Monday Qualifiers: Travelers Championship

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SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — The only thing that spared Dustin Johnson from another U.S. Open implosion is that everyone around him suffered on a Shinnecock Hills course that even the USGA conceded got out of hand Saturday afternoon. Daniel Berger and Tony Finau were the exceptions, each posting a 4-under 66 about the time Johnson was just starting out on greens that became so slick that Phil Mickelson swatted a ball that was still moving on the 13th green and no one in the final 22 groups broke par. Johnson, who started the third round with a four-shot lead, barely nudged his 17-foot birdie attempt on the 18th hole. It ran 8 feet by the cup and he missed the par putt for one last bogey and a 7-over 77. At least he still has a chance. Johnson was in a four-way tie for the lead at 3-over 213, the highest 54-hole score to lead the U.S. Open since the fabled “Massacre at Winged Foot” in 1974. “You were seeing shots that were well played and not rewarded,” said Mike Davis, the chief executive of the USGA. “It was a very tough test, but probably too tough this afternoon.” Berger and Finau, who started the day 11 shots out of the lead, will play in the final group. Johnson and defending champion Brooks Koepka will be right behind them. Koepka made only two birdies in a hard-earned round of 72, leaving him in position to become the first back-to-back winner of the U.S. Open since Curtis Strange in 1989. Henrik Stenson made one birdie and picked up three shots on the leader. Mickelson celebrated his 48th birthday by matching his worst score in his 27th U.S. Open with an 81, and he provided the snapshot of a day that was entertaining for reasons the USGA didn’t imagine. He went from behind the 13th green all the way off the front. His next shot was 18 feet above the hole. His bogey putt slid by, and after a few putts, Mickelson trotted after it and then stuck out his putter and hit the ball back toward the cup to keep it from running off the green. That’s a two-shot penalty, giving him a 10. “It’s just a moment of madness,” said Andrew “Beef” Johnston, who played with Mickelson and couldn’t stifle a laugh. Mickelson apologized if anyone was offended by his act, even after saying he knew the rules for hitting a ball in motion and was happy to take a two-shot penalty instead of playing a crude version of tennis. Johnson didn’t have anything that wild, rather more of a slow bleed that began with a shot off a sandy path and three putts on the par-3 second hole for his first double bogey of the championship. His lead was gone with a three-putt bogey on the par-3 seventh. He was back in the lead when everyone around him couldn’t hang on. Justin Rose (73) and Stenson (74) also shared the lead at some point. Rose was one shot behind, with Stenson another shot behind. Kiradech Aphibarnrat had the only other round under par. He teed off at 9:40 a.m. and had a 2-under 68 and was three shots behind. The scoring average of 75.33 was the highest for a third round in the U.S. Open since 2000 at Pebble Beach.

