No U.S. Open on Father’s Day This Year? It’s a Gift for This Correspondent

The golfers competing also bring their fathers. Some of the most heartwarming scenes near the final green have been between fathers and sons, including last year’s winner, Gary Woodland, and his father, Dan. Twenty years earlier, immediately after Payne Stewart defeated Phil Mickelson on the final hole of the U.S. Open, Stewart had the selflessness to remind Mickelson that he was about to become a father for the first time. The next day, Mickelson’s wife, Amy, gave birth to a daughter.

Even when a father could not be at the climactic moment of a U.S. Open victory, he was not forgotten. In 2013, after Justin Rose sank the final putt in his victory, he looked and pointed skyward in a tribute to his late father, Ken, who had nurtured his love of the game.

My streak of U.S. Open visits was broken last year, in a very literal sense, when I shattered an ankle while running in my neighborhood the day before my flight to the tournament. I spent my 2019 Father’s Day in a medicated haze following reconstructive surgery two days earlier.

This week, I was looking forward to my U.S. Open return, but being home, and fit, for Father’s Day is a more than suitable outcome instead. Around the world, there are bigger things to weigh and solve than the interruption of a sport’s connection to an annual holiday.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/sports/golf/us-open-final-round-fathers-day.html