🎭 Joaquin Niemann Was In Contention At The U.S. Open Until He Absolutely Was Not
Niemann was right there Thursday. Playing clean golf, sitting near the top of the leaderboard at Shinnecock, doing his whole smooth LIV swing thing. Then his final hole happened — a collapse ugly enough to ruin a week — and he decided to throw a club on top of it. The USGA responded by hitting him with a TWO-STROKE penalty for what they officially called “serious misconduct.” (source)
The phrase “serious misconduct” is doing so much work here. It’s so wonderfully stiff and institutional — like getting a formal letter from the HOA because your bins were out a day early. They didn’t just penalize him, they morally processed him in three words. Incredible. The USGA stays winning the PR battle even when they’re losing the setup battle.
And look, the discourse that followed was exactly what you’d expect. Half of golf Twitter dunked on him for the tantrum. The other half blamed the setup conditions. (Narrator: the greens were actually SOFT this week.) Neither camp acknowledged the obvious point, which is that Niemann was genuinely playing well and imploded at the worst possible moment, in front of the biggest possible audience, at a major championship. (source)
A LIV player in contention at Shinnecock was actually a real story. He traded it in for a different kind of story. The golf was fine, Joaquin. The club was not.
🔬 Bryson DeChambeau Showed Up With A Driver That Doesn’t Technically Exist Yet
Death, taxes, and Bryson arriving at a major with equipment no one can buy. This week’s mystery object: a prototype TaylorMade driver with increased face curvature — more curve than anything currently on the market. The reasoning is that his swing speed is so extreme that standard face geometry physically behaves differently on his club than it does for everyone else. This is a real sentence that describes a real human golfer. (source)
Golf Monthly helpfully asked if you might need more face curvature too. (source) You do not. Bryson has custom physics. You have a slice.
💨 Bryson Hit A 427-Yard Drive And Outdistanced Matt Fitzpatrick By 102 Yards
ONE HUNDRED AND TWO YARDS. That’s not a distance gap, that’s a different sport being played on the same hole at the same time. (source)
⛳ The USGA Set Up Shinnecock Nicely And Everyone Should Stop Celebrating That
The wind forecast this week had everyone bracing for another Shinnecock massacre. Instead the USGA played it safe — soft greens, accessible setup, zero carnage. Round 1 passed without a single scorched-earth presser or player threatening to never return. (source) Players called it “weird how soft” the greens were. (source)
Here’s the genuine take: the USGA has been so publicly humiliated by 2016 Oakmont and 2018 Shinnecock that they’ve overcorrected, and now “no complaints” gets treated as a success condition when it really isn’t. Shinnecock’s entire identity is built on routing, elevation, and punishing wind — the course wants to be difficult. Softening it to protect the optics wastes one of the most demanding venues in American golf. The players saying it felt soft weren’t complaining. They were genuinely surprised. They came to fight and found a negotiation.
A U.S. Open at Shinnecock should make Sunday afternoon feel like a hostage situation for half the leaderboard. That’s not cruelty — that’s the contract. If nobody’s reconsidering their career choices on the 16th hole Sunday, we left something on the table.
⚖️ Phil Mickelson Resigned From A Club After Allegations, Per His Lawyer
It’s always Phil o’clock somewhere. (source)
🚌 A Random Group Of Spectators Pushed A Bus Out Of The Mud At The U.S. Open
Paid hundreds for tickets to a major, ended up doing manual labor in a parking field — the most authentic fan experience the USGA has ever accidentally provided. (source)
🕳️ Someone Rolled 16,503 Putts To Test Zero-Torque Putters And Honestly Good For Them
MyGolfSpy tested TWENTY-SIX zero-torque putter models across 16,503 putts (yes, really) and found the category averaged a 46.9% make rate — outperforming both traditional mallets and blades. Legitimate options available for under $250. (source)
16,503 putts. Someone’s wrist tendons deserve a formal apology and a gift card. The actual data is useful though — zero-torque is no longer a gimmick category and the price point has come down enough that it’s worth a look before you buy another Anser copy you’ll blame instead of your stroke.
🏀 This Guy Got Stuck At The Knicks Parade Carrying His Golf Clubs
The crossover content we didn’t ask for, fully respect, and would absolutely watch a 12-part docuseries about. (source)
Talk soon — assuming Niemann’s clubs are still in one piece and Bryson hasn’t commissioned a second prototype driver that violates a different law of physics entirely.
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