The US Open at Oakmont is a brutal test that takes a long time

Winnipeg Free Press

2 days ago

OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — There's a lot to think about at the U.S. Open. Particularly when it visits brawny Oakmont, where danger always seems to be one swing, one bounce, one 'wait, where is that putt going to end up?' away.
Good thing — or bad thing, depending on who you ask — there's plenty of time to think (or overthink).
The physical demands at the sprawling par-70 layout carved into a hilly slice of Western Pennsylvania so big it's divided by an interstate are obvious.
Step into the 5-inch-plus rough and your shoes (not to mention your ball) disappear.
Put too much spin on approach shots to greens so fast and so frustrating that Edward S. Stimpson invented his now-eponymous and ubiquitous tool to measure their actual speed, and the ball may start spinning back toward you and threaten to never stop, as qualifier Will Chandler found out Friday in the second round.
The mental demand of keeping it all together during rounds that can stretch far beyond what the pros encounter during a weekly tour stop can be a little more subtle, but no less daunting.
Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa needed 5 1/2 hours to slog their way through a muggy opening round Thursday. Barely 12 hours after they shook hands on the 18th green, they were back on the 10th tee Friday for the second round, then needed nearly six hours to navigate their way to the ninth green.
'It felt long to me,' the top-ranked Scheffler said after a 1-over 71 left him 4 over for the tournament, seven shots behind Sam Burns, who sat at 3-under following a crisp 65.
Yet Scheffler didn't find himself checking his watch too often, not even during waits that stretched to 15 minutes or more between shots.
'I've got too many concerns other than the pace it takes to get around this place,' he said with a shrug.
Scheffler and company might have gotten off easy. It took Thriston Lawrence's group well over an hour to play the first three holes as part of the late wave Friday.
Part of the issue at Oakmont is the combination of the layout — where players literally have to cross a bridge to get from the first green to the second tee, and again while going from the eighth green to the ninth tee — and the decisions the course forces you to make.
There's typically a backup at the par-4 17th, for example, because at around 300 yards (albeit uphill ones) it's drivable, meaning the group on the green typically has to putt out before the group behind them can go.
Throw in the stakes — the lure of golf immortality (or at the very least, a healthy paycheck for making the cut) for the pros and the walk of a lifetime for amateurs like dentist turned qualifier Matt Vogt — and yeah, things can drag on a bit.
Hovland's second trip through Oakmont was an adventure. His 1-under 69 included only eight pars. There was an eagle thanks to a pitch-in on 17, five birdies, three bogeys, and a double.
During a regular tour event, when scores are lower and the pace is a far more palatable 4ish hours, Hovland isn't sure he would have been able to keep things from spiraling out of control after the second, when a poor drive into the right rough was followed by a mangled pitch into a bunker and eventually a double-bogey that threatened to rob him of the momentum he'd build over his first 10 holes.
'If it would have happened at another tournament, for example, I could have potentially lost my mind there a little bit,' he said. 'But I felt like I kept things together very well.'
The fact Hovland had time to let his frustration melt away before his driver on the third tee may have helped. The 27-year-old Norwegian knows his game well enough to know that he tends to speed things up when a round threatens to go sideways, and not in a good way.
There was no chance of that on Friday.
'Yeah, you might have had a bad hole on the last hole and then you're sitting on the tee box for 10-20 minutes,' he said. 'At least it gives you a good opportunity to get that out of your system and reset and think about the next shot.'
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Hovland calmly parred the third, then followed with back-to-back birdies on the par-5 fourth and par-4 fifth and will head into the weekend in contention to claim his first major, something that felt like an inevitability in 2023 but not so much of late.
Though he won at Valspar in March, Hovland arrived in western Pennsylvania with relatively modest expectations. Those might be raised Saturday, when the rounds figure to speed up when the threesomes of the first two rounds turn into twosomes.
Maybe the rhythm of the day will feel more like normal, or at least as close to normal as Oakmont and the one major that leans into the pressure (mentally, physically and otherwise) it puts on its players allows.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf