Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau humbled at U.S. Open

OAKMONT, Pa. — As golf’s cathedral entertained its record 10th U.S. Open, much of the banter among the golf geeks during the steamy first round concerned the long drives, the evil greens, and the deep, thick grasses that frame the fairways at Oakmont Country Club.

Meanwhile, most of the banter among the 39,000 fans on the property concerned the Big Three: world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, and LIV superstar Bryson DeChambeau. For the first time since Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Vijay Singh won 19 of 38 majors between the end of 1997 and the beginning of 2008, golf features a resonant Big Three.

Will they equal their immediate predecessors? Will they match Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player from the 1960s? Will they outpace the next Big Three — Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, and Seve Ballesteros?

That seems irrelevant for a game now fractured by a competing tour that, despite roots in exclusivity, elitism, and discrimination, is currently tainted by unprecedented greed and entitlement. At this moment, golf needs charismatic stars. These three deliver. Usually.

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On Thursday, not so much.

None sniffed the leaderboard after the first round. All were between seven and eight shots behind the leader, and all were in danger of being cut Friday. The U.S. Open remains golf’s cruelest test.

Whereas the Masters is golf’s springtime garden party, a gentle reminder of golf’s gentlemanly roots, the U.S. Open is its rock festival — Golf-A-Palooza, hot and loud and often soggy, overpriced, overcrowded, and gloriously overhyped.

Also, often, unfair. That’s why, on courses as difficult as Oakmont, the toughest of all U.S. Open courses in history, randomness often prevails over excellence. J.J. Spaun, who has one PGA Tour win, in 2022, led at 4-under. Thriston Lawrence, a South African ranked 90th in the world, was second at 3-under. James Nicholas, who qualified at the sectional at Canoe Brook in Summit, N.J., was tied for sixth, at 1-under. He’s ranked No. 502.

The Big Three? Nowhere to be found.

DeChambeau, the defending champion and the YouTube superstar, at 7:29 a.m. was the first off among them. Some 5½ hours later — it is a U.S. Open, and he is the slowest player since Jim Furyk — DeChambeau’s semi-beard was dripping sweat and he was wondering where it all went wrong.

“I wasn’t fully on my game. Pretty disappointed with how I played,“ he said after missing six fairways, five greens, and finishing 3-over. ”I think the rough is incredibly penalizing. Even for a guy like me, I can’t get out of it some of the times, depending on the lie. It was tough. It was a brutal test of golf.”

And it could have been worse. DeChambeau almost took illegal relief from a crosswalk, and was saved from a two-stroke penalty by an alert rules official.

How hard was it? Well, DeChambeau on Tuesday told the DP World Tour that an 18-handicap amateur would be lucky to break 200 in a single round — and that was during a practice round, before the fairways got so firm, the greens got so fast, and 5-inch rough made balls and shoes disappear. Par this week is 70, and the field finished Thursday averaging almost five strokes over par. Only two holes played under par Thursday, Nos. 4 and 17, both of them are par-4s of less than 400 yards.

In DeChambeau’s current absence near the top, LIV’s Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka represented the PGA Tour’s rival. Koepka birdied No. 18 to finish at 2-under, tied for third, with Rahm one shot behind him.

“I’m extremely happy,” Rahm said. “I played some incredible golf to shoot 1-under, which we don’t usually say, right?”

McIlroy’s group teed off 11 minutes after DeChambeau’s, and through nine holes it seemed like Rors, who started on No. 10, had shaken off his post-Masters malaise. Then came holes Nos. 1-9, where he bogeyed four of the first seven holes and doubled-bogeyed the 276-yard, par-3 eighth. He finished 4-over, tied for 67th.

Since finishing T-7 in the Truist Championship at Philadelphia Cricket Club a month ago, McIlroy has broken par in just one of seven rounds and is 13-over in his last three rounds, including an 8-over second round last week at the RBC Canadian Open, where he missed the cut by 12 strokes.

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After reports surfaced at the PGA Championship that his driver failed routine testing before that tournament began, McIlroy embarked on a weeklong media boycott. He resumed that boycott Thursday after his second-nine collapse. He exited the scoring cottage, ignored a USGA official, then shot a smug smirk at the waiting media horde as he strode up the stairs and into the coolness of the clubhouse.

He seemed a bit shell-shocked, but then, the Northern Irishman had been the best part of the worst Euro group since Chumbawamba. They shot 20-over, combined. England’s Justin Rose was 7-over. Rory’s pal, Irishman Shane Lowry, dropped a plus-9. Deflated, he trudged off to lunch.

McIlroy & Co. were typical of Thursday’s carnage. World No. 3 Xander Schauffele was at 2-over. World No. 5 Justin Thomas was plus-6.

The feel-good story wasn’t feeling good, either. Area native Matt Vogt, a 6-foot-6, 34-year-old amateur qualifier who played golf and basketball at Seneca Valley High (he won a state tournament game with a last-second tip-in) and caddied here as a younger man, was so “bummed” by his 12-over result that, when asked about his dental practice in Carmel, he seemed to forget that he now lived in Indiana.

There were a few highlights. On the par-5 fourth hole, Patrick Reed logged just the fourth double-eagle, or albatross, in recorded U.S. Open history and the first since Nick Watney in 2012.

Rahm eagled hole No. 4.

More than anything, this championship has the feel of an unpredictable, if not unfair, result. Don’t be surprised if an unlikely winner emerges. We’ve seen it before at majors with penal course design and setup.

Paul Lawrie was ranked 158th when he won the British Open in 1999 at Carnoustie, the second-hardest course in major-tournament history among courses that have hosted multiple times; it literally brought 19-year-old Sergio Garcia to tears in his mother’s arms after he shot 18-over in Round One.

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Steve Jones was 102nd when he won the U.S. Open in 1996 at Oakland Hills, which Ben Hogan once called a “monster.”

Lucas Glover was 71st when he won the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black in 2009, an unrelenting beast, said Tiger Woods: “This is probably the most difficult golf course we’ve faced, from tee to green.”

Scheffler could see it coming.

“This is probably the hardest golf course that we’ll play, maybe ever,“ he said Tuesday.

He was not wrong. He made the turn at 2-over, got down to 1-over with a birdie on No. 11, but, as play stalled — his group waited on every tee on the back nine — so did his game. He bogeyed Nos. 13 and 15, the latter the third-hardest hole on the course.

“On this golf course, when you get over par early, it can feel like a daunting task,” Scheffler said.

On Round One, the Big Three certainly felt daunted.