a day ago
Raging McIlroy finds late magic to make cut as Oakmont leaves Lowry at low ebb
With the skies about to open above him, Rory McIlroy pulled himself out of the hellish challenge that has been Oakmont these past 48 hours and fired a heavenly closing birdie to make the cut on Friday night.
Standing on the 18th tee at 7-over for the year's third major, the cutline moving up and down between +6 and +7, McIlroy knew only a birdie could guarantee his run of six-straight US Open cuts made. With playing partners Shane Lowry and Justin Rose having long since succumbed to the horrors of the Pittsburgh course, his was the only fate to be decided. After a post-Masters run that has defied expectations and, at times, belief, McIlroy found a little bit of vintage magic. How badly he needed it.
American Sam Burns had set the pace with a morning 65 which got all the more impressive as Friday progressed in Western Pennsylvania. By nightfall Burns was the outright halfway leader at 3-under, one of just three of the 156 in the field to remain under par. Overnight leader JJ Spaun did his best to cling in there but otherwise those who began in the red felt the creep of the black. Big names joined Lowry and Rose in falling by the wayside too, defending champion Bryson DeChambeau and Ludvig Aberg among them.
From start to finish there were crooked scores everywhere and the organisers even found time in the darkening hours for an absurd weather delay which meant a handful of misfortunates have to return on Saturday morning, when rough weather is expected to play a major factor throughout the third round.
Friday at Oakmont featured plenty of Irish carnage as Lowry leaned into another expletive-laced reaction to major struggles then picked up an inexplicable penalty stroke while McIlroy tossed a club down the fairway on one hole and later smashed a tee marker for good measure.
Birdie for the weekend 🐦@McIlroyRory converts to make it inside the projected cutline @ — PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 13, 2025
However on his pivotal final hole of the round the Holywood man composed himself to find his best tee-to-cup performance since his third hole the previous day. A perfect drive set him up for his most sparkling wedge of the week finding the last fraction of a degree of undulation to bring the ball back to just four feet. He rolled in the birdie for a 2-over 72 that in the circumstances may be his best round since Augusta.
That's probably an overstatement or a bias towards how he finished it. Because it started in spectacularly hideous fashion, a calamitous double bogey on the first added to with another on the third to push him to 8-over overall and well outside the cut line. From there it was slow progress, in terms of both moment and plain ol actual progress, the pace of play disgracefully slow.
He birdied the 9th to turn in brighter form but gave one back on the 11th and laboured a little until another arrived at the 15th.
Shane Lowry won't be hanging around and won't be eager to ever discuss his visit to Pittsburgh this time around. A 54-hole leader here in 2016, this was a sequel which proved to be a box office bomb.
The Offaly man left with a two-round card that by his high standards looked nothing short of diabolical. He followed up his Thursday 79 with an 8-over 78 to leave the grounds with an ugly +17 to the right of his name on the leaderboard. Below him were just 16 players, a grouping which you wouldn't describe as a golfing who's who but a who's he?
Where to start with Lowry's fiendish Friday? How about the fact that on the 14th green he bent to mark his ball and pick it up but forgot to do the first bit. The vision of the slow dawning of what he'd just done, as he stood with ball in hand and marker in pocket was a vision of what the place can do to the best in the game.
Lowry so rarely looked like a member of the elite unfortunately. Of all the places to need a fast start, Oakmont may be the last you'd pick. Looking for birdies, Lowry found an opening bogey on the confiding 1st and followed it with a double and two more bogeys before he stepped on to the 5th. He was +14 and wanted to be anywhere else. There was a throwback to his misery at Quail Hollow when he repeated his 'f*** this place' line after that third bogey.
His only birdie of the week arrived so late it felt early, on the par-4 7th but there was further woe on the way home, bogeys on 10, the brain fart on 14 and one last bogey on 15. As he congratulated McIlroy for making the cut, Lowry joked and laughed with his friend. 'Rather you than me,' may have been the gist of it.
Lowry spoke to the Examiner last week about how hard he has found recent weeks with his wife and children already back in Ireland for the summer. He has one more event before he heads home for six weeks but as he prepares for a weighty return to the Open at Portrush, there can be no hiding the need for work.
Lowry's 2025 major season reads as follows: a closing 81 at Augusta to plummet down the field, a missed cut at Quail Hollow and a tie for 138th at an Oakmont course where he was widely expected to contend. Not great.
For McIlroy, a wholly unpredictable weekend awaits. As afternoon scores spiked and big names tumbled, some made the point that Scottie Scheffler may have sat at 4-over but in a tie for 23rd, just seven back with only three major wins between him and the lead. McIlroy is just two further back on the course which offers up the least predictability in golf.
