The 2025 U.S. Open (probably) won't have a superstar winner, and there's nothing wrong with that

Yahoo

10 hours ago

OAKMONT, Pa. — We're going to start this wrapup of Saturday's third round at the U.S. Open with an unexpected figure: Caitlin Clark. No, the Indiana Fever star forward wasn't in attendance Saturday; she was too busy triumphantly returning from injury. But while Clark was out, ratings for Fever games suffered mightily. Stars draw eyeballs, whether it's Clark, LeBron James or Tiger Woods.
Golf is about to have a major in which, barring an absolute barnstorm, a non-superstar will lift the trophy Sunday afternoon. This, in itself, is not all that rare — there are dozens of players who picked the perfect week to have a perfect week, and never again won another major.
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The only player in the top 10, within 7 strokes of the lead, who's won a major? That would be Adam Scott (-3), who's now more than 12 years removed from his 2013 victory at Augusta National. Consider the other challengers at even par or better:
Sam Burns (leader, -4): Currently ranked 22nd in the world. Burns has five PGA Tour wins but one lone top-10 in a major — a T9 at last year's U.S. Open. A member of the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2023, he's very much on the rise.
J.J. Spaun (-3): Currently ranked 25th in the world. He has one PGA Tour win, and took Rory McIlroy to a playoff at the Players Championship this year before falling short. This is just his second U.S. Open, and he's never placed higher than T23 at any major.
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Viktor Hovland (-1): Currently ranked 14th in the world. If he were more consistent, he'd already be a superstar, but he's wavered from his 2023 Tour Championship-winning form. Has four top-10 finishes in majors, though none came in a U.S. Open.
Carlos Ortiz (E): Currently ranked 246th in the world, but that's because he plays on the LIV tour. While he has a LIV win to his credit, he has struggled in the few majors he's played, never finishing in the top 50.
Any of those winners would be a considerable … let's say variance from the champions of the 2020s. To be blunt, we've gotten spoiled, expecting big dogs to win every major … because they pretty much have. In the 21 majors held in the 2020s, all but five were won by multiple-major winners. The list of recent major winners is the list of the game's best: Scheffler, McIlroy, DeChambeau, Koepka, Schauffele.
Still, it's worth noting: every superstar was once an unknown. Almost none of golf's current stars came into the game preceded by their reputation. The last time that the U.S. Open came through Oakmont back in 2016, for instance, Scottie Scheffler was an amateur who missed the cut, Brooks Koepka showed promise but still had not won a single major, Bryson DeChambeau tied for 15th but was still four years from his first major win, and Xander Schauffele was still on what was then called the Web.com Tour.
J.J. Spaun (left) shakes hands with Sam Burns on the 18th green during the third round of the 125th U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. (Photo by)
(Warren Little via Getty Images)
(The reverse is also true. Dustin Johnson won that 2016 U.S. Open, and he's fallen completely off the golf map. Indeed, only a handful of players within six strokes of Johnson's lead back then — Shane Lowry, Sergio Garcia, Jason Day — are still playing at a reasonably high level, and Garcia didn't even make the field at this year's U.S. Open.)
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In each of the last 10 majors, the eventual winner was ranked either first or second after 54 holes. Given the trickiness of Oakmont, that trend could end Sunday. In each of the last two U.S. Opens at Oakmont, according to Elias Sports, the winner — Johnson and Angel Cabrera — came from four strokes back. Back in 1973, Johnny Miller famously rode a final-round 63 to victory from six strokes back. For 2025, only eight players are within six strokes of the lead — those above, plus Tyrrell Hatton, Thriston Lawrence and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen. Scheffler is the closest icon at +4, eight strokes off the lead.
The next time the U.S. Open returns to Oakmont in 2033, will Sam Burns have five majors? Will J.J. Spaun be one of the best players in the world? Or will Scheffler, Koepka and DeChambeau have retaken control of the game? It's impossible to predict, and that's what makes this game so fascinating.