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For the first time since 1973, four players head into the final round of the U.S. Open Championship with a share of the lead - Masters champion Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Branden Grace. Spieth is used to holding the advantage through 54 holes of a major championship, but he may not be used to having company, as he led outright after every round of the Masters in April.
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All four of the leaders finished 54 holes at 4-under-par 206. Spieth carded a 1-over 71 at Chambers Bay, while Day, who was a day removed from collapsing on his final hole due to a bout with benign positional vertigo, used a 2-under 68 to vault into a tie for first. Playing together, Johnson and Grace both carded even-par 70s.
Spieth, Day, Johnson and Grace have all won at some point this season. It has been a breakout year for Spieth as he rolled to a 4-shot victory at the Masters for his first ever major title. He also won a playoff at the Valspar Championship in March. Those were the second and third wins of his career. Spieth is looking to become the sixth player ever to win the Masters and U.S. Open in the same season.
Day earned his third PGA Tour title with a playoff win over J.B. Holmes, Scott Stallings and Harris English at the Farmers Insurance Open. Johnson has six top-10 finishes this season in 13 events, including a win at the WGC-Cadillac Championship for his first victory since taking a six-month leave of absence from the PGA Tour.
Grace picked up his fifth and sixth victories on the European Tour this season with wins at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Qatar Masters.
Spieth had a rather wild day that saw him leading by three as well as trailing by three at one point before he was able to come back and grab a share of the lead.
Johnson was up by as many as two shots Saturday, but faltered a bit down the stretch. Grace also held the outright lead by a shot later on. Day was the only one of the leaders to not hold an outright advantage Saturday.
Just because there is a four-way tie for the lead does not mean one of them is destined to win. The last time it happened was in 1973, when Johnny Miller came from six shots back with a 63 to capture the title.
With that in mind, here's how some recent U.S. Opens have been won:
KAYMER MAKES IT LOOK EASY (2014)
In a week when most believed the winning score would be closer to even-par than not, Martin Kaymer conquered Pinehurst No. 2 from start to finish with a brilliant short game en route to an 8-shot victory.
It was as stress-free a round as one could have on the final day of a major championship as no player moved any closer than four shots to Kaymer on Sunday. The German fired his third round in the 60s, a 1-under 69, and finished the week at 9-under-par 271.
It was a big season for Kaymer as he became the first ever to win the Players Championship and the U.S. Open in the same season. He was the seventh player ever to win the season's second major in wire-to-wire fashion with no ties.
Kaymer's 8-stroke victory was also the fourth biggest in championship history. Rickie Fowler, who finished inside the top-5 in each major in 2014, ended tied for a distant second with Erik Compton at minus-1.
The 30-year-old stretched his lead to six early on with a 2-putt birdie at the third. However, a bogey at seven paired with a slight push by Compton left Kaymer four shots up.
That was as close as anyone got to the eventual champion as Kaymer traded a birdie for a bogey from the ninth. He later holed back-to-back birdies from 13 and tripped to a bogey on 16. A pair of pars closed the title out for Kaymer.
It was Kaymer's second major title as he also walked away with the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, where he beat out Bubba Watson in a three- hole playoff.
ROSE EMERGES FOR THE WIN (2013)
Justin Rose battled through a crowded leaderboard to conquer a rainy Merion and collect his first career major title.
During a hectic final round that saw the lead change hands 19 times, Rose grabbed the outright lead with consecutive birdies at the 12th and 13th to become the final player in red figures for the championship.
The Englishman quickly gave that lead away with a bogey at the 14th, however, and later bogeyed the 16th to fall to 1-over. He parred his final two holes to finish there and had to wait and see if his score would hold up.
Phil Mickelson and Hunter Mahan both sat at 1-over through 14 holes, but fell behind at the 15th as Mickelson posted a bogey and Mahan recorded a double- bogey.
As Mahan continued to drop shots at the 17th and 18th, falling well off the pace, Mickelson remained a shot behind with back-to-back pars at the 16th and 17th.
Needing a birdie at the last to force a playoff, Mickelson's drive found the thick grass left of the fairway. His approach stopped short of the green and he failed to hole the birdie chip to hand the win to Rose, who refused to watch the shot in the clubhouse and only knew he won when he heard the groan from the crowd.
Mickelson's runner-up finish was the sixth of his career at the U.S. Open, setting a record.
STEADY SIMPSON GRABS THE TITLE (2012)
At the 2012 U.S. Open, Michael Thompson posted a 67 in the final round to get to plus-2 for the championship, then sat and watched as Webb Simpson did what he had to do to win.
Simpson was 5-over par through 36 holes before easing his way into contention with a 2-under 68 in round three. He still trailed by four shots heading into the final round,
After falling even further behind Jim Furyk early in the final round, Simpson charged into the lead with four birdies in a 5-hole span from the sixth. Over the final eight holes, he did what is almost always best in U.S. Opens -- make pars.
Eight of them in fact. After he signed his scorecard, Simpson was next to sit and watch.
Graeme McDowell birdied No. 17 to get within one, but he failed to birdie the last.
Furyk was one back with two holes to go. He had just over 20 feet for birdie at 17, but his birdie chance stayed above ground. His approach at the last buried in a greenside bunker. He blasted into another bunker on his way to a closing bogey, which left him two back.
