The course was biggest star of this year's U.S. Open

There was one undeniable star at the 2025 U.S. Open, and with all due respect to winner J.J. Spaun, it wasn't really him. His story is fantastic, and the way he won was captivating. 

But he wasn't the biggest star. 

Neither were any of the other golfers who participated in the four-day tournament at Oakmont Country Club just outside of Pittsburgh.

It was the course. 

The course was the star of the weekend, simply due to the fact it was the biggest storyline of the entire tournament. 

It was the story in the days leading up to it.

It was the story as it pushed the best golfers in the world to their limits, challenging them in ways that no other regular stop on the tour can. 

It resulted in just one golfer — Spaun — finishing under par, and all but 11 golfers finishing five-over or worse. 

And it was amazing. It was everything we should want to see from a major championship. 

The whole point of professional sports is to see the best players in the world get challenged. Failure is a part of that. When you go to watch a Major League Baseball game, you are watching a sport where the best players fail seven out of 10 times. NFL teams are not scoring touchdowns on every possession. Hockey teams score at most three goals on average. NBA players shoot about 40 percent from the field. 

It shouldn't be easy.

It's supposed to be a challenge. It's supposed to be hard. 

Golf presents a little bit of a different challenge because there is nothing you can do as a player to stop your opponent. You can not create a defense or develop a scheme that will exploit their weakness. It is an individual sport where everybody is doing their own thing without obstruction from the other players. You are helpless watching the other competitors. 

The course is the obstacle. The course is the defense. 

Sometimes that obstacle should be comically hard. 

It should push the best players in the world to ditch the decorum expected from golf and throw a club across the course.