For Leaders Entering Final Round, Tuning Out Distractions is a Challenge

Photo Martin Kaymer after winning the 2014 U.S. Open. He limited his TV viewing of the event on the final morning. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — For reasons having nothing to do with the summer solstice, Sunday will feel like the longest day of the year for the last group to tee off at Chambers Bay Golf Course. From first light to first drive, the hours stretch before the 54-hole leaders like a gangplank leading from familiar shores to the great unknown.

For the two players in the final group, it’s the day with the most idle hours, and it does not help that as time drags, everything else seems to speed up. Down the stretch of a major, with a title in one’s…