Retief Goosen was in the lead entering Sunday, but teamed with Jason Gore to shoot a combined 25-over in the final round. AP

PINEHURST, N.C. -- The USGA threw another ritzy Father's Day party on Sunday, and what do you know? The players forgot to bring the whine.

Oh, we scribes in the press tent were ready all right. It was another Bloody Sunday at the U.S. Open, with the temperature in the 70s and the scores in the 80s. Fourteen players failed to break 80 in the final round. That may have been well short of the 28 who shot 80-plus during last year's final round at Shinnecock Hills, but this year the winning score was even par. At Shinnecock, two players finished in the red, and Retief Goosen's winning score was 4-under.

Then there was the final-round pairing featuring Goosen and Jason Gore, the overweight underdog. Those two came into the day vying for a U.S. Open title, only to shoot a combined 25-over par. That may well be the highest fourth-round score by the last twosome in the history of Major championship golf.

Surely, then, there was going to be lots of carping and carterwauling to fill our notebooks, right? Remember this gem from Jerry Kelly after last year's Sunday debacle at Shinnecock Hills? "When is [the USGA] going to grow a head?" Kelly screeched after shooting 81. "Get off your high horse and be good to the game. It's an ego contest and if they were smart, they'd realize they look really stupid. Just try to be intelligent. And apparently, they have no idea what that means. They're ruining the game. They're ruining the tournament. Their organization is not respecting the game."

THAT, my friends, is what I call a quote. You'd figure the USGA would get more of the same Sunday. Yet, all we heard were valentines like this one from Sergio Garcia, who shot 5-over for the tournament and finished third: "It was great," Garcia said of Pinehurst No. 2. "It's a really difficult course, but it was well set up."

And this, from Lee Janzen, who shot 16-over par on the week: "The USGA and everyone should be happy about the play here. For four straight days, it was as consistently as I've seen any U.S. Open course play. It was very fair and very challenging."

No one shot better than 1-under par, and only four players managed that score, including Stewart Cink, who tied for 15th.

"Going back over the last ten U.S. Opens I've played in, I think this course is probably the best because it leaves no room for error," Cink said. "You're not going to get away with anything on Pinehurst No. 2. You have to plan your shots well and execute them."

The average score for this year's Open was 74.7. Last year's was 74.1. So why did the same players who ripped Shinnecock Hills give Pinehurst their universal stamp of approval?

The answer can be summed up in one word: consistency. This year's scores barely fluctuated from day to day; the high average was Thursday's 74.7, the low was Friday's 73.7. The average score during last year's final round was 78.7. Not good.

That jump was largely a function of the weather. Shinnecock was softened by rain early in the week, then it was blown dry by severe overnight winds on Saturday night. Pinehurst did not experience any rain this week, enabling the USGA to exert complete control over the condition of the course. The biggest point of emphasis was on the greens. Marty Parks of the USGA told me that every time they tested the greens this week, they measured between 11 and 11 1/2 on the stimpmeter. That's consistent -- and fair.

I'd like to think, however, that maybe there's another reason why nobody complained about Pinehurst's difficulty. Maybe, just maybe, these guys -- who are good, so we're told -- got reminded that it's okay to play badly at the U.S Open. That's what makes the Open so special and eminently watchable. That's what makes the Open the Open.

Tiger Woods was asked Sunday if he preferred this type of grueling setup or the more playable conditions the PGA Tour visits most weeks. "This, by far," Woods said. "I don't like tournaments where 25-under par is the winning score. I'd much rather play challenges like this. It's more of a thinking man's game. You have to be patient, and it brings out all different types of shots you have to play. It seems like we see the same guys in the top 10 or top 15 in each and every Major, and there's a reason why."

I don't deny the USGA went overboard in setting up Shinnecock Hills last year, but at least they went overboard in the right direction. In fact, there was some concern as this year's event was approaching that the USGA might over-correct and make Pinehurst too easy. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem also visited the site about a month before the Open and confided to friends that he was concerned the course might not be in prime condition when the tournament started. The Tifway II Bermuda rough was growing slowly because of an unseasonably cool North Carolina spring. A sudden heat wave fixed that, but it also baked the fairways as well as the signature collection areas around Donald Ross' turtleback greens. As a result, there were very few L-wedges in sight this week. A player was much more likely to putt from 20 yards off the green than try to chip and spin the ball close. You don't see that at the Western Opens and Fed Ex Classics of the world.

What the USGA ended up with was the perfect result: A tough course that played fair and remained consistent for each round, leading to that coveted winning score of even par.

When the Open moves to Winged Foot Golf Club next year, will more than a dozen golfers again limp home in the final round with scores of 80 and above? Quite possibly. Will the final round pairing go a collective two dozen over par? Could be. If that does happen, here's hoping the world's best players take their medicine with the same grace they took it at Pinehurst. This is the U.S. Open, after all. It's okay to make big numbers on Sunday. It's not okay to whine about it.