By Michael Mattingly | June 21, 2026
Somewhere in Southern Illinois
It’s late Saturday night.
The U.S. Open broadcast has abandoned the present—looping highlights on repeat while the golf world has gone to bed.
The leaderboard is finally taking shape.
The bourbon is half gone.
Today is already slipping into yesterday.
And the wind keeps blowing.
It moves through the trees behind the deck like it has something to prove.
That’s when I saw him sit down in the empty chair across from me.
Jimi Hendrix. Or something close enough.
“You still writing about the Grand Slam?” he asked.
“That’s the story.”
“No,” he said. “That’s the story everyone is writing.”
He leaned forward, closed my laptop, took the rest of my bourbon, and said:
“Listen. The real story is the wind. People think it belongs to a place—Shinnecock, St. Andrews, Pebble Beach.”
He laughed.
“Same wind, man.”
“People think it cries because of something that happened. But it cries because nothing—and no one—stays.”
And maybe he’s right.
It’s easy to believe a man can march through that wind and stack history like cordwood. A Grand Slam—like it’s something you can schedule between tee times.
“That’s right,” he said. “The truth is far different.”
“Greatness isn’t something you recognize out there—it sneaks up behind you while you’re trying not to drown in the rough. It doesn’t announce itself. It looks like someone grinding over a six-foot par putt while the wind rearranges their soul.
It looks like anxiety. Calculation. A quiet kind of terror.”
“And later—when it’s over, when the scorecards are signed and the crowd drifts away—you realize you might have seen something rare. All that’s left are the arguments.”
“Like Jordan versus LeBron?” I asked.
He smirked and took another sip.
“As if it’s close.”
“Let me ask you—did you see Babe Ruth play? Jesse Owens run? Kathy Whitworth walk a round?”
“No. Just highlights.”
“How do you know they were great then?”
“Comparisons. Statistics. What they accomplished.”
He nodded.
“Exactly. You didn’t have to be there for it to exist.”
And maybe that’s the problem—greatness bends to the lens of whoever’s watching it. Each generation swears it saw the truest version.
“So true greatness lasts?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“The wind remembers. People forget.”
I told him Scottie had spent another Saturday doing what Scottie does—quietly lingering in the background until suddenly he wasn’t. Wyndham Clark still held the lead, but Scheffler was there now too. Steady. Unhurried. Like a man who understands that championships aren’t won on Saturday afternoon. They simply drift in your direction if you stay alive long enough.
He nodded.
Then he smiled, like he already knew the ending.
“But the wind’s seen it all.”
It moved across fairways when Shippen walked them—allowed, but unwelcome to some.
It leaned into Hogan, hard and unforgiving—and he leaned back harder.
It rode with Palmer into the crowds, when golf stopped being quiet.
It circled Tiger like a storm you couldn’t look away from.
It carried Rory on days when it all looked effortless.
And every time it felt like something permanent was being built.
Every time, it wasn’t.
“Because the wind doesn’t keep score. It just keeps moving.”
Now it runs through Shinnecock again, brushing past Scottie—steady, unshaken, maybe standing at the edge of something they’ll call historic.
Maybe.
“And if the wind cries ‘Scottie’ tomorrow,” he said, “does he stop?”
I shook my head.
“Not a chance. He wins, he loses—it doesn’t matter. He chases it again.”
He nodded.
“That’s the deal.”
Because the wind never stops.
And neither does time.
Tomorrow there’s another round, another name, another chase.
There’s an old idea—a warning—that all glory is fleeting.
Maybe that’s why the wind cries.
Not because of what happens…
but because whatever happens won’t last.
So whether Scottie wins or not—
Enjoy it. Watch it. Feel it while it’s here.
Because it will pass either way.
It always does.
Sometime later I woke from the haze, but Hendrix was gone.
Just the chair, rocking slightly in the dark.
An empty bourbon glass beside it.
My laptop was open—
The Wind Cries Mary was playing.
Same wind.
Same time, moving through us.
And it will cry again— when today’s champion becomes yesterday’s hero.
Enjoy Your Sunday – MWM
Michael Mattingly is a freelance journalist from Smithton, Illinois, with a background in advanced mathematics and creative writing. He is a student of the game of golf, drawn to its pressure, rhythm, and unpredictability. He is also an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and a loyal Chicago Bears supporter.