With that, Simpson was a first-time major champion. All it took was a pair of 68s on the weekend.
MCILROY'S RECORD REBOUND (2011)
Rory McIlroy seemed on the verge of his first major title at the 2011 edition of the Masters, where he carried a four-shot lead into the final round. But the Northern Irishman endured a disastrous back nine, carded an 80, and finished in a tie for 15th.
A couple months later, McIlroy found himself at Congressional and rebounded in a big way. He opened with a 6-under 65, followed with a 66 and a 68 to give himself an eight-shot cushion heading into Sunday.
Not only did McIlroy not melt down, but he maintained his enormous margin on the way to the title, thanks to an aggressive approach in the final round.
He opened with a 12-foot birdie putt to extend his lead to nine strokes, and tapped in for birdie at four. He managed nice par saves at two, five and six.
Then, on the back nine, McIlroy kept his poise. At the demanding par-3 10th hole, he spun his tee shot within a foot and drained the birdie to reach 17-under. He stumbled to a bogey at 12, but got the stroke back four holes later and never did anything to jeopardize his lead.
In all, McIlroy set or tied 12 separate records that year. Among them, his score of 16-under 268 set marks for lowest score and lowest score in relation to par in U.S. Open history. McIlroy also became the youngest winner of the championship since Bobby Jones in 1923, and was the third player in U.S. Open history to post four rounds in the 60s.
MCDOWELL AS LAST MAN STANDING (2010)
After tapping in for par on the final hole in 2010, McDowell looked toward the sky and exhaled. He was the last man standing on a brutal Sunday at Pebble Beach that chewed up some of the world's best players.
McDowell -- like McIlroy, from Northern Ireland -- became the first European in 40 years to win the U.S. Open after closing with a 3-over 74 for a one- shot victory over Gregory Havret of France.
Hanging on down the stretch, McDowell laid up and made a two-putt par at the 18th hole to clinch the first major championship of his career. But the day was a nightmare for so many others, especially Dustin Johnson.
Beginning the round with a three-shot lead, Johnson was out of contention by the seventh hole, an epic collapse that included a triple bogey at No. 2, where he took one of his shots left-handed. He missed a short putt at the 18th hole that would have been his only birdie of the day and finished with an 82 that left him five shots back.
Woods and Mickelson also hacked their way out of the championship, combining for nine bogeys and just three birdies on a day when simply breaking 70 would have won them the title. Els had a share of the lead, but his misadventures included a shot over the grassy cliff at No. 10.
How ugly was this final round? Among the last 24 players on the course, no one broke par. But McDowell did just enough to end on top of them all.
THE GLOVER ONE (2009)
Lucas Glover made it through a qualifier to get into the 2009 U.S. Open, then won it exactly two weeks later, the unlikely champion of a Monday finish that began with so many possibilities for a storybook ending.
It wasn't the final chapter everyone expected at the rain-soaked championship, but then little went as planned in five stop-and-start days at soggy Bethpage Black.
Things certainly fell apart for Mickelson, David Duval and Ricky Barnes on the final day, but Glover managed to scratch out a 3-over 73 to win his first major at a championship where he'd never even made the cut before.
He beat Mickelson, Duval and Barnes by two shots, becoming only the sixth qualifier since 1960 to win the U.S. Open.
Mickelson had tied him for the lead -- and electrified the crowd -- with a 25- foot birdie putt at the 12th hole and a 4-footer for eagle at the 13th. But he made two costly bogeys after that and posted his record-setting fifth runner-up finish at the U.S. Open -- including fourth in New York. The heartbreaker came just over a week before his wife, Amy, began treatment for breast cancer.
Duval, playing that week as the 882nd-ranked golfer in the world, also earned a share of the lead with three straight birdies on the back nine as he tried to capture his first win since the 2001 British Open. But he missed a 6-foot par putt on the next hole, the 17th, and came up short.
Barnes, the former U.S. Amateur champ who set a 36-hole U.S. Open scoring record that McIlroy broke, folded under the weight of playing in the last group of a major and made seven bogeys for a 76.
ON SHREDDED KNEE (2008)
Is it possible to be too hyperbolic about the 2008 U.S. Open? Probably. But the fact remains that Tiger's 91-hole win over Rocco Mediate that year -- on a severely disabled leg that required surgery soon after -- remains one of the enduring legacies of Woods' on-the-course legend.
The Monday playoff at Torrey Pines was something: Mediate, though overmatched in talent, took Woods past 18 holes and to a 19th before losing.
But it was peanuts compared to what happened during two electrifying days over the weekend.
First came Woods' Saturday charge. Limping and using his club like a cane, he took the 54-hole lead with a highlight-filled third round that included a 70- foot downhill eagle putt with six feet of break, a chip-in birdie from beside the green and another long eagle putt -- three signature moments in a six-hole span.
Then, on Sunday, Mediate could only stand and watch on a TV nearby as Woods rolled in a 14-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole Sunday to tie him for the lead and force the playoff.
The championship, shown during primetime on the East Coast through Sunday, scored great ratings and made a sympathetic hero out of Mediate. But it was better for Woods, of course, who won his 14th major to move within four of Jack Nicklaus' all-time record.
As we all know, Woods hasn't captured one since.
[SportsNetwork.com]
