US Open 2015: The Biggest Takeaways from Chambers Bay

So, how was that for a Sunday round of golf?

Five players had at least a share of the lead. Two players saw three-stroke leads evaporate. And a five-minute stretch with the last pairing on the 18th green saw a potential win for Dustin Johnson, a potential Monday playoff and a shocking three-putt from 12 feet to hand the 115th U.S. Open title to Jordan Spieth.

"I'm in shock," Spieth told Fox immediately after the round. "Wow."

The 21-year-old captured his second major of 2015, getting halfway to a single-year Grand Slam while also becoming the youngest U.S. Open winner since Bobby Jones in 1923, the youngest to win two majors since Gene Sarazen in 1922 and the sixth player to capture the Masters and the U.S. Open in the same year.

Amid the other tumult, this U.S. Open was all about Spieth's spectacular steadiness for four days. 

What were the other big takeaways from Chambers Bay? Let's take a look.

Tiger Woods woke up the echoes with a respectable performance at the Masters this spring, which sent golf writers of all stripes scrambling to see who could most eloquently herald his return to major contention.

Those same writers are singing a slightly different tune a few months later.

The 14-time major winner's career-worst round of 85 at the Memorial Tournament a few weeks back transformed him into what Fox Sports 1 analyst Joe Ogilvie labeled "the great unknown."

"Tiger Woods has gone from the greatest golfer that any of us have ever seen to someone who we don't know what he can shoot," he said. "Will he shoot 85 or will he shoot 70?"

An ugly 80 in the first round at Chambers Bay resulted in a scramble to best assess what, if anything, Woods can do to regain respectability as an injury-plagued 39-year-old without a major since 2008.

He'll play once more, at the Greenbrier Classic, before arriving at the British Open at St Andrews to restart the soap opera that leaves other world-ranked commodities like Jason Day to play psychiatrist.

"We put him on such a pedestal that, where is the old Tiger and what’s he going to do? When’s he going to come back?" Day told Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post before the tournament began. "We’re just waiting for him to come back and win those tournaments like it was nothing. But will we see it? I’m not sure."

Rory McIlroy was the world's top-ranked player and Jordan Spieth had a chance to win a second straight major, but outside of that duo, the main topic of pre-Chambers Bay conversation was Phil Mickelson.

Lefty had spent extensive pre-tournament time in the Pacific Northwest, and the popular wisdom heading into Thursday was that the course suited his game nicely enough that the quest for an elusive U.S. Open trophy might finally come to an end after six second-place disappointments.

A first-round 69 stoked the fires Thursday, but a 74 on Friday and desultory rounds of 77 and 73 on the weekend made it official that another 12 months would pass without a Career Slam for Mickelson. And given that the 2016 U.S. Open will be played at Oakmont in suburban Pittsburgh, the realistic chase may be over.

Mickelson will be 46 by the time that event opens, and it's a course he's had little success on in two previous U.S. Open attempts, finishing tied for 47th in 1994 and missing the cut in 2007. By the time the 2017 tournament rolls around at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, he'll be 47 and would need to become the second-oldest player in history—behind Julius Boros, 48, at the PGA Championship in 1968—to win a major.

And if you think it doesn't matter to him, think again.

"There's such a difference in the way I view the few major champions that have won all four," he told ESPN.com's Bob Harig last year. "I'm fortunate and honored to be part of that long list of great players who have won three of the four—that's great—but it would mean a lot to me. I would look at myself, I would look at my career, in a whole different light if I were able to get that fourth one."

It certainly was a different feel.

As Fox Sports' coverage of the U.S. Open began Thursday, it did so with a montage of players describing significant firsts in their lives—first date, first kiss, first round of golf, etc.—with the Black Crowes providing the soundtrack, appropriately enough, with their 1990 hit "Seeing Things (For the First Time)."

And once players began hitting shots, the network that brought the puck tracker to hockey in the 1990s uncorked such novelties as the ball tracer, the hole locator and robots following players off the tee.

Not everyone was impressed by the newness.

"Broadcast in any sport has been refined over time," David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, told CNBC's Fred Imbert. "Based on their track record, the quality of the production they have attached will lead them to reaching new fans who are used to video games up against the old guard, which is very content watching golf on TV as they have for generations."

They'll have to get used to it, though, seeing how this week's event was the first in a 12-year deal worth more than $1 billion.

For the most part, it started with polite compliments on Thursday.

Phil Mickelson said the Chambers Bay setup for Round 1 didn't include anything gimmicky or hokey, and Patrick Reed suggested that even more challenges would make it a more fun course to play.

By the weekend, however, the infatuation was clearly on the ropes.

Player after player hit the media tent with less than warm regard for the layout, including myriad descriptions of putting surfaces that were something less than lush.

“Everyone probably expected [the greens] to be a bit better," said Louis Oosthuizen, who shot 77 on Thursday and followed it with consecutive 66s. "There’s no grass on a few of them. So it’s just dead. There’s a few holes where it doesn’t look really, really good."

The major concerns typically came from players competing later in the day, when poa annua grass began popping up amid the fescue greens and impacted the rolling of putts.

“To me, it’s like playing the NBA Finals on a court that has holes and slopes and no backboard," said Sergio Garcia. "It just doesn’t feel right.”

USGA executive director Mike Davis, however, suggested the problems were an optical illusion.

"The colors are different here," he told Fox Sports. "A lot of it is your eyes telling you it doesn’t look like it’s going to be smooth."

