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It's tough to impress Dan Jenkins. The man has been to 222 major championships and he hands out praise the way the Spurs hand out open 3-pointers.
And yet this year, even the golf-writing legend was impressed by what Martin Kaymer did at the US Open at Pinehurst. He even compared his outing to the sacred one (for Jenkins anyway):
This was my 61st U.S. Open, and one of the most dominating performances. Well done, Martin Kaymer.
— Dan Jenkins (@danjenkinsgd) June 15, 2014
Just talking to @danjenkinsgd, who said Kaymer's 31 on back nine Thursday looked like Ben Hogan. Dan doesn't dish Hogan comparisons freely.
— Tim Rosaforte (@TimRosaforte) June 13, 2014
This is all praise of the higest order for the big German from a golf writer most hold in the highest of regards. He's not wrong, either.
Kaymer's eight sets of nine-hole stretches looked like this:
34-31-33-32-36-36-34-35
That's some golf, friends. That is some incredibly elite stuff from the hottest golfer on the planet at the moment.
The unfortunate part about all of this is that nobody really seemed to notice.
While Kaymer was busy doing what only man has ever done better -- taking 271 strokes to complete a US Open (Rory McIlroy took 268 in 2011) -- folks were too busy with the World Cup and the College World Series and preparing all the hot sports takes you can handle on LeBron James.
The TV ratings, when they're released, will look like Kaymer's scores -- preposterously low. The crowds at Pinehurst even openly cheered the few slip-ups Kaymer had on the week.
"I would say it was probably the toughest day that I played golf today," said Kaymer. "Especially the first nine. Because if you have two or three Americans chasing you, playing in America, it's never easy being a foreigner."
Kaymer's performance was the stuff of legend, ours as fans was decidedly not. Some of the jeering of Kaymer on Sunday was borderline embarrassing.
This was a 29-year-old German constructing the tallest, most beautiful piece of golfing architecture we've seen maybe since Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach in 2000 and it fell flat on the American sports landscape.
That bums me out as a golf fan.
I get it, though, I guess. Tiger was absent, Phil Mickelson might as well have been, and the US Open isn't the most exciting event to begin with.
Still, it makes you wonder if golf could eventually go the way of tennis within the United States without Tiger or someone like Tiger to carry it.
What if Kaymer had been 19 under? Or 29 under? Would folks have paid attention then?
We bled the dictionary of all its hyperbole when Tiger did this at Pebble in 2000 and this year we just shrugged and changed the channel to something more exciting, like baseball.
That is fine, of course, I don't expect German-born pseudo-robots with oily arms and oily swings to bring you to the edge of your seat without any competition within striking distance.
But you missed something terrific on Sunday if you weren't watching what Martin Kaymer did to Pinehurst. Something we don't see very often in golf.
An all-time dominant performance at the toughest tournament in the world.
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