You can do everything right and still lose.

At this year’s U.S. Open, we saw a dramatic finish where JJ Spaun walked away with the trophy after a wet, rainy day at a brutally difficult golf course.

But Sunday’s final round wasn’t really about the winner, the losers, the weather, or the golf course.

It was about the tiny margins that shape how we remember things. How others see us. How we see ourselves. A gust of wind at the wrong time, a sudden downpour, a ruling that doesn’t go your way.

Little things that are completely out of your control, but still, somehow, become the difference between glory and what-if.

Let’s start at Viktor Hovland’s tee shot on 18. He was paired with JJ Spaun, and needed a birdie to have any chance to get into a playoff. He hits a decent drive, landing in the fairway… before trickling just oooone inch into the first cut of rough.

Hovland

One inch.

Just enough wet grass around the ball to prevent Hovland from hitting his patented stock fade, the exact left-to-right shot shape that he needed on his next shot to get close to a tucked right pin.

Instead, his next shot goes uncharacteristically straight… and ends up two feet behind JJ Spaun’s ball on the green. Spaun gets to watch Hovland putt first.

Spaun watches Hovland’s putt roll down a slope, turn to the right, and run a few feet by the pin. Spaun gets to incorporate that information into his own putt, adjusts the line, and sinks the Championship-winning putt from 60+ feet to seal the victory.

Now let’s jump over to Sam Burns, the leader after 54 holes. On the 15th hole on Sunday, he hits a great drive, where his ball bounces down the curvy fairways at Oakmont, all the way into a low accumulation area of the fairway.

The pouring rain of the last few hours has gathered there, and Burns (understandably) feels that the puddles entitle him to relief from that spot of the fairway. He asks a rules official, who decides that Burns’ feet were “pressing down excessively” (rather than just pressing down regularly?), so Burns has to hit his ball as it lies.

He proceeds to sends his next shot 50 yards left – unusual for another guy with a textbook left-to-right shot shape – into thick greenside rough. Double bogey. Tournament over.

Kyle Porter, on the spot Burns hit from


One inch into the rough.

Two feet deemed to be pressing down excessively.

A few neurons firing one way or another in the brains of the USGA rules officials, deciding on the philosophical weight of the word ‘excessive’ in the rulebook.

These are the difference between greatness and what-ifs.

Spaun is a worthy U.S. Open champion. A guy who embodies the grinder mentality, who scraped through for 12 years before making it big. He hit the drive of his life on the 17th tee, followed by the drive AND putt of his life on 18. He saw the moment and seized it.

And now, he’s A Major Champion.


Monday Q tweet
Monday Q, on the journey that led Spaun to this moment.


But that’s the thing about golf and life. We never get to know how it all could have turned out otherwise.

In some alternate branch of the universe, Hovland’s ball holds the fairway on 18, Spaun never gets the perfect read of his Championship-winning putt, and the putt slides by the hole. Burns gets relief from standing water, hits a dart, and rides the momentum to victory.

A few inches this way, a few feet that way, and someone else is lifting the trophy.

It’s uncomfortable to think that you could do everything right and still get unlucky. Greatness doesn’t always reward effort. Some people grind forever and never catch the right bounce.

And there are countless others that get one brief look at the opportunity, one great break, and they seize it.

You’re tired and you skip going to the bar one night, and you never meet the girl who would have otherwise become your wife. You take the wrong job, move to a new city, and your whole trajectory shifts off course.

You don’t get to know what would have happened in the other universe. You just have to hit the ball from where it lies.

So if the moment comes, pull the damn driver out of your bag. Swing hard.

If you get a good break, seize the moment.

If you catch some bad luck, don’t quit too early. Spaun made an unlucky bogey on 2 when his ball hit the flagstick and ended up 50 yards from the hole. He still won the U.S. Open.


USGA, on Spaun’s brutal break at the flagstick


And if you end up like Sam Burns, soaking wet and staring down at a puddle with the U.S. Open on the line… you might as well swing hard at it anyway. The universe never promised us fairness.