Player meltdowns occur in virtually every U.S. Open — particularly those played at diabolical Shinnecock Hills. 

Few will forget Phil Mickelson in 2018 playing hockey with his own moving golf ball on the 13th green in the third round, exasperated that he couldn’t get it to stop on the slick, undulating surface and taking a 10 on the hole. 

Early Thursday evening, it was Joaquin Niemann, a 27-year-old uber-talent from Chile who plays on LIV Golf, with a club-tossing implosion on the sixth hole. 

Niemann, however, somehow recovered to turn in a magnificent second-round 5-under-par 65 and not only make the cut but stay on the cusp of contention at 3-over. 

Niemann made a mess of the 480-yard, par-4 sixth hole by hitting two tee shots out of bounds. Play was suspended due to darkness before he would end up taking a quintuple bogey 9 on when he finished playing the hole Friday morning. 

Insult was added to injury when, after Niemann completed his first round, the USGA assessed him a two-stroke penalty for throwing a club, violating Rule 1.2b, which states “serious misconduct.’’ 

That turned his score on the hole into an 11, seven shots over par on it, and left him with an 8-over 78 in his first round, 14 shots behind first-round leader Wyndham Clark. He was at even par before he got to No. 6. 

“I was playing good golf, I got expectations, I would like to win this tournament, as anybody here,’’ Niemann said afterward. “I hit two terrible tee shots, came out of nowhere. Hitting the golf ball at 8:30 p.m., I felt like my body wasn’t quite there. Two bad swings (and) then got pretty frustrated. 

“I’m not someone that (is usually) in that behavior,’’ he added. “I’m the first one to judge myself when I don’t behave on the golf course. That was a misbehave from my part. I felt a little bit extra penalized with the two-shot penalty, but … I’m going to learn from it. It definitely kind of helped me a little bit to have a better (second) round.’’ 

Niemann, who had 37 minutes between the end of his calamitous first round and the start of his second round, somehow composed himself to shoot a 65 to climb to 3-over for the week, inside the cut line and 10 shots behind Clark. 

“It was hard,’’ he said. “It took me probably 30 minutes to get over it, then two minutes to hit some tee shots, two putts, and then go out. (I made) a nice birdie on the first and the second, so, yeah, it was a good start.’’ 

Niemann credited “a good team around me’’ for helping him recover mentally after he’d been informed of the penalty. 

“I was frustrated (and) they were trying to get me up,’’ he said. 

There was a report from The Athletic that quoted a marshal on the sixth hole saying Niemann was angered when his third shot landed in a sandy spot with fire ants and had asked for a ruling to take a drop. 

Niemann, however, did not use that as an excuse. 

“Yeah, I had a bad lie on the third tee shot in between the fairways,’’ he said. “I saw a lot of ants there and I was just asking the referee if they were fire ants and he say, ‘No.’ I wasn’t angry asking him. 

“After that shot, I hit it, I lay up, and the whole frustration went inside me. All the frustration that came inside me and had my club in my hand, and I couldn’t resist to throw it away. I’m not proud of it.’’ 

Here’s the anatomy of the meltdown for Niemann, who’s the winningest player on LIV Golf with eight individual victories: 

l  He hit his first tee shot across a road and out of bounds. 

l  He re-teed and hit his second drive into the same place, out of bounds. 

l  His third tee shot landed in a native grass area that juts into the fairway. 

l  He then advanced his next shot just 113 yards from the thick lie. 

At that point, with Niemann laying six, play was suspended for darkness at 8:25 p.m., leaving him to have to sleep on the nightmare, awaiting his seventh shot Friday morning when play resumed. 

Niemann returned at 6:35 a.m. Friday and came up short of the green with his seventh shot. 

He reached the green with his eighth shot and made one putt for what he thought was a 9. 

The collapse dropped him from even par to 8-over and he fell more than 100 spots down the leaderboard, which is what made his recovery in the second round so remarkable. 

“Sometimes, especially in these tournaments, it could go the other way,’’ Niemann said, “and this time it worked.’’