UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — For reasons having nothing to do with the summer solstice, Sunday will feel like the longest day of the year for the last group to tee off at Chambers Bay Golf Course. From first light to first drive, the hours stretch before the 54-hole leaders like a gangplank leading from familiar shores to the great unknown.
For the two players in the final group, it’s the day with the most idle hours, and it does not help that as time drags, everything else seems to speed up. Down the stretch of a major, with a title in one’s sights, the tendency is to walk faster, talk faster, eat faster, drive faster, even sleep faster.