"I’ll probably keep playing them, just to torture myself once a year. I get angry, and it makes me hate golf for two months. Then I’m OK again.”

The 17th moments before the final group came through Sunday. (click on image to enlarge)Todd Milles features all of Ryan Moore's post round tirade Sunday, and the only part I would agree with is his point on the 17th.

As he stood on the 17th tee, he told his brother and caddie Jason that he couldn’t hit a shot that would hold on that green with a 7-iron, much less the high, cutting 4-iron shot he needed to get close from 205 yards.

“It’s just a horrible golf hole the way (the USGA) set it up,” Moore said. “I don’t know what they’re trying to demand. Where is the skill? I don’t know. If you can’t even hit a shot to stay on the green, where is the skill involved?”

Moore later said he could not “physically … hit the shots” the USGA requires to score at a U.S. Open.

I can't agree with most of Moore's comments about the overall elimination of skill, except for the comments about No. 14 and the above stuff regarding 17.

I'd give Mike Davis a B+ for the week in my deeply scientific and utterly meaningless grading system. The best moment of the week came at 3 and 4 Saturday when the leaders flew through those holes, and that was all setup driven. Davis also got a lot out of Pebble despite major limitations presented by the green sizes and he avoided some all-out hole location debacles that could easily take place on those greens.

His point deductions are for the short grass around 14, the 11th fairway contour and in the case of 17, not figuring out a way to make it more playable. I would love to have seen him go with the 17th hole cut right at least once more, maybe three of the four days. As Moore suggests, playing it shorter seemed like a wise move too, but that didn't happen. That said, the green is so awful at this point that I'm not sure how much it would have helped. But I'm confident that it would not have been worse than what we witnessed.