OAKMONT, Pa. — Cheers to the left of them, silence to the right, here they were, stuck in the middle of golf hell. If Sam Burns and Adam Scott felt alone and abandoned, it is because they were alone and abandoned. The stands around the 16th hole were mostly empty and getting emptier. Fans kept looking away. Burns and Scott did not have that luxury. Burns began the day with the lead, held it when storms swept everyone off the course, and kept it through the 10 holes. Then … then … then: Burns was two-under par as he stood on the 11th tee and four-over-par as he stood on the 17th. Two double-bogeys, two bogeys, two pars, and cruelly, two more holes to play.
After playing magnificent golf for most of the week, Burns shot a back-nine 40 for a final-round 78. If it makes him feel better, and it won’t, Burns was still the low golfer in his group. Scott was one-over par with five holes left, looking like he might win his second major. Then, in a matter of seconds, he hit his fairway wood into a bunker and uttered the words that would sum up his day: “You gotta be kidding me, Adam.” He went bogey-bogey-double and finished with a 79.
As J.J. Spaun drained his 64-foot putt to win the U.S. Open, Scott and Burns were a couple hundred yards behind him on the 18th hole, holding umbrellas. It was like they got dumped over appetizers and were forced to stay through dessert.
Scott and Burns were the last pairing of the final round.
Sixty-four golfers teed off before them.
Sixty-two of them shot better scores.
Burns and Scott went splat, yes, but people tend to do that in mudslides. Burns’s tee shot on 11 landed in the fairway, rolled into the rough, and stopped in a divot. He had a wedge in the fairway on the par-5 12th, and when he hit the ball, it looked like the sprinkler system went off. On 14, he found the fairway again but ended up in another divot.
On 15, Burns hit his tee shot into a water hazard, which was weird because at Oakmont there are no water hazards. The course was so wet that Burns’ ball needed a life preserver, and two USGA rules officials declined to give him one.
“That fairway slopes left to right,” Burns said. “That's kind of the low part of the fairway there. When I walked into it, clearly you could see water coming up. I took practice swings and it's just water splashing every single time. Called a rules official over, they disagreed. I looked at it again. I thought maybe I should get a second opinion. That rules official also disagreed.”
Regardless of what the USGA said, and regardless of whether the USGA read the rulebook correctly, as a practical matter, the shot was unplayable. Burns hit a low hook shot, looked back down, and smacked the ground, causing more water to spray. His ball landed in the rough on the short side of the green, leaving him a thin margin for error out of thick wet grass. His first chip did not reach the green, and this was the moment where I think Burns did start to unravel.
He is a fast player, which is good. Golf needs more of those. But after failing to get a ruling and failing to reach the green with his first chip, he should have taken a moment to compose himself. Instead, he hit the ball again. It scooted past the pin. He two-putted for double bogey. He was out of the tournament.
“Once the fairways were soaked, it was very hard controlling the golf ball,” Scott said. “It was just so sloppy the rest of the way. Sam, we must have looked horrible, both of us playing like that. But that's what can happen in these things. If you get a little off, you're just severely punished.”
This is where we would point out that Spaun and Robert MacIntyre played the same golf course, and they combined to make six birdies and one bogey after the storm. But we don’t have to point that out, because Scott and Burns did.
Burns: “Look, it's part of it. Everybody's got to deal with it. I didn't have my best stuff, and clearly it showed.”
Scott: “I didn't adapt to those conditions well enough ... everyone had to deal with it.”
After Burns signed his scorecard, his wife Caroline handed him the trophy: His one-year-old son, Bear. Sam held Bear, smiled, and pointed up toward the USGA flags flying above the grandstand, and Bear said his first words: “That ruling on 15 sucked, Dad.” If I misheard him, that’s on me. I was tired and had been out in the rain for a long time, but as Bear’s dad will tell you, that’s no excuse.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The U.S. Open's Final Pairing Absolutely Fizzled on Sunday.