Brooks Koepka won his second consecutive U.S. Open by a shot over Tommy Fleetwood at Shinnecock Hills. Koepka shot a final round 2-under 68, and became the first back-to-back winner of the U.S. Open since Curtis Strange in 1988-1989.
Fleetwood shot a final-round score of 63 but came up one shot short.
One of the big controversies from this U.S. Open is when Phil Mickelson seemingly lost is mind temporarily on the 13th hole on Saturday when he missed a bogey putt and then ran to hit the ball again before it could roll down a slope and off the green.
This is very much the same kind of move that John Daly did at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 1999 when he tried to putt a ball from a collection area up onto the green but didn’t quite hit it hard enough. As the ball rolled back down on its way to where it was just played from, Daly strutted to it and “polo”ed the ball up the slope and across the green.
As I remember the incident, it was in the second round and Daly had played great on Thursday and talked about how great the course setup was, until he struggled on Friday and suddenly the course setup was “a joke”.
Back to Mickelson in 2018 on Saturday. He claims he did what he did in order to not have to chip back up onto the green again, so he decided to hit the moving ball, take a 2-shot penalty for hitting a moving ball, and then finish the hole and move on to the next one.
Mickelson’s “use” of the rules is stretching the whole idea of players using the rules to their advantage (usually this happens when they get free relief or a drop where they get out of a bad lie and into a position where they can recover). I don’t think this use of the rules is good for the game of golf, and basically is like cheating. During the broadcast, David Fay, former president of USGA and Fox’s rules expert, said that if he were part of the USGA’s current decision making process that he would have recommended disqualification for Mickelson’s actions.
Anyways, Here are some of the highlights from the final round:
