On this day in 2001 Retief Goosen won the United States Open Championship. The 101st US Open was played from June 14 to June 18 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Goosen won the first of his two US Open titles in an 18-hole Monday playoff, two strokes ahead of runner-up Mark Brooks.
The tournament was also notable for ending defending champion Tiger Woods’s run of four consecutive major championship wins, the “Tiger Slam”; Woods finished seven strokes back in a tie for twelfth. He reclaimed the US Open title the following year, and won the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in 2007.
At the end of the final round on Sunday, Brooks three-putted his way out of the lead on the 72nd hole. In the final pairing, co-leaders Goosen and Stewart Cink both had approach shots from the 18th fairway. Cink missed the green long and then three-putted from 15 feet (5 m) to double bogey. Goosen had 10 feet (3 m) feet for birdie, but also three-putted to tie Brooks, forcing the next-day playoff.
After winning the 18-hole playoff on the Monday, Goosen became just the sixth foreign-born winner of the US Open in the last 70 years. The seemingly stoic 32-year-old became the third South African to win the title, joining countrymen Gary Player and Ernie Els as champions of the USGA’s premier event.
