Brennan: Jordan Spieth provides fitting, and bizarre, end to the U.S. Open

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. -- They said it was strange. Bizarre. Unprecedented.

They were talking about the golf course.

They could have been talking about the finish of the 2015 U.S. Open.

Jordan Spieth won his second major championship of the year when Dustin Johnson shockingly three-putted from 12 feet on the final hole, allowing Spieth to become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2002 to win the first two men's majors in a calendar year.

"I'm in shock. Wow. I just watched it. I feel for Dustin," Spieth said after Johnson's stunning miss of a 4-foot putt that would have put the two in an 18-hole Monday playoff.

"It's the same feeling I had on 17 (after a double bogey). I just had another hole to rebound. I didn't think this would be over and I'd be holding the trophy."

Spieth, still only 21, had made his own short birdie putt on the 18th hole minutes earlier to take a one-shot lead.

It was fitting that all this drama, the bad and the good, was happening on the 18th hole at quirky and controversial Chambers Bay. On Friday, with the hole playing as a par-4, not the par-5 it was Sunday, Spieth called it "the dumbest hole I've ever played in my life."

On Sunday, it had to be the weirdest.

But because of it, Spieth is now halfway to the Grand Slam, with July's British Open and August's PGA Championship awaiting. He also became the youngest player ever to win both the Masters and the U.S. Open in his career.

"Everything I seem to do, everyone seems to find a history lesson in it," Spieth said with a smile. "It's cool to be able to have two legs of the Grand Slam now and to conquer golf's hardest test, which is the U.S. Open. The fact that we did it is amazing. I really grinded this week. I didn't have my best stuff."

Meanwhile, Johnson, one of the worst short putters on the PGA Tour, faced another shocking major meltdown in his career, this one so bad that it is likely to never be forgotten, at least in golf circles. Johnson foreshadowed his huge miss earlier in the day by misfiring on short putts time and time again, including four straight on the back nine in a three-bogey stretch that dropped him so far out of the lead that there looked to be no coming back.

But there he was again, right back in contention, after Spieth made his own bad mistakes on the 17th hole. Spieth took a three-shot lead onto the tee at the par-3 17th, but hit an iron far right and short of the green into the tall rough, triggering a double bogey. He left the green in a tie for the lead.

Johnson soon birdied 17 and joined in a three-way tie with Spieth -- until Spieth made his birdie on 18.

Then, when Johnson was putting for eagle — and outright victory — on 18, Spieth thought it was over.

"I think Dustin's going to make this," he said to his caddie Michael Greller as they hid out in a trailer away from public view and the omnipresent TV cameras. "What did I do? How did I let this happen?"

Then Johnson missed. Moments later, he approached his short putt to tie Spieth.

"My eyes were wide watching the TV screen," Spieth said.

Johnson's putt slid by the left side of the hole.

"Dude, give me a hug," Greller said to Spieth. "You did it."

It made total sense that this U.S. Open would come down to this craziness. When the last putt on the bumpy, blotchy greens had been missed, and the final complaint about Chambers Bay had been lodged, and the last train had whistled by, the man who was left standing was the steadiest competitor of all.

A golf course is never supposed to be the story of the U.S. Open. It's never meant to overshadow the things that really matter at the national championship: the players, the shots, the leaderboard, the drama. It's never supposed to do what Chambers Bay did this week and hog the spotlight for itself, focusing on greens that were compared to "broccoli," on the "dumb" par-4 finishing hole that always should have been a par 5, on trains, on sand, on clouds bearing no rain and on a golf course full of hills and cliffs and dead ends that made it nearly impossible for spectators to watch play.

This was the U.S. Open that tried too hard and became way too cute in the process.

Until the end, when one man's bad mistake gave the golf world the U.S. Open champion it deserved.

PHOTOS: Sunday at the U.S. Open