The U.S. Open is the second most viewed major golf tournament in the world, right behind the Masters.

From a viewership perspective, this year's tournament averaged 2.85 million viewers across the entire event. However, this year's final round viewership was the third lowest of all time. There were some amazing storylines this year though.

Brooks Koepka was the seventh player in U.S. Open history to win back-to-back championships, plus, amateur golfer and firefighter Matt Parziale made the cut ahead of Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth.

However, golf media and the golf world as a whole would rather talk about Phil Mickelson and his putting controversy on the 13th hole at Shinnecock. Already on his seventh stroke of the hole, Mickelson hit a moving putt as it slid past the hole, seemingly heading to slide off the green. In doing so, Mickelson incurred a two-stroke penalty and the wrath of the entire golf world.

I've been watching sports for a very long time and I think the sports media outdid themselves in terms of sheer overreaction.

I'm putting the whole ordeal in the top five overreactions from sports media of all time.

Joe Buck, who was calling the tournament the whole weekend from the FOX Sports booth, was the worst of it all. Granted, this is the same guy who said, "That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss and it's unfortunate that we had that on our air live" in response to Randy Moss fake mooning a Green Bay Packers fans after a touchdown.

I liked Joe Buck when he called Cardinals games in St. Louis and I can tolerate him on FOX Sports calling NFL Sunday, but the man was absolutely insufferable during the U.S. Open. There are plenty of tweets out there that share the sentiment. Let's not forget John Hopkins who called Mickelson a "chump" and an "ass." Phil Mickelson was getting absolutely chastised by the media all because he swatted a putt in one of the worst rounds of golf he's probably ever played.

Let's put it this way: Mickelson broke a rule and took the punishment like a man. I don't understand why people expect more out of him. He even met with rules officials to discuss both the nature of the violated rule and whether or not he should have been disqualified. That itself is much more than I would have expected from him, especially after his apology given immediately after the conclusion of his round.

For context, USGA is allowed to disqualify players if they feel a player has extensively violated a rule. They're also allowed to take context into account when making their decision. In this instance, the golf governing bodies decided that Mickelson committed a rule violation and added a two-stroke penalty, but decided not to disqualify him because he hit the putt while it was still in motion.

I think it was a good idea for the USGA to not eject Mickelson from the rest of the tournament. It's a whole different story if he's in contention to win and he did what he did, but he was +3 at that point and then shot himself up to a +9. A lot of people thought Mickelson pulled that move as some sort of strategy. The thought is it was more advantageous to take the penalty than let the ball slide al the way off the green and work from there.

I can't really envision how scoring a quadruple bogey is in any way advantageous, but there's a greater issue at play here. I've heard rumors of golfers openly admitting that they will abuse that same rule at certain tournaments, including the Masters. Instead of the USGA having to call their bluff, they should increase the penalty from two strokes to three, thus completely eliminating any "strategic" element.

Speaking of the USGA, let's talk about how they completely escaped any sort of blame from the media for botching the tournament. Apparently, the overarching thought among the organization was to make the U.S. Open harder this year than in years past. In all honesty, I believe that is a completely fair goal to have. Brooks Koepka won last year's Open, shooting -16 followed by Hideki Matsuyama with -12. That's a ridiculous score, especially considering Rickie Fowler was able to score a 65 on the opening round.

This wasn't a minor adjustment, this was such a change in pace that the winning golfer, Brooks Koepka, scored a +1. Part of it is just because Shinnecock Hills is a ridiculously difficult course as is. There's just something about the U.S. Open that makes the USGA just want to take hold of whatever course is hosting and do some absolutely ridiculous things with it. They'll tighten the fairways, grow out the roughs and in this year's case, alter the way in which the greens were watered. High winds on the Saturday round essentially turned the greens to glass which resulted in a course-record 361 double bogeys or worse.

It's essentially become a tradition at this point for golfers to complain about the U.S. Open. Every year the complaints from the golfers start to trickle in about something new. Golfers like Kevin Na, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson have all been very vocal about their displeasure with the USGA and how they treat the U.S. Open.

It's just so tragic to me to see the golf world turn their backs on Phil Mickelson, who is one of the Top 10 golfers of all time. And arguably carried the golf world through it's post-Tiger Woods phase. And now that we're well past the whole debacle and Mickelson officially issued an apology, the greater media world still won't let him off the leash. It's just sad at this point.