We attended the Saturday round at Shinnecock Hills.

The Course: First time ever seeing the course, and it may be recency bias, but it's the finest test of golf I've ever seen. Tee to green links style, with parkland greens. Incredible. That the USGA widened the fairways and only had to put the greens to 10.5 on the Stimp tells you all you need to know about just how hard this course is. If they jacked the greens up to 13 or 14 like last year it would have been a bloodbath. Absolutely loved it.

Getting there: No surprise but probably the only downside is just how remote Shinnecock is. There are no reasonably priced accommodations anywhere on Long Island during the week. The LIRR is fine, but man almost 3 hours each way from NYC is a killer.

The Fan Experience: The USGA did a masterful job with fan routing around the course. Never felt cramped in or blocked off from great viewing areas. One nit, having the last group tee off at 3:45PM EST was about 2 hours later than they should have. No wonder the course was empty when the last group played 18. Everyone was streaming out when Rory and Scottie finished 2 hours ahead of the last group so that they could catch the last couple of trains leaving the course. Sunday's earlier tee times were more appropriate.

The Fans: First time for me being around New York fans. Not really sure why they felt the need to heckle so many golfers. I get Rory's going to hear it, but Xander Shauffele and Justin Thomas? Really? The Wall Street frat boys sure struggled to handle their alcohol. Saw several of them getting the Weekend at Bernie's treatment late in the day. Having said that, those guys weren't the majority.

The Players: Not sure what to think about Scottie. Something's not clicking this year. Maybe it's just too hard to play at the level he was the last 3 years and he's regressed. Rory's starting to look like he's going to be a Masters specialist and he can't adjust his game to other venues. Wyndham Clark played unbelievable for 4 days. I wasn't cheering for him but he deserved the win. Great redemption story.

On to Pebble.

...remotely like the heckling I heard on Saturday (and on TV on Sunday).

Yes, New Yorkers have a serious dumbass quotient, yes, the prior Ryder Cup on L.I. amped things up...but the factor that I haven't heard mentioned (at least much) is the effect of in-pocket 24/7 gambling.

Watching folks gambling all over the course on Thursday and Saturday. More the young, 17 - 30. Large group of youngsters (to me) by us between 5 and 15th greens was prop betting on all sorts of stupid things as each group came by and yelling at some golfers...

I really think the gambling is only going to magnify the heckling aspect across all sports as folks take out their frustrations for their in-the-moment stupidity and losses...

Sad display. I wasn't rooting for Clark but certainly respected what he did and would never think of trying to negatively impact players and play...

Honestly, I think many of them weren't really golf fans so much as they were "event" fans and brought their MSG/Yankee Stadium sports mentality to a golf tournament. The crowd at Oakmont in 25 was pretty much all golf fans so there was no heckling at all.

These self absorbed, entitled shits need to learn humility and respect.

The Left constantly tries to use the military for purposes other than war fighting. They love to use it as a captive group of young people to try to change domestic society. They can push woke initiatives further among a group of people who must obey (which should tell you something). Many non-military independent voters don't pay attention to this, but they should.

The good thing is that there are career officers and NCOs that will keep the highest standards. In other words, combat effectiveness doesn’t change with each administration.

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I was curious about the greens as they did not appear lightening fast on television.

The US Open champ always seems to be the player who saves par after par. Clark certainly did that, especially on Saturday. His birdie on #16 yesterday was remarkable after seeing his drive.

Even with a 10.5 Stimp reading, balls were running off the greens into bunkers and collection areas. Once you got the ball on the green you were fine, it was getting the ball to stay on approach shots where the players had difficulty. The landing areas were literally 3-5 yard circles on some greens. The first hop on a lot of Rory's approach shots just bound forward like 5-10 yards and went off the back before the spin could kick in.

Typical PGA tour events usually run around 12. By comparison, if you've ever played Pebble Beach they set their greens to about 10-10.5 for the regular rounds which is perfectly fine and keeps play moving. But if they left it at that for next year's US Open the pros will destroy that course. So they'll ramp it up to 13-15 to protect the course from being embarrassed and brings scores closer to even par. Oakmont leaves their greens at around 13 or so for regular member/guest rounds but can go 13-15 for a US Open set up. Same thing, if Oakmont dropped their Stimp to 10.5 for the US Open the pros would go pretty low in scoring. Each course has it's own way of protecting par. Shinnecock didn't need fast greens to protect par. It's hard enough.

especially toward the end of the day. Having DVR'd the tourney, I replayed one of Scottie's putts from about 20 ft. yesterday...he had perfect speed on it and it was trundling down headed straight for the center of the cup...then, within inches and took a hard right and missed. That's Poa for you.

Of course everyone had to deal with it, but Wyndham handled it better than most, especially on the short par saving putts...he habitually tamped down the line on those putts...not for ball marks, but the unevenness due to patchy growth and foot traffic.

As to Wyndham Clark the player...I'm convinced he is truly repentant over what happened last year...so, hopefully there will be less harassment of him in the future, but of course it's unreasonable to expect all the cretins to suddenly vanish. He will be a contender for quite awhile.

The top 64 players in the 2025 US Open averaged 2 putts or less for 4 rounds. That's according to the official USGA stats.

The members play at 14-15. The highest they have run a SWAT was 18.3.

It's not just green speeds that protect par at Oakmont during member and US Open play, but green speeds are a defense that Oakmont uses that Shinnecock doesn't need.

Shinnecock has used green speed before. It did not go well.

If you are going to have false fronts and runoffs, you can't lose the greens. They "needed" to slow them down.

The course played tough but fair.

Clark played the best golf. His putting saved a lot of pars.