US Open: Scheffler the man to beat, Lowry better primed than distracted McIlroy

The 42

a day ago

YOU'LL BE HEARING a lot this week about 'the greatest test in golf', as the organisers of the US Open take their historic championship back to Oakmont in Pittsburgh, whose founding principle was to be the most challenging golf course in America.
And so the 2025 US Open may cross the threshold from test to outright trial. The rough is long and knottier than the tree lights you took down from your attic last Christmas; the greens are slippery and more sloped than even those at Augusta National; and the eighth hole is the longest par-three in major championship history. Speaking on Golf Channel on Tuesday, the long-serving former head pro Bob Ford was asked to describe the typical member at Oakmont. 'Sadistic', he replied.
The whole set-up is designed, ultimately, to have pro golfers break out in the kind of cold sweats they otherwise reserve for the prospect of a tougher tax regime in Florida.
Jon Rahm said on Tuesday he expects the winning score to be over-par if the rain stays away. Rory McIlroy played a practice round last Monday week and birdied the final two holes to card an 81.
While the course has been deluged by rain in the weeks leading up to the tournament, the forecast for the opening days of action is more agreeable, although the weekend face the risk of disruption from thunderstorms. Without this rain, says McIlroy, the course would have been 'impossible.'
There are only two Irish golfers in the field, as all of Seamus Power, Graeme McDowell, Tom McKibbin and Padraig Harrington failed to make it through qualifying. Organisers have handily paired them together, and so McIlroy and Shane Lowry will play alongside each other and Justin Rose, teeing off early on Thursday and among the late wave on Friday.
McIlroy playing alongside Rose evokes easily-accessed memories of the Masters, and trust McIlroy to take the aftermath as interesting as it could possibly have been. He spoke from Augusta in April of feeling freed from the burden of his long major drought; McIlroy was, in his own words, now playing with house money.
Er, not so. He barely made the cut at a bizarrely surly PGA Championship, at which he swerved media interviews amid annoyance at the leaking of the fact he had to change his non-conforming driver, and then missed the cut by a mile at last week's Canadian Open with what was, in strokes gained terms, the second-worst round of his career.
McIlroy missed the cut the last time this tournament was held at Oakmont, which started a three-year run of missed cuts at the US Open. His reaction to this run is one of the more underrated aspects of his career, and he has been freakishly consistent at the tournament since. He has been in the top-10 in each of the last six years, finishing as runner-up in each of the last two editions.
Advertisement
Maintaining that consistency this week rests on him finding form off the tee. His driving accuracy across each of his last three events has been abysmal, and a failure to find fairways at Oakmont will mean an early end to his challenge. Having tried a new driver in Canada, McIlroy has switched up his equipment once again this week.
'I feel a little better with the driver over the weekend at home and even today playing a practice round, so hopefully I can hit a few more fairways than I have been hitting and give myself some opportunities', said McIlroy at his Tuesday afternoon press conference.
A bigger question is the inner drive. McIlroy admitted ahead of the Canadian Open he had been finding it hard to have the same motivation to grind on the range now that he's achieved all he had set out to do. Speaking to the press this week, McIlroy didn't give the impression of a man who has re-fixed a maniacal focus on golf.
'I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of a decade and a half, I think I'm allowed a little bit of time to relax a little bit. But here at Oakmont, I certainly can't relax this week', before then talking of how one of his goals this year was to take up more hobbies and see more of the world, and so he's joined caddie Harry Diamond and manager Niall O'Connor for their on-the-road tennis matches.
His playing partner, by contrast, arrives in much more consistent form, albeit appearing increasingly tortured by his inability to get over the line on Sunday. Lowry had a galling close shave at the Truist Championship the week before the PGA Championship, at which he missed the cut on one of his least favourite courses on Earth. He made a stunning Sunday start in Canada last week – five-under through his first four holes – only to cool off too early to catch the later starters. Lowry is less daunted than most by Oakmont, where in 2016 he took a four-shot lead into the final day only to shoot a round of six-over 76 to finish in a tie for second, three shots off winner Dustin Johnson.
Lowry is a much better player now, though, and this is a course which will reward his accuracy off the tee – where he ranks among the top-30 on the PGA Tour – along with the quality of his iron play and his hands around the green, where greenside rough will reward only the very best. His contention will rest, though, on how he performs on the greens: he has shown an ability to catch fire with his putter, but these sprawling, sloping greens are redolent of those at Augusta National, on which Lowry has occasionally struggled.
That said, Lowry arrives in a better position to contend than McIlroy.
Their biggest issue for all may not be the brute of the course, but Scottie Scheffler. Having made a slow(ish) start to the season after hand surgery in the off-season, Scheffler is once again the dominant man in the sport: he has won on three of his last four starts and arrives exuding that air of apparent invincibility.
Given Scheffler's awesome form, the brutality of the Oakmont test may ultimately be a favour to everybody else in the field. Scheffler has never won this championship, though victory this week will see him rocking up to Portrush next month seeking to complete the career Grand Slam.
Scottie Scheffler: 2025 PGA Championship winner. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo
Who can stop him? Jon Rahm finally returned to relevance at a major championship with his Sunday charge at Quail Hollow, where his finishing score did not reflect the pressure he exerted on Scheffler. He has the muscle to deal with the Oakmont rough, along with the form to compete.
Bryson DeChambeau has meanwhile 3D-printed a new set of irons in the hope he can successfully defend his title this week: at the Masters and Quail Hollow, he contended despite his ball-striking, rather than because of it. Oakmont, though, is going to be too tough to hide any aspect of your game.
DeChambeau is now undoubtedly the most popular player in the game, thanks mainly to his YouTube videos, which he says has given him a new lease of life on the course.
'I view my legacy as not just winning golf tournaments', DeChambeau told the press on Tuesday. 'I view it as how much good can I do for the game outside of playing professionally. That's a metric that I hold myself up to.
'The start is YouTube, but there is so much more that's coming down the line, and that's also what gets me up every day, as well.'
Elsewhere within that press conference he began some megaphone negotiations with LIV over a contract renewal – 'They see the value in me. I see the value in what they can provide' – explained if he hadn't been a golfer he would be working on how AI will be integrated into biomechanics and hailed his own business sense with the deathless line that his Crushers LIV team have been 'EBIDTA positive for the past two years.'
(LIV golf is hardly leaning into the traditional partisanship of other team sports. EBIDTA positive. . . you'll never sing that.')
DeChambeau will be the most popular man on the golf course, though Scheffler is, as ever, the man to beat. The greater the test, the more likely the best player is to emerge from the field. And the best player by a street is Scottie Scheffler.
Tips
Gavin Cooney
A winner not named Scottie Scheffler: Jon Rahm (9/1)
A solid, make-your-money-back e/w bet: Harris English (55/1)
A wild outsider who might make you a fortune: Aaron Rai (75/1)
Fintan O'Toole
A winner not named Scottie Scheffler: Xander Schuaffele (18/1)
A solid, make-your-money-back e/w bet: Harris English (55/1)
A wild outsider who might make you a fortune: Rasmus Hojgaard (150/1)