With its intricate plot and rising tension, the U.S. Open Championship is as much a four-act play as a golf tournament. In this annual big-budget, off-Broadway production, the golf course can be easily imagined as an outdoor stage, and the golfers as actors. Sometimes, the performers soar as they battle themselves and each other, and sometimes they forget their lines. But always, the U.S. Open gives us a moment or two that we simply cannot forget.

The best of these become part of golf’s collective unconscious, little instants of grace or panic under pressure that we remember whether we saw them or not. Who among us was at Merion Golf Club in 1950 for Ben Hogan’s immortal 1-iron to the final hole? Yet everyone who plays the game knows something about that sublime shot.

Here, then, are a dozen personal — and thus, debatable — nominations for the greatest moments in U.S. Open history.

BEST PUTT TO WIN: Payne Stewart, Pinehurst (Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina), 1999. Locked in a duel with Phil Mickelson on Pinehurst No. 2, Stewart got hot with the putter at the best and most dramatic time, holing from 25 feet on the 16th hole; three feet on No. 17; and from 15 feet on the final hole — the longest-ever putt to win the Open.

BEST PUTT TO TIE: A tie, between Bobby Jones, Winged Foot Golf Club (Mamoroneck, New York), 1929; and Hale Irwin, Medinah (Illinois) Country Club, 1990. After building a big lead, Jones staggered to the finish, needing a 12-footer on an icy green just to break 80, and to tie Al Espinosa. Bobby made it, and syndicated columnist Grantland Rice immortalized "the greatest putt ever made." (Jones won the ensuing 36-hole playoff by 23 shots.)

Irwin looked like an also-ran until he birdied five of his final nine holes, including a 45-footer with a five-foot break on the last hole; his high-fiving victory lap remains a vivid memory. He beat Mike Donald in 19 holes the next day.

MOST INSPIRING PLAYER: Francis Ouimet, The Country Club (Brookline, Massachusetts), 1913. Ouimet, an owlish 20-year-old sporting goods salesman, knew the posh acres of The Country Club better than most. He’d caddied there and had grown up in a house across the street from it. His playoff victory over Harry Vardon — the best player in the world — and another Englishman, Ted Ray, was totally unexpected. Suddenly a national hero, Ouimet inspired a generation of kids to keep a golf club in their hands, a generation that included Gene Sarazen, the 1932 U.S. Open champ.

BEST IRON TO THE FINAL GREEN, TO WIN: Jerry Pate, Atlanta Athletic Club, 1976. Nerves caused Pate to blow his drive on the 460-yard final hole, jeopardizing his one-shot lead over Tom Weiskopf, John Mahaffey, and Al Geiberger. Luck gave Pate a lie in the rough so good he could have hit a driver. Skill and nerve allowed him to pull off an electrifying shot, a high 5-iron that hit and held the green less than three feet from the hole.

BEST IRON TO THE FINAL GREEN, TO TIE: Ben Hogan, Merion Golf Club (Ardmore, Pennsylvania), 1950. A little over a year after he’d almost died in a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus, and limping every step of the way, Hogan came to the final hole needing a par to get into a playoff with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio. Life magazine photographer Hy Peskin caught Ben on his follow-through as his 1-iron shot streaked toward the heart of the green, golf’s best-known photograph. Hogan got his par and won the playoff.

JACQUES COUSTEAU AWARD: Ray Ainsley, 1938, Cherry Hills Country Club (Denver). In the second round, Poor Ray hit his second shot on the 16th hole into Little Dry Creek. With an imperfect understanding of the water-hazard rule, he whacked at his ball again and again as the current slowly carried it downstream. His 19 on the hole is an Open record.

BEST DRIVE: Arnold Palmer, Cherry Hills Country Club (Denver), 1960. With one round to play, Arnie trailed leader Mike Souchak by seven shots. But he drove onto the right fringe of the short par-4 first hole, and two-putted for birdie. He chipped in from 35 feet on the second, holed from 18 feet, then from 25 … when the smoke cleared, he had birdied six of the first seven holes. The classic Palmer charge resulted in a 65 that hot day in Denver, and a win in one of the most dramatic Opens ever.

BEST IRON TO THE SECOND-TO-LAST GREEN: Jack Nicklaus, Pebble Beach Golf Links (California), 1972. To win his record 13th major and his third U.S. Open, Nicklaus hit a shot no one thought he had — a controlled, contrived 209-yard 1-iron. The gale blowing in off whitecapped Carmel Bay held the ball in the air for long seconds. And though the wind had marbleized the surface of the hourglass-shaped green, Jack’s ball landed gently, six inches from the hole, as if it had fallen out of his pocket. He won by three.

MOST WONDERFUL WEDGE: Tom Watson, Pebble Beach Golf Links (California), 1982. The 17th at Pebble provided the stage for more dramatics a decade later. Nicklaus and his younger rival Tom Watson were tied for the lead when Tom’s 2-iron trickled into lush rough about 18 feet from the hole. But Watson had somehow found an easy lie in the hay. "Get it close," caddie Bruce Edwards said. "I’m not going to get it close," Tom replied, "I’m going to make it." When he did, he pogoed around the green in ecstasy. Then he birdied the final hole to beat Nicklaus by two.

LUCKIEST: Orville Moody, Champions Golf Club (Houston), 1969. The worst putter on the PGA Tour beat the three best putters in golf by one shaky shot. In that wild finish in Houston, Bob Rosburg, Al Geiberger, and Deane Beman all missed crucial putts, while Moody’s wobbling cross-handed stroke made them.

MOST INCREDIBLE UPSET: Jack Fleck, Olympic Country Club (San Francisco), 1955. The unknown club pro from Iowa drove 49 hours to San Francisco, then beat the great Hogan in a playoff.

GREATEST FINAL ROUND: Johnny Miller, Oakmont Country Club (Pennsylvania), 1973. Miller’s fourth-round 63 was the lowest score ever shot in the Open. Some will argue that Hogan and Palmer shot better final rounds, and that’s expected — because greatest moments are not etched in stone, and there’s a new one every year.