his second U.S. Open title.
No Juice
The USGA plans these championships out years, even decades, in advance. Here’s a fun fact: The governing body gave Shinnecock Hills the 2026 U.S. Open in June 2016; we didn’t know we’d be hosting a World Cup that same summer until two years later.
That’s to say nothing of the Knicks bringing New York on a magic carpet ride for several weeks, culminating in a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan the same day as the first round began out on Long Island.
Combine all this – other marquee sports, other places that New York-area fans wanted to be – with the fact that Clark built a nearly indefatigable lead over the course of the week, and there’s little wonder why the lack of juice became the prevailing narrative. Fried Egg Golf noted Saturday afternoon that fans were pouring out of the course about three hours before that round would end because there was only one more train back to the city. That’s a major whiff, and something the USGA did have the power to address ahead of time.
Blow Pig
For the uninitiated, the nickname “Blow Pig” is derived from smashing a word associated with “Wind” together with a word associated with “Ham.” It’s come to stand for something more: a dislike of Clark, whose attitude problems on the course predated incidents last year in which he destroyed a T-Mobile sign (the kicker – T-Mobile is his hat sponsor) at the PGA and later vandalized a locker at Oakmont upon missing the cut at the U.S. Open.
Put Blow Pig in a pressure cooker with the New York fans that did show up Sunday, and you get a scenario where the crowd was rooting against the leader. It helped that good ol’ Scottie Scheffler was in his final group, playing his unwitting foil as the crowd favorite. “I think sometimes it can get a little too much when, you know, balls are kind of going off greens and you start hearing cheers. That felt a bit much to me,” Scheffler said in defense of Clark.
Four of the past seven U.S. Opens have now been collected by Bryson DeChambeau – who at least has his legion of fans, even if they’re native to the YouTube comment section these days – and Clark, whose fans are hard to identify. Certainly not the USGA’s dream scenario.
The Course Was… Fine
Would you look at that, the U.S. Open wound up playing like the U.S. Open. Three guys finished the week under par: Clark, Sam Burns and Tom Kim. In 2004 at Shinnecock, that number was two; in 2018, Brooks Koepka won with a score of 1 over par.
Armchair architects overreacted when there were some lower scores on Thursday, led by Clark’s 6-under 64 in the afternoon wave. The USGA laid out Shinnecock Hills with the wind in mind. Say the forecasts called for 30 mph gusts. If they turned out to blow 40 or 50, balls wouldn’t stay on the greens unless the speeds were ratcheted down.
So there were unusually soft greens, the gusts underperformed and the course played easier for those in the afternoon wave. I saw one Twitter egg (do we still use that term?) say, “Jobs should be lost.” Little more than typical social media grandstanding. Everything evened out by the weekend, with only two players managing to break par Saturday.
For me, it’s not going to be the most memorable major, but in contrast to player complaints about some impossible pin locations at the PGA last month at Aronimink, nothing about this setup was “unfair.”
