As major championships go, the US Open is related to the Masters or The Open as the grass of Wimbledon is to the red clay of the French Open.

In fairness the grass of this era is quite different from the surface John McEnroe and Stefan Edberg were so brilliant on, but nonetheless the examination is quite different and it’s a good thing especially for a sport where the nature of the playing arena is nowhere near as interesting, or varied, as a golf course.

John Fitzgerald, twice a winner of both the French and Wimbledon doubles championships (and mixed doubles at the US Open and Wimbledon with Elvis Smylie’s mum) suggests, “Grass has changed quite dramatically – it’s a slower, higher ball now when traditionally it was low and fast. Serving and volleying have become a lost art as a result but still clay and grass remain quite different examinations.

Fitzgerald was however transfixed by the US Open, Oakmont golf and the winner, J.J. Spaun.

“I’m sad in tennis we can’t have someone like that win,” Fitgerald says.

“We’ve just seen the greatest players of all time – but you don’t get a J.J. Spaun winning in tennis majors and it’s a crying shame. No one else aside from the very few top players really get a chance. Golf creates more names. You cannot be ranked 22 and win in tennis – It doesn’t happen. I innately like golf because anyone can win – and tennis isn’t like that – certainly not over five sets.”

The surface of the court wildly changes the nature of the game as does the philosophy and nature of the game differentiate the US Open from what we see at Augusta with its expansive playing spaces and complete absence of long, green grass.

Or in an Open Championship on the bouncy, windswept British links where the bunkers are in the fairways – as opposed to being buried in the long grass of Oakmont.

Coming into the week we all knew what it was going to be like. Par was going to be a great score – even though the par of 70 is somewhat manipulated. The par-5, ninth hole is switched to a par-4 and the eighth hole is now forever infamous for being the first ‘par-3’ to stretch all the way to 300 yards – a full 45 yards longer than the par-4 opener at Victoria on the Melbourne Sandbelt.

The rough was going to be brutal, hack out stuff, and around the greens shots which would be relatively easy are made difficult – or worse – by the nature of the terrible lies.

At Augusta in contrast there are any number of incredibly difficult short shots around the greens, but all are played from perfect lies.

Adam Scott’s chances disappeared over the back of the 11th green when a misjudged wedge left him something horrific coming back and even though he saved a bogey with a great putt it proved impossible to arrest his inexorable slide to the finish.

As it was for his partner Sam Burns, finally done in by a controversial non-drop from what most would have judged as casual water on the right side of the 15th fairway.

Between them the final pairing were seventeen over for the day. Perhaps not since the 19th century have we seen such final pairing carnage in a major championship.

And the greens – Oakmont members famously boast they slow down for the Open – were closer to sixteen feet on the stimpmetre than fourteen. Extreme is one way to describe it. Silly is another. Certainly, it’s not something the wider game should admire or aspire to achieve.

The American Open has, far more than Augusta or The Open, thrown up surprise winners all the way back to Francis Ouimet in 1913. Jack Fleck beat Hogan. Orville Moody won in 1969, the only tournament he ever won on the PGA TOUR.

Moody though, like Spaun, was a brilliant iron player but an (relatively) awful putter, who took up the long putter on the Senior Tour and won eleven times.

Andy North (twice) Lou Graham, Michael Campbell, Steve Jones, are amongst somewhat surprising winners and this century alone few will remember second place men Steven Leaney in 2003 (not Australians though) Ricky Barnes (2009), Gregory Havret (2010), Michael Thompson (2012), Eric Compton (2014) or Matthew Wolff in 2020.

It’s always thus at the US Open as the arranger’s raison d’etre is to set up the game’s most difficult physical and mental test.

Generally, excepting Carnoustie in 1999 or Greg Norman’s Turnberry in 1986, they succeed by distorting the dimensions of the game – the speed of the greens, the length of the rough, the narrowness of the fairways, the par of the course (often cut from 72 to 71 or 70) and a 6700-metre course.

The one thing the Americans can’t rely on is the almost ever-present wind of the British seaside and without which the links can seem relatively simple. Of course, a links almost has to be relatively easy on a still day because make as difficult on a windless day and you almost immediately have something brutal when the wind comes in.

Spaun is in the midst of a fine season, one where he lost a playoff to Rory McIlroy at The Players Championship and which will see him as key man in the upcoming Ryder Cup. He has a technically excellent swing with the club perfectly following the plane all the way up and all the way down to impact and his iron play at Oakmont set him apart from the rest. Indeed his worst break of the week was when a perfect wedge into the second green on Sunday hit the pin and came back a full fifty paces.

And on the final two holes he executed a pair of the championship’s most memorable shots. The driver onto the 17th green was an incredible shot under the pressure and the sixty-footer he holed across the 72nd green will be long remembered as one of the game’s great putts.

Sure, he had two for it but from so far away and with three or four feet of break it was something generations from now will marvel at the nerve and skill it took to execute.