Golf Shirts Must Have Tight Collars

Dear World of Golf: So you didn’t have Tiger Woods in the hunt on the last day of a major and how did you like the way it looked?

The first Tigerless major in awhile, it wasn’t merely ugly, no, it was breathtakingly ugly. This U.S. Open needed a warning label. It should be hidden underneath the kitchen sink.

What happened Sunday at Southern Hills Country Club brings new and even deeper meaning to the word “choke.”

It has soared to another level and disappeared into the atmosphere.

It was very likely the biggest group collapse in the history of golf, maybe in all of sports.

Somebody should have ringed the 18th green with yellow police tape, because what happened there was a felony offense.

Three players came to the 72nd hole on the last day of the final round of the U.S. Open and three chalk outlines were drawn in the short grass.

The following information is also available in the report that homicide is preparing, but here is what the eyewitnesses saw, in chronological order:

Mark Brooks three-putted the hole for a bogey, missing the second one from eight feet.

Stewart Cink three-putted the hole for a double bogey, missing the second one from two feet.

Retief Goosen three-putted the hole for a bogey, missing the second one from two feet.

If Brooks made par, he wins.

If Cink made par, he wins.

If Goosen made par, he wins.

It was all so sad, so unexpected and so downright eerie, you wished you had Freud’s number on your speed dial so you could get him on the line and try to help sort things out a little bit.

Three players come to the last hole of the U.S. Open and three players choke all over themselves. Three players need three putts to get the ball in the hole. Nobody wins.

There were so many balls rolling around on the green, it looked as though someone had just made the break on a pool table.

And the reaction of the players, it was classic. They looked as if somebody had just pumped the blood right out of their heads.

It was all so numbingly weird that it was difficult to figure out who felt the worst, although Goosen probably gets the nod. Cink is off the hook. Because of his double bogey on the last hole, he is missing out on today’s playoff between Brooks and Goosen. So he’s spared any additional heartbreak.

Goosen is South African and has a keenly developed sense of humor, and that’s good, because he’s going to need every bit of it once he comes to again and realizes how he blew it sky-high on Sunday.

Brooks was already packing his laundry bag in the locker room, sure that he would be back home in Fort Worth this morning, remembering how he played the 18th hole in three-over for four days and bogeyed at the end to drop out of the lead.

Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, Cink was busy playing himself onto an airplane out of town. He had just made a birdie at the 17th hole to catch Goosen at five under, but his second shot into the 18th carried over the green into the rough. He chipped out and, recovering nicely, nearly holed a 15-foot par putt.

Faced with an opportunity to make golf history, Cink did not make the most of his moment, and that is being kind. He missed his short putt for bogey. In the hot sun, his face was so red, it looked like he was using marinara sauce for lotion.

Then, by the time he finally nudged the ball into the hole for a double bogey putt, he was done. Cink was sunk.

That left it up to Goosen. When he was an amateur, he was once struck by lightning. Now it has happened to him twice.

His second shot had come to rest only 12 feet above the hole on the right side of the green. All week long, Goosen had discovered his pars on holes from a lot worse places than that, but not this time.

Goosen hit his putt too hard and it slid past on the right. He was still all right, though, just a routine two-footer to go to win the U.S. Open, not far from tap-in range.

Of course, the ball didn’t roll in.

If you rewind the tape to early in the week, when the players were complaining about the condition of the 18th green, that it was unfair, you have to say that what happened Sunday is even more weird. Three players might tell you it really was unfair.

Three players came to the 18th hole looking for the U.S. Open trophy and three players left it looking for some aspirin. Come back, Tiger, and please take over again. From the looks of things, it’s pretty chaotic out there without you.

Now, as far as the U.S. Open goes, what we had was an unforgettable moment, even if three players in courtesy cars leaving the parking lot Sunday night would probably like to.