A pair of 72s and a third-round 70 had the world's top-ranked player, Rory McIlroy, firmly entrenched among the nonentities heading into Sunday's final 18 holes. He was four over par, eight shots off the lead and had done precisely nothing in 54 holes to suggest that something dramatic was on the way.

But then it was.

The Northern Irishman blitzed the course with a three-under 32 for his opening nine Sunday, then added birdies at Nos. 10, 12 and 13 (a 72-footer) to get to two under for the tournament and within two shots of the lead.

"Are we going to witness a Johnny Miller at Oakmont?" asked Fox Sports analyst Greg Norman, referring to the final-round 63 that clinched the 1973 U.S. Open—the last time there'd been a four-way tie going to the final day. "I wonder if the pressure he can put on these guys will make them fold when they realize his scores are out there."

It seemed the excitement was about to be ratcheted up again when McIlroy's approach shot at No. 14 landed inside of 10 feet, making another birdie that would halve the lead to a single stroke appear imminent. The putt wound up missing left, though, and the would-be charge disintegrated with bogeys at 15 and 17, eventually leaving him with a 66 for the day, five shots off the pace.

"Coming in, I thought if I could get to two under, I could make the guys in front of me think a little bit," he told Fox Sports after the round. "I played a great front nine, but instead of making two birdies coming in, I made two bogeys. I'm disappointed, but if I can just drive the ball a little better, I feel good going into the last two majors of the season."

McIlroy, who jumped 16 spots in the standings following his electric final round, wasn't the only middle-of-the-packer to make a push.

Brandt Snedeker started his round at one over par and got to two under with four straight birdies to close out his front nine, while former Masters champions Adam Scott and Charl Schwartzel shot 64 and 66, respectively, to get to three under and two under while also climbing double-digit places. Louis Oosthuizen, who shot 77 while paired with Tiger Woods on Thursday, birdied six holes on the back nine Sunday and briefly shared the lead before finishing in a tie for second.

Joe Buck had it right on Saturday.

The Fox Sports broadcast host signed off the third round with yet another affirmation for the guts that Jason Day—stricken by vertigo symptoms 24 hours earlier—had shown while firing a two-under 68 to take a share of a four-player lead heading into the final 18 holes.

"People will remember what Jason Day did today," Buck said, "whether he wins or not."

He didn't. But Buck was right; it really didn't matter.

The 27-year-old entered the event with seven top-10 finishes in majors—including seconds at the Masters and U.S. Open in 2011 and the U.S. Open again in 2013—and walked away from it with a gaggle of new fans thanks to the way he endured an on-course ailment that was oftentimes hard to watch.

He wound up shooting a four-over 74 on Sunday and tied for ninth with Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy.

"A lot of people would have spent the time in the bedroom with the drapes drawn," Day's caddie, Colin Swatton, told Fox Sports. "He's dug deeper than he's ever dug before. It's just real, real impressive." 

It's almost fitting that Greg Norman was calling the final round at Chambers Bay for Fox Sports. That's because the more major tournaments that Dustin Johnson plays, the more he becomes the heartbreak kid for a new generation. 

Much like Norman in the 1980s and 90s, Johnson not only hasn't been able to close the deal when put into potentially winning situations, but he manages to lose in particularly excruciating fashion.

The three-putt misfire from 12 feet, four inches that gave Jordan Spieth the U.S. Open title was the third time Johnson found himself in a lead in the final round of a major and the third time he left without a trophy.

Lest anyone forget, he had a three-shot lead to begin the fourth round of the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, but blew up to 82 on Sunday and wound up tied for eighth. Two months later, he was a shot ahead of Bubba Watson and Martin Kaymer on the 72nd hole at the PGA Championship, but he bogeyed the hole and took a two-stroke penalty for grounding his club in a bunker, missing a playoff Kaymer ultimately won.

His fiancee, his infant son and his soon-to-be in-laws experienced the emotional roller coaster alongside the 18th green Sunday, and Norman seemed genuinely sad for Johnson when commenting afterward.

"My thoughts, for obvious reasons, automatically go to him in that situation," Norman said. "He'll never forget it, but he's got to get over it as quickly as possible. Once you tear the head off the snake, the snake is dead forever. And he's just got too much talent to let this hold him back."

Welcome to the new generation.

Rather than demurring to Fox Sports' Joe Buck when asked about the prospect of the Grand Slam, soft-spoken but clearly confident 21-year-old Jordan Spieth embraced the fact that he's pursuing history.

He'll head to St Andrews for the British Open next month with a chance at a third leg. And he expects to be a factor.

"You can't win them all unless you win the first two, I guess," Spieth said. "We're going to go to St Andrews looking for the Claret Jug."

Based on his four days at Chambers Bay, few would bet against him.

Spieth vaulted to the top of the leaderboard with a 68-67 roll through the first two rounds, then held it together during a pedestrian 71 on Saturday and entered the final day with a share of a four-player lead.

He was three shots behind Dustin Johnson at one point in the round, but ultimately clawed back, overcame a double bogey on No. 17 and birdied the 18th for what turned out to be a one-shot win.

And his demeanor through it all made an impact.

"He's light-years ahead of anybody else on tour," Fox Sports analyst Greg Norman said. "He's got the complete game and he's mature beyond his years. Maybe it's his dad, maybe it's [caddie] Michael [Greller], maybe it's his coach. But he made some really phenomenal decisions out there on the course and he never let it get away from him."

In fact, while Spieth double-bogeyed three holes over four days, two were followed with birdies.

"It is now definite," Buck said. "America has a new sporting icon."

All quotes are from television broadcasts unless otherwise noted.