Phil Mickelson’s outrageous U.S. Open putt was a maddening, successful troll

We got a strong Sunday finish at the U.S. Open and a deserving, great champion. But the first memory of this week’s 118th national championship will probably be Phil Mickelson’s sprint-and-slap on the 13th green Saturday afternoon.

Keep your head on a swivel because every kind of take on this bit of drama bubbled to the surface the last two days. I have had a bunch of conflicting thoughts on it, which I’ve been running through my head since it happened. I’m still not sure what’s right and final but I try to run through them, a little stream-of-consciousness, below. Here we go:

1. What Phil did can be a disgrace. It can be entertaining and funny, too. I’m not a golf purist and generally find completely unexpected madness like this enjoyable. This was enjoyable because of the fallout and stupidity. But there’s really no other reading of it than it was wrong and bad.
2. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s room for nuance here between “OMG, golf is so soft” and “Phil should be arrested.” Saying he should have been disqualified does not immediately mean you think your kids are now scarred forever. Nor is it some indictment of golf being too uptight.
3. Phil should have been disqualified. You can attach some histrionics and modulate your voice or use some intense language that can make that a hot take. But the premise is not. He should have been tossed.
4. He did something that’s just outside of how the game is played. The rules covered his ass and they were technically applied correctly, but this is also a case where applying a common sense or reasonableness standard would yield a different result. There’s an “I know it when I see it” element here.
5. The move was far over the line of this whole arrangement and how this game is ordered and structured. It’s a dirty hit in football or a flagrant 2 in basketball. Just because there wasn’t violence associated with this doesn’t make the call for having him tossed some sort of soft, only-in-golf notion. It was just so far beyond how the game is played and the two-stroke penalty did not feel commensurate.
6. I watched it, and then listened to his comments that it was a deliberate move to try and gain an advantage and then I spent much of the rest of the day walking around Shinnecock Hills thinking about the slippery slope implications of the whole thing. I don’t think it’s going to start happening with regularity, but the fact that Phil did it, outlined his motives, and came back to play again opens the door for it. That seems less than ideal and I could see another rule change down the line to officially slam the door on this kind of f**kery happening more often. The slippery slope argument IS enough for the DQ, in my opinion.
7. It was a “serious breach” and it sounds like many of the players who do this every day for a living think he should have been DQ’d too. It’s not some media outrage to feed the content beast during a major championship.
8. I love Phil, I was entertained. I enjoyed the circus and I was amused by his defiance, but it also bummed me out. Can I have all those conflicting emotions? Thinking it was a disgrace but also loving the circus around it? I don’t know, you can yell at me for being a ball of contradictions but that’s where I was at Saturday. Giggling while saying “holy shit, that was insane and wrong.”
9. There is absolutely no one who could have taken less fire for this than Phil did. If Tiger did it — and to be clear, he never would — he’s pilloried as classless. If Jordan Spieth, AKA the golden child, did it, he’s ripped as a whiny petulant brat. Justin Thomas the same. Sergio is a spoiled headcase who can’t deal. There would just be a greater consensus of condemnation for anyone but Phil, the gregarious goofball dad. Phil took some heat, but there’s been a backlash to the backlash that no other player would have generated.
10. I am absolutely in awe of how Phil has again kicked the USGA in the nuts in about eight different ways coming and going on this. He might be playing chess while they’re playing checkers. This wasn’t some momentary lapse, but more of a deliberate complaint about the setup of an organization that Phil seems to hate. He ripped them just last week, saying they’d find a way to screw this 2018 Shinnecock U.S. Open up. Then this running putt move:

• engulfed their most prestigious championship in a sideshow. The caterer at media dining started yelling at me about it. I overheard the cops on their radios talking about it.
• illuminated a setup issue and pin placement that was later called onto the carpet
• forced them to huddle up and make another difficult rules call under stress
• prompted outcry against the USGA about that eventual rules call
• prompted debate about if the rules need to be re-considered
• prompted the USGA to make a statement, hold a quick press conference, make an appearance on Fox, an appearance on Golf Channel, hold a second, more tense late-night press conference, and issue yet another Sunday morning clarification statement. It was all done trying to explain themselves in a way that maybe did not look the most clear and commanding, all while Phil giggled defiantly.

It’s amazing how much Phil screwing around put the USGA through the ringer, which was probably the overarching point from the start. I laughed about all that came afterwards, but he should have been disqualified for it.