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When John Feinstein sits down to write a book, the best-selling author has a single focus in mind. “What I’ve always tried to do is not make headlines but explain headlines,â€� he says. And those headlines have been an extremely diverse collection. Feinstein has written about the two teams who played in the 1995 Army-Navy game (a book that is his personal favorite), as well as Bobby Knight and his 1985-86 Indiana basketball team, probably his best-known tome. He even delved into the December 1977 fight between the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers when Kermit Washington landed a punch that left Rudy Tomjanovich bleeding and unconscious. And that’s why when Rory tweeted when the book came out … that reading the book he felt like he was in both team rooms, that I thought it was kind of the ultimate compliment. And of the 26 non-fiction books he has written, nine have been about golf, including the most recent, “The First Major: The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup,” which was released in October. That’s more than any other sport Feinstein has researched and speaks to an enduring fascination with the game that began when he worked at Gardiner’s Bay Country Club on the eastern end of Long Island as a teenager. “I loved the esthetics of it,” he says. “I loved the fact that you could go out and practice and play on your own. I used to get off work in the summer at about 7 and would just grab a cart and go play nine holes by myself before dark, and I had the whole golf course to myself. “I always loved that.” The first person Feinstein told that he was going to write “The First Major” was Davis Love III. The conversation – the first of many over the next 18 months — came on the same day in 2015 when the soon-to-be-named World Golf Hall of Famer was selected as captain of the U.S. Team. “He said, ‘Oh, here we go again’ because he’s been involved in so many of my golf books, and that’s the great thing, though, (because) he completely understands what I’m doing and what I’m trying to do,” Feinstein recalls. So many, indeed. In fact, Feinstein’s first golf book, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” begins with Love standing in the 18th fairway at The Belfry, a bundle of nerves, knowing that his match with Constantino Rocca would decide the 1993 matches. Feinstein actually wanted to write his latest book two years earlier when Tom Watson was the U.S. captain. The two had become close when Feinstein wrote “Caddy for Life” about Bruce Edward’s struggle with ALS. As he pitched the book to Watson, Feinstein hoped to get access similar to what he had when he wrote “Season on the Brink” about the volatile Knight and his Hoosiers. Feinstein had essentially embedded himself with the Indiana team that year and he hoped to tell the story of Watson’s American team from the inside out, as well. “Tom is always honest,” Feinstein says. “And he said, I know it would be a great book, but if one guy on the team came to me afterwards and said, you know, having John in there was a distraction and we lost 14-13 1/2 or something, I’d never forgive myself, and I understood that.” So instead of focusing on the Americans in 2014, Feinstein decided to write about both teams at the 2016 event. Over the next two years he worked to develop relationships with as many of the players as possible, as well as both captains and their assistants. He’d let them take him inside the ropes and behind the scenes instead. “And that’s why when Rory tweeted when the book came out … that reading the book he felt like he was in both team rooms, that I thought it was kind of the ultimate compliment,” Feinstein says. The author was almost overwhelmed by the reception and cooperation he received in researching the book. Take his quest for a sit-down with Jordan Spieth, for example. “The first thing that happened actually that was funny and tells you a lot about Jordan, he had to postpone twice for legit reasons, and when we sat down, the first thing he did was he apologized for postponing, and I said, Jordan, come on, you’re doing me a favor giving me this time, and he said, well, aren’t you doing me a favor putting me in your book?” Feinstein says. “I’m like, really? Jordan needed to be in my book like I need to gain another 20 pounds. And so I laughed. And so then we sat and we talked for a long time, and at the end, like I said, I said, I’m going to need to circle back to you, and he said, yeah, yeah, let’s just make it simple, take my cell phone number and text me whenever you want to talk. You can’t ask for more than that.” From Oct. 2 of last year, when the matches at Hazeltine ended in a hard-fought U.S. victory, to that Thanksgiving, Feinstein estimates he touched base with 16 or 17 of the players to get their take on the event, as well as Love and his European counterpart, Darren Clark. He also interviewed all of Love’s vice captains with the exception of Tiger Woods. “But I had so much stuff from other guys on him, talking about how obsessed he became, and to me people always say, what was your biggest surprise,” Feinstein says. “My biggest surprise was definitely how into the whole thing Tiger became, especially given his past Ryder Cup participation when he was clearly just there because he thought he had to be.” Even as he was in the midst of those follow-up interviews, Feinstein started writing some of the background and historical chapters the week after he got back from Minneapolis. The 320-page book was finished on Feb. 1 of this year. “I’ve always said my newspaper training comes in because I can write fast and I can write on a deadline,” he noted. “I knew it was going to be a fast turnaround, but I was mentally ready to deal with it.” While the competition is at the center of the book, the anecdotes Feinstein gleaned from the coaches and players are what sets it apart. Two of his favorites involve Clarke and Phil Mickelson, two long-time friends as well as keen competitors. Clarke lost his first wife Heather to breast cancer shortly before the Ryder Cup matches in 2006. Mickelson’s wife Amy also has fought the disease, and among Clarke’s memories from that emotional year came at the opening ceremonies when members of the two teams walked in together. “That year it was wife, player, player, wife, two from each side walking side by side, and Darren was supposed to walk in with Amy and Phil, and of course he did not have a partner,” Feinstein says. “And so when the music started and they were about to walk in, Amy walked around Phil, got in between Phil and Darren, took both their hands and walked in with them that way. “And of course Darren never forget that, and Phil said that when Amy was diagnosed, the first phone call he got was from Darren saying, you know, I’m here for you.” Another favorite story in Feinstein’s book came from Love, who remembers seeing Clarke and Mickelson deep in conversation into the wee hours on Sunday night after the U.S. victory. “(He was) talking about sitting and watching Darren and Phil talking together at 2 or 3 in the morning and thinking, this is what Sam Ryder would have wanted the Ryder Cup to be, these guys who have been through so much more together than a golf match, coming back together after competing against one another for three days and sitting around and telling stories together,” Feinstein recalls.

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