Tom Rock: U.S. Open visit showed off picturesque vistas of Southampton and high-caliber test of Shinnecock Hills

There was a runaway winner of the U.S. Open. No, it wasn’t Wyndham Clark.

He had the decency to add some drama to the occasion by nearly choking away a six-stroke lead in the final round but eventually hanging on for the 1-stroke victory.

But it was Shinnecock Hills and it was Long Island which came out of the tournament looking the best.

As the round played out on Sunday evening there was plenty of time to reflect back on the week that was, soak in the early summer Southampton sunset, and appreciate just how spectacular this setting and this event actually was.

Memorable from a golf perspective? Probably not.

But memorable from a mismanagement perspective? For unruly behavior? For infrastructure failures or hospitality faux pas?

Probably not those either.

Some of this tournament’s headlines were even stolen by another sports’ centerpiece on Sunday when Wimbledon and Serena Williams conspired to make splashier, more surprising news.

And that’s OK. In fact that might be the most East End-perfect part of it all.

The U.S. Open came here, spent a few days, and then left leaving only the shallowest of impressions, just like soft footprints in the sands at Cooper’s Beach. Waves, tides, tourists, trends — they all come here and then they go, they come and they go. That’s how time is measured in the Hamptons, not on any of the Rolexes you see blinging on wrists through the neighborhoods but by the soft swell and ebb of saltwater-scented life.

The U.S. Open is just another part of the easygoing rhythm here. That’s not the case in other parts of the country where this kind of carnival takes over every aspect of life. Our world did not stop for the Open; the Open stopped by to become part of our world for a little while.

And it’ll be back again, too, in 2036. A decade from now. Even that seems about right. Not too soon. Not too distant either.

It’s already been a frantic, exhausting sports month here in New York that’s witnessed a historic Knicks championship run and a weeklong celebration that feels as if it is still buzzing in the air. The World Cup soccer games are just across the rivers in New Jersey and upward of two billion people will be watching the championship game there in July. That’s the equivalent of about 16 Super Bowls’ worth of eyeballs.

Amid all that excitement it was nice to kick back in the swaying fescue and let a big event just happen without forced hoopla, overwrought adjacencies, or epic consequences.

The weather couldn’t have been kinder. With the exception of that two-hour fog delay on Thursday morning and a few gusts that played havoc with shots now and again there wasn’t much else to complain about. Not too hot, not too humid, not too chilly, not too anything. It was Goldilocks meteorology.

The rugged course came right up to the edge the USGA tries to achieve for these events, challenging the world’s best golfers but not to the point of discouraging them as it has done here in the past. The field was humbled but never humiliated.

The LIRR trains that shuttled the majority of spectators throughout the week were crowded and sometimes late, but they got where they needed to get. Most of the passengers, aware there is no such thing as a flawless commute in these parts, happily accepted a transportation system that beat sitting in a car trying to get over Shinnecock Canal on Montauk Highway.

And the fans were mostly gracious, a departure from, and a redemption for, the reputation Long Islanders gave themselves after their unclassy showing at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in the fall. They razzed Clark, and one small group had to be removed from the course for yelling “Don’t choke!” at him, but it was nothing close to the venom spat — and often encouraged — toward Rory McIlroy in September.

Sure, there were some grumpy gripers along the way. There always are.

The eventual wire-to-wire champ moaned about the lack of fans at the conclusion of his play on Saturday. You serious, Clark? Out here we call that “exclusivity” not indifference. We have better things to do on a perfect Saturday evening than watch the finishing putts on an already decided penultimate round of golf, especially when they are being taken by someone far more prickly and far less popular than favorites such as Scottie Scheffler or McIlroy.

There were fire ants, apparently. Joaquin Niemann explained they were part of the reason he flung his club late on the first day of action after scoring a 9 on the sixth hole, incurring a 2-stroke penalty that wound up looming large for him. Niemann shot a 66 on Sunday and finished the tournament at +1 tied for 7th; without that penalty (or the quintuple bogey strokes that led to it) he could have been right in the thick of things.

And some people didn’t like the bunkers all that much. “Stupid rocks,” groused Scheffler after one not-quite-right shot from the hazard, which golf aficionados had to tell me was a slander against the gravelly sand and not fightin’ words against my family. Must have been a North Shore bunker.

Overall, though, there were just a handful of those bogeys.

“It's a great golf course,” McIlroy said earlier in the week. “I think if everything is going the way everyone wants it in terms of weather, the setup, I think it's the best championship test in the country.”

It all came together that way, both golf-wise and Hamptons-wise. Just like Clark, Shinnecock Hills and Long Island put on a display that simply couldn’t be beat.

See you again in ’36, U.S. Open. You’ll know where to find us.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.