By MONTE DUTTON

Baseball games are too long. College football games are too long. NASCAR races are too long. Soccer matches are too long. Why aren’t golf tournaments too long?

Because it is the nature of the game. I wouldn’t want a round of the United States Open to be nine holes. Tastes of the fans vary over time. Pastimes rise, fall and rise again.

Time doesn’t matter. Golf has one advantage, a captive advertising base, that other televised sports lack. As long as there are Cadillacs, Rolexes, Maxflis and stock portfolios to peddle, golf is going to be on TV whenever it wants to be.

I rather enjoyed this year’s Open. For a year, I thought the backdrop of the Los Angeles skyline in the distance and high rises nearby was a novel change.

Most people never heard of Los Angeles Country Club, but none was surprised there was one.

I hoped Rory McIlroy would win. He and Roy McAvoy arrived on the scene at about the same time, McIlroy for real and McAvoy in the movie Tin Cup. Wyndham Clark richly deserved America’s national title. I’ve stayed in his hotel chain, though mainly the Days Inns and Super 8’s. I felt badly for Rickie Fowler, whose body language was awful. He looked resigned to a sad fate, a self-fulfilling prophecy in the final round. The man known for colorful attire wore a personality that was olive drab. Tennessee orange never looked so faded.

No sport has as many cliches repeated over and over for no apparent reason. The announcers discussed at length who were the game’s great “ball strikers.” What in the name of Old Tom Morris is a golfer supposed to do to the ball? On Saturday, the “marine layer” struck me as a polite way to avoid calling it “smog.”

I love the Masters because it’s always at the same course. I love the other major tournaments because they aren’t, particularly the U.S. Open for its hellish rough and the British for its antiquities. The plots thicken as if Shakespeare wrote them.

Wyndham Clark may, at age 29, emerge into international stardom, but he may also become known just another fellow with his name etched on a great trophy. For four days, he was Lee Janzen. For one, he was Justin Rose. For nine holes, he was Ben Hogan. Ninety-one players have won it. Twenty-one have won more than one. It was Orville Moody’s only tour victory.

Not long after his first tour win, in May, Clark put the likes of McIlroy, Fowler and Scottie Scheffler to shame. He wasn’t expected to win but looked the part.

Amid the marine layer, Clark struck the ball best, and that’s what a golfer does. It’s a complicated simplicity.