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The 42
2 days ago
- Climate
- The 42
US Open: Scheffler the man to beat, Lowry better primed than distracted McIlroy
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)
New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
With 15,000 Fewer Trees, Oakmont Is Now Ready for Another U.S. Open
Standing on the back porch at Oakmont Country Club, site of the U.S. Open, which begins on Thursday, you can see 16 of the 18 greens. This is something that was not possible and was downright undesirable when the club hosted the Open in 1994. At that Open, Oakmont, considered then and now to be among the toughest tests of golf in America, looked like a forest, with trees lining the fairways. The club also had hundreds of bunkers, meaning an errant shot would be punished by a tree or a bunker — or in some cases, both. The course, near Pittsburgh, that will be on view this week began its transformation under cover of darkness after that Open and culminated in 2023 with Gil Hanse restoring it to the original vision of Henry Fownes, the club's founder and principal architect. As strange as it may sound today, those trees began to fall at the hands of members cutting during the night. 'Absolutely true,' said Bob Ford, once the longtime head pro who used to live in a house adjacent to the 18th green. 'They went out at 4:30 in the morning with lights. My wife would wake up to the sounds of the chain saws, and I'd say, 'Banks is at it again.'' Banks was R. Banks Smith, a corporate lawyer and the president of Oakmont at the time. Known as Old Chainsaw, Smith was the leader of the tree removal project that largely went undetected for years. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Rare Changing of the Guard at Oakmont, as U.S. Open Returns
Devin Gee is ready for this U.S. Open. His mentor and former boss, Bob Ford, will be standing on the first tee at Oakmont Country Club as he has for the last five U.S. Opens at the club near Pittsburgh. But he will be there in a new role as the starter, reading the names of the players. It will be the first time in over four decades that Ford has not been the head pro at the club for the Open. That role is now held by Gee, who is at Oakmont only because a friend convinced him to take a summer internship in 2006. 'I was supposed to go to Medinah that year,' Gee said of the golf club near Chicago. 'But some circumstances took me here.' And now he is set to be the face of Oakmont as it hosts a record 10th U.S. Open. 'It's a dream job,' he said. 'It's a prominent place. As you can imagine, anyone going into a job like this, you wonder, am I ready for it?' As at many U.S. Open venues, the head pro job at Oakmont comes open infrequently and is coveted when it does. Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, another anchor site for the United States Golf Association, is only on its seventh head pro in 102 years. The longest tenure went to Claude Harmon, the Masters champion who was there for 31 years. Brendan Walsh is set to become the pro emeritus at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., after 27 years. His predecessor, Don Callahan, was in that role from 1967 to 1999, with the last several years as pro emeritus. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
NBC Sports
4 days ago
- General
- NBC Sports
Ford: 'We like to see some crying' at Oakmont
Longtime head pro at Oakmont Bob Ford joins the Live From desk to talk about the course bringing back the stern test of the U.S. Open and how tree removal transformed the venue.
American Military News
01-05-2025
- Health
- American Military News
NC poultry farms are free of bird flu, a greenlight to expanding exports
The World Organization for Animal Health this week declared North Carolina's commercial poultry farms bird flu-free, lifting a months-long suspension of poultry exports, according to a N.C. Department of Agriculture release. Since January, a High Path Avian Influenza outbreak in the state's commercial poultry flock has stopped farmers from exporting and trading their birds to some foreign counties. Perhaps the biggest market that closed was China, which buys chicken feet — or paws, as they are called — from growers in the state. 'This will help North Carolina poultry industry as a total a whole lot,' said Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation. 'I would say some of those shipments have been sitting on back order waiting.' Ford said it was unclear when overseas shipments would resume, but now that the world organization has designated North Carolina's commercial flock bird flu-free, nothing is stopping them from restarting. The state exported about $347 million worth of poultry and poultry products last year, according to the agricultural department. While North Carolina was barred from exporting poultry, other states filled the demand, said Jeffrey Dorfman, professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. But that's not ideal, he said. 'In a year with a lot of turmoil in agriculture, it is nice to get some good news and for farmers to get some money in their pockets,' he said. North Carolina bird flu outbreaks North Carolina farmers suffered a trio of bird flu outbreaks in January, the only outbreaks to happen at commercial flocks so far this year. The first outbreak happened Jan. 7 at a chicken egg farm in Hyde County. There, 3.3 million birds had to be killed or composted. On Jan. 27, 1,856 turkeys had to be killed at a farm in Sampson County. And a day later, some 24,400 more turkeys had to be destroyed at a separate Sampson County farm, according to the agriculture department. 'Compared to other states, we've done a pretty good job of managing HPAI,' said Heather Overton, a spokesperson for the state Department of Agriculture. By comparison, Ohio has had 78 infected commercial flocks this year, totaling more than 25 million birds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pennsylvania has had 40 infected flocks totaling 7 million birds. Poultry is king in NC Thousands of farms raise chicken and turkeys for corporations in large, long and tightly packed barns across the state. Many farms sit just north or east of Mecklenburg County. Others stretch from north to south near Interstate 95 to the east. North Carolina ranks first among all states in poultry and egg cash receipts, according to the agricultural department. Farmers here raise about a billion birds per year, most of which are broiler chickens — or chickens raised for meat. Broiler chickens are the state's top agricultural commodity, bringing in some $5.6 billion in cash receipts for farmers each year, according to the agricultural department. This week's declaration doesn't mean there couldn't be a new freeze on exports and international trade, Overton said. North Carolina sits along a popular flyway for migrating birds, which can spread avian flu from farm to farm, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farm equipment and workers can transport it too if they carry traces of infected bird manure or saliva into barns. 'Just because we have been declared HPAI-free does not mean that the risk of HPAI is gone,' Overton said. 'As long as it's in wild birds, there's always a chance it can get into our own birds.' ___ © 2025 The News & Observer. Distributed at Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
