Four players were tied for the lead entering the final day at the U.S. Open. What more could golf fans ask for? Defending champion Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Tony Finau and Daniel Berger are all at 3-over par entering the final day at Shinnecock Hills. The final two groups tee off at 2:13 and 2:24 p.m. ET. The U.S. Open is known for being the most-difficult of golf's four major championships, and this week has been no different. The course on Long Island, which has been criticized by many as being too difficult, has humbled some of the world's best players, as Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, Jason Day, Sergio Garcia, Jon Rahm and Tiger Woods all missed the weekend cut. Follow along as we provide updates from all the latest news on the final day of the tournament. Koepka closes out title defense Winner-winner chicken dinner! Brooks Koepka becomes the seventh player to win back-to-back U.S. Open championships, the first in nearly three decades. Koepka successfully defended his title, winning by just one stroke over Tommy Fleetwood. Koepka clings to one shot lead Brooks Koepka is GRINDING to defend his U.S. Open title. Holding a one-shot lead over Tommy Fleetwood (who's in the clubhouse), Koepka was in the weeds - literally - on the par 4 14th. He was forced to punch out and then get up and down from 67 yards. He was left with about 8 feet for par after the approach and drilled the putt. This is going to get fun. Here comes Captain America Patrick Reed's birdie on No. 14 brings him within two shots of leader Brooks Koepka. If Reed can come back to win, he'll be just the seventh player in history to win the Masters and U.S. Open in the same year. Tommy boy! If you didn't catch Tommy Fleetwood's final round, you missed out on the performance of the weekend. Fleetwood becomes the sixth player in U.S. Open history to shoot 63, missing a chance at 62 on the 18th green. The pressure's on for DJ, BK and the boys. Leaderboard update: Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed are tied at 1-over, followed by Fleetwood and Dustin Johnson at 2-over. And the leaders are off Daniel Berger, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are all now on the course, and there's been a flurry of activity ahead of them all morning. Masters champ Patrick Reed birdied his first three holes and is now tied with the leaders at 3-over. So you're saying there's a chance ... Tommy Fleetwood started the day at 9-over par, six shots back from the leaders. The 27-year-old is making a run at the leaders and scoring well early. Fowler makes history at Shinnecock Rickie Fowler won't win his first major championship this weekend, but the four-time PGA Tour winner tied a tournament record at Shinnecock Hills on Sunday. Best frenemies Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are good friends ... until they're tied for the lead and playing together in the second-to-last group at a major. Here's what DJ had to say about his relationship with BK on Sunday: Early highlights on Sunday Phil Mickelson rebounded early on Sunday after a disastrous Saturday round that featured a storm of criticism after an out-of-character putting fiasco. Follow Adam Woodard on Twitter @AdamWoodard.<doc-sep>History holds a regular tee time at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. Founded in 1891, it is the oldest incorporated golf club in the country. Inside a white tent just off the first fairway, Mike Davis, chief executive of the USGA, considers the past ahead of the 118th U.S. Open to be held this week. He calls the course “a national treasure,” throws laurels at the aesthetics and notes the extended length — 7,445 yards to be played to a par of 35-35 — 70. He tracks the landscape’s evolution, referencing aerial views, fairway contours and shot values. Not all history is hallowed, though. Davis broaches the hell that still haunts the clubhouse. It was 14 years ago, during the final day of the 2004 U.S. Open, when the greens ran dry on No. 7. Advertisement “We’re happy that we have a mulligan this time,” Davis said. “Certainly it was a bogey last time. Maybe a double bogey.” The green turned to rock that Sunday morning. The first four players took three triple bogeys and a bogey at the hole. Walter Driver, chairman of the USGAs Championship Committee, ordered the grounds crew to water the greens then. By day’s end, three players made birdie. On the score sheets, there were 28 pars, 27 bogeys, five double bogeys and the three triple bogeys. Retief Goosen and Phil Mickelson managed par that Sunday as Goosen claimed his second Open trophy, this time by two strokes with a four-under-par 276. Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland plays a shot from a bunker during a practice rounds prior to the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. (Andrew Redington / Getty Images ) “I think that everybody who was either here or watched it, realized that we had a situation that on some holes, and particularly the seventh hole itself, you were watching well-executed shots not being rewarded,” Davis said. “In fact, in the case of seven, you saw some well-executed shots actually get penalized. And I can assure you that was not what the USGA wanted.” There will be 156 golfers back on the course for the return of the U.S. Open. The seventh hole measures at 189 yards this time, as it did in 2004. It is a par three. Branded as golf’s ultimate test, Davis maintains that the Open’s advancements have eliminated the possibility of the same nightmare emerging. He insists there will be better communication between the groundskeepers and the USGA. “I would just say it was 14 years ago, it is a different time, it was different people,” Davis said. “We, as an organization, we learned from it. When you set up a US Open, it is golf’s ultimate test. It is probably set up closer to the edge than any other event in golf. I think the difference, then versus now, we have a lot more technology, a lot more data on hand. “Frankly, what really happened was just a lack of water. There just wasn’t enough water put in. The grass itself went dormant. There wasn’t enough friction on the greens. Nowadays, you have everything from firmness meters. We’ve got moisture meters in the greens, things that tell us how fast the greens are running. Meteorology is better. We not only know where the winds are coming from and the velocities. We’re comfortable.” Advertisement The forecast was for mostly dry conditions with perhaps not as much wind as this part of Long Island typically gets in June. A big difference 14 years later is the closely mown areas around the greens, which will cause golf balls to roll 15 yards or more away. The length of the course appears to be a secondary concern. “It’s back to being a pure U.S. Open with serious discipline in your iron play,” said Graeme McDowell, the 2010 Open champion at Pebble Beach. “I don’t look at it and say, ‘I’m not long enough to win here.’ And that excites me. I haven’t seen anything that has upset me.” This will be the fourth U.S. Open of the modern era to be played at Shinnecock, the lone course to have hosted the U.S. Open in three different centuries. Raymond Floyd won in 1986 and Corey Pavin took the Centennial U.S. Open title in 1995, sealing his victory with a four-wood to the 18th green. The USGA already has awarded the 2026 U.S. Open to Shinnecock, and the U.S. Open will be back in the tri-state area in 2020 at Winged Foot’s West Course in Mamaroneck. Only 19 players from the 2004 U.S. Open are back for this year’s edition, including Adam Scott. Advertisement “It’s considerably wider and more generous off the tee than it was in ’04,” Scott said. “It’s very fair off the tee. And it’s very penal if you miss.” After walking the back nine Saturday evening and playing the front nine Sunday afternoon, McDowell was convinced of one thing. “I think we’re back to a U.S. Open mentality,” he said. How the first four U.S. Opens at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y., unfolded: Advertisement 1896 Winner: James Foulis. Margin of victory: Three strokes. Runner-up: Horace Rawlins. Advertisement What happened: Shinnecock hosted the second-ever U.S. Open, a 36-hole tournament with only 35 competitors. James Foulis of Scotland edged out the previous year’s champion Horace Rawlins by three strokes to earn the $150 prize (roughly $4,200 in 2018) and his only major victory. Foulis later invented what became the seven-iron along with his brother David. 1986 Winner: Raymond Floyd. Margin of victory: Two strokes. Advertisement Runner-ups: Chip Beck and Lanny Wadkins. What happened: Greg Norman began Sunday of the 1986 Open with the lead, but the Australian blew up with a five-over 75 in the final round and finished 12th. Raymond Floyd birdied three times on the back nine to distance himself from the pack and win by two strokes at one under. The title was Floyd’s first U.S. Open win and fourth major overall. 1995 Winner: Corey Pavin. Advertisement Margin of victory: Two strokes. Runner-up: Greg Norman.<doc-sep>Poulter then analyzed all the factors in a typical approach shot to a Shinnecock Hills green. Would that gusting wind hit his ball at 15, 20 or 25 mph? You must guess. How fast are the greens, soaked by Wednesday rain, drying out? Will the shot release or check up? Where is the safest area to aim on such severely sloping greens? Even if you analyze every variable correctly, the target area to put the ball in position for a comfortable par — don’t even discuss a birdie — “is the size of two table tennis tops.” In his analysis, he used the word “stress” six times.<doc-sep>Mickelson, in effect, nominated himself to be the poster boy for disaster when he deliberately broke one of the most revered and never-broken rules in golf by deliberately putting his ball while it was still rolling — rolling rather quickly and picking up pace away from the hole. Phil slapped at the moving target, like a drunk frat boy on the way to a 135, and barely missed from eight feet, then tapped in. He took his two-shot penalty with a mocking grin. He might as well have said: “Take that, USGA. That’s for what you did to me here in ’04.”<doc-sep>
