The Loop

U.S. Open greens reinforce notion that satire is dead, as The Onion showed

June 23, 2016

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Art Buchwald wrote that “you can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.”

Indeed.

Two days before the U.S. Open began last week, The Onion, America’s Finest News Source, as the satirical news website bills itself, posted a brief story with this headline:

Nation Demands More Golf Highlights Where Ball Lands On Green, But Then Rolls All The Way Back Down Hill

“Stressing the urgent need for an increase in such clips both on television and the internet,” the story said, “Americans across the nation fiercely and unanimously demanded to see more golf highlights where the ball lands on the green, but then rolls all the way back down a big hill, sources confirmed Tuesday.

“‘I love it when the ball lands on the edge of a hill pretty close to the hole, stops for just a second, and then starts rolling backwards faster and faster until it’s all the way in the rough,’ said 33-year-old Trevor Burkin of Frederick, MD.”

Two days later, Jordan Spieth was incredulous that a wedge shot to the 17th green at Oakmont Country Club spun back toward the hole, gathered momentum, and eventually rolled off the green and into a bunker (see video above).

It wasn’t an isolated incident on Oakmont’s already treacherous greens made more menacing by USGA manipulation.