OAKMONT, Pa. — After just a few days of getting ready for the U.S. Open at Oakmont Nation Membership, the perfect participant on this planet reached a hanging conclusion Tuesday.
“That is in all probability the toughest golf course that we’ll play,” Scottie Scheffler mentioned. “Possibly ever.”
Scheffler sits at No. 1 within the official world golf rankings and is the prohibitive favourite this week. He has made profitable at Augusta Nationwide look routine and has overwhelmed fields of the perfect gamers within the sport at a number of the hardest golf programs on this planet with ease.
This week, nonetheless, even he’s on the mercy of the venue that has hosted probably the most U.S. Opens, one which has by no means featured a winner with a rating higher than 5-under par.
“I sort of equate a number of the main checks to — just like the majors in tennis you are enjoying on a distinct floor,” Scheffler mentioned. “You have received grass, clay after which the exhausting court docket, and it is a totally different type of sport. The U.S. Open in comparison with the Masters is a totally totally different sort of check.”
Oakmont, nonetheless, is not only a historically robust U.S. Open venue. It is greater than that.
“Whenever you miss the inexperienced on the Masters, the ball runs away and it goes into these areas, and you may play a bump, you may play a flop. There’s totally different choices,” Scheffler mentioned. “Right here, if you hit the ball over the inexperienced, you simply get in some heavy tough, and it is like, let me see how I can pop the ball out of this tough and someway give myself a glance.”
The subject of Oakmont’s problem has been on the forefront of the championship to date. Gamers have talked at size concerning the problem this week will carry, be it the thick tough off the fairways, the deep bunkers or the lightning-fast greens.
“I feel everyone is aware of that is in all probability the hardest golf course on this planet proper now,” Bryson DeChambeau mentioned. “It’s important to hit the fairways, you need to hit greens, and you need to two-putt, worst-case state of affairs. Whenever you’ve received these putts inside 10 toes, you have to make them. It is an excellent check of golf.”
DeChambeau printed a video on his YouTube channel final week that detailed each shot of a observe spherical go to he made to the course. He shot a fair par 70.
“It isn’t like each single gap is Winged Foot out right here,” mentioned DeChambeau, who received the primary of his two U.S. Opens at Winged Foot in 2020. “You possibly can’t simply bomb it on each single gap and blast over bunkers and have a wedge run as much as the entrance of the inexperienced. You possibly can on plenty of the holes however not on each one among them. I feel this golf course you need to be only a fraction extra strategic.”
Two-time main winner Collin Morikawa didn’t make an early go to to Oakmont this yr, however he mentioned he watched a few of DeChambeau’s video. Nothing, nonetheless, may have ready him for truly being on a few of these holes and having to hit a few of these pictures.
“I do not assume individuals perceive how thick the tough is,” Morikawa mentioned. “It isn’t wispy just like the membership goes to undergo. That is simply thick. Golf equipment will flip over. You are going to see guys attempting to hit pitching wedge out and it should go 45 levels left as a result of that is how thick the tough is. That is simply how you need to play it.”
Morikawa mentioned Tuesday that he virtually tried to neglect about all of the issues he has seen of the course earlier than this week, partly to not psyche himself out. Gamers are already preempting the doable carnage that Oakmont will carry come Thursday, particularly if the rain that is forecasted for the weekend doesn’t arrive.
“Greens are already rushing up,” Morikawa mentioned. “They may get firmer because the solar comes out, because the wind picks up.”
Being within the tough or a fairway bunker will spell bother for gamers, however it’s Oakmont’s greens, with their dramatic slopes and potential mid-teens velocity, that might actually decide simply what sort of chew the course has this week.
“Being completely trustworthy and really egocentric, I hope it psyches plenty of gamers out,” Justin Thomas mentioned of the course’s problem. “It is part of the preparation, like attempting to go hit wedges or attempting to get the velocity of the greens or something. It is getting a sport plan for a way you are going to method the course mentally and strategically. I perceive this place is difficult. I need not learn articles, or I need not hear horror tales. I’ve performed it. I do know it is troublesome.”
But at the same time as they attempt to forecast how troublesome of a process they may have, many are discovering at the least some solace in the truth that each one of many different 155 gamers within the area they’re attempting to beat should face the identical golf course they may.
“It may be a pleasant check, a troublesome check,” Jon Rahm mentioned. “And I feel one of many truest representations of what a U.S. Open is all about.”