Gary D'Amato USA TODAY Network SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Given the wildly fluctuating course set-ups from day to day at the 118th U.S. Open, the United States Golf Association lucked into a great leaderboard, a back-to-back champion in Brooks Koepka and enough final-round drama to hold the critics at bay. Still, the question hangs in the air like a Dustin Johnson 3-iron: Why can’t the USGA get it right? Shinnecock Hills was impossibly difficult Saturday, when Ian Poulter wondered in a tweet if “Bozo set up the course,” Phil Mickelson made a mockery of the Rules of Golf by playing hockey on the 13th green and numerous players stomped their soft spikes and cried foul. The reactionary USGA, already up to its blazer crests in bad publicity, went the other way Sunday, muzzling Shinnecock so that Tommy Fleetwood had five consecutive 3s on his card in a 63 that tied the major championship record and Rickie Fowler improved upon his third-round score by 19 shots (84-65). “That’s the course I enjoy playing,” Fowler said. More:Brooks Koepka wins U.S. Open, holds off DJ, Tommy Fleetwood More:Amy Mickelson: Phil Mickelson offered to withdraw from U.S. Open USGA executive director Mike Davis is a smart and honorable man and a golf guy through and through. The U.S. Open is his baby, and it’s his mission to test the players without embarrassing them. He admitted the organization got it wrong Saturday. Is it so hard to straddle that line? “You wouldn’t think so,” said Steve Stricker, “but how many times have we watched them on TV, like Mike Davis last night, saying the same thing year after year? It’s like you come to expect it when you come here.” As a members’ course Shinnecock Hills is an absolute delight. As the site of our national championship, despite its storied history, its wind-swept beauty and its standing among the great American courses, it might be on the verge of being obsolete. We saw it in 2004, when the USGA turned the seventh green into a miniature Sahara Desert, and we saw it again Saturday, when the course changed drastically from morning to afternoon because of a set-up that didn’t account properly for sun and wind, turning the leader board upside down. Two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North said he had never seen a golf course change so dramatically over the course of one day. Not even in Scotland. Some might say that’s the rub of the green, but when players who barely survive the cut are able to make up eight or 10 shots on the players who are ostensibly on top of their games, something is wrong. “They always err on the wrong side of that line,” Stricker said of the USGA. “Today, they erred way on the safe side and yesterday they didn’t. They were across that line. I think it’s a great course to have a U.S. Open. They just set it up poorly sometimes.” The reality is that the USGA cannot bring Shinnecock to the edge without going over it. It’s almost impossible to do given the weather on the eastern end of Long Island and the fact that the course is more than 100 years old, with a set of severely sloping greens that were not designed for modern green speeds. Put too much water on the putting surfaces and you’re going to see a bunch of 64s and 65s. Let them dry out in the sun and wind and players will be trying not to three-putt from 10 feet. “If the green speed goes up, the difficulty of putting goes up hyperbolically,” said short-game expert Dave Pelz. “If it’s twice as fast, it’s not twice as hard. If it’s twice as fast, it’s impossible.” Some believe Mickelson was making a point, wrong-headed though it was, when frustration got the best of him and he jogged after his ball on the 13th green and swiped at it while it was still moving, resulting in a two-stroke penalty and a raging debate about what’s fair and foul in the gentlemanly game. It’s nice to have gizmos that measure the firmness of the turf and moisture in the soil, but sometimes common sense must prevail. “There’s so many pin placements out there but they choose some that, as players, we don’t even ever see in our minds,” Stricker said.