Burns fires his way to the top
Tour's top putter leads at Oakmont after 65; McIlroy still mum; Lowry ready to go home
Sam Burns is the new boss of the moss at Oakmont and on tour (Mike Ehrmann/USGA)
OAKMONT, Pa. — The conclusion to his first round of the U.S. Open is the sort of finish that might send a golfer into the abyss of negativity.
Playing quite nicely through 14 holes at Oakmont Country Club on Thursday, Sam Burns — coming off a playoff loss on Sunday at the RBC Canadian Open — was 3-under par and within a shot of the lead. Then he played the last four holes in 5-over to shoot 72, ruining a great start to the tournament and, quite possibly, ruining his week.
Not so it turns out.
Burns, 28, took the positives out of that first day day and channeled it into his second round on Friday, when he shot the low round of the tournament — a 5-under 65.
By the end of the day, his 3-under total turned out to be good enough for the 36-hole lead by one shot over first-round leader J.J. Spaun and two up on Viktor Hovland. They are the only three players in red figures at Oakmont. Adam Scott and Ben Griffin are three shots back at even par.
“I played a really nice round of golf and I think you get out of position here and the golf course will bite you,” Burns said of his reset after the first-round finish. “It was unfortunate, but there was too much good to focus on the little bit of bad.”
Part of the bad was an uncharacteristically poor putting day. Burns leads the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting and had a good day Friday with 27 putts, ranking third in the field. He was outside the top 100 during the first round, although his troubles toward the end of the round went beyond that.
“I think at times, trying to be a little too perfect around major championship golf courses, and I think especially around here, honestly it kind of forces you to take your medicine because a lot of times that’s the only option you have,” Burns said.
“I think for this golf course, you really just have to free it up. It’s too hard to try to guide it around here. You’re going to hit some in the rough, you’re going to hit some in some bad spots, you might as well do it with authority.
“Yeah, it’s going to be a fun weekend.”
Burns’ 65 tied for the third lowest in a U.S. Open at Oakmont. It didn’t rival the 63 in the final round of the 1973 U.S. Open by Johnny Miller but it was the lowest of the week. The only other round to best Burns at Oakmont was a 64 by Loren Roberts in 1994, the year he lost in a three-man playoff to Ernie Els.
“I played really well yesterday other than the finishing holes,” said Burns, who lost in a four-hole playoff last Sunday to Ryan Fox at the RBC Canadian Open after shooting a Sunday-best 62 in the final round. “So I think today was just kind of getting mentally ready to come out and try to put a good round together. I feel like I’ve been playing well coming off last week and into this week and my round yesterday. Really just trying to get yourself in position out here and give yourself as many looks as you can.”
While Spaun held pretty steady to shoot 72 and stay 2-under, Hovland made a strong move with a 68 that was only marred by a double bogey on the second hole — his 11th of the day. He handled his mishap with the same stoic grace at Burns did his Thursday finish.
“Actually made a nice two-putt for a double bogey,” Hovland said of his most unfortunate adventure on the second hole. “And I just told Shea [Knight, his caddie], ‘Yeah, I just got U.S. Opened right there.’ There’s not much you can do about it. At least I was playing really well up until that point, so you’ve just got to go back to what you were doing before.
“Yeah, for some reason I’ve just been in a really nice mental state this week,” Hovland added. “It’s like, both my rounds have been very up and down. I feel like a couple times if it would have happened at another tournament, for example, I could have potentially lost my mind there a little bit. But I felt like I kept things together very well.”
Viktor Hovland is ready for a “fun” weekend in contention (Harvey Jamison/USGA)
With rounds taking between 5½ to 6 hours, Hovland endorsed a theory that the slow pace of play actually might be beneficial for once.
“That’s probably a fair point. I’d say just personally, when I’ve had a couple bad holes back-to-back, I tend to rush. I tend to really get quick,” he said. “Out here when the rounds are so long, you can’t really do that. As you said, you have to reset, and yeah, you might have had a bad hole on the last hole and then you’re sitting on the tee box for 10, 20 minutes. At least it gives you a good opportunity to get that out of your system and reset and think about the next shot.”
The 27-year-old Norwegian is finding the groove he had in 2023, when he finished runner-up to Brooks Koepka in the PGA Championship and eventually won the FexEx Cup. He heads into what will be a wet and difficult weekend feeling pretty good about where he is despite the bites Oakmont has taken out of him.
“It’s a combination of a lot of different things,” Hovland said. “Definitely tired, exhausted because you’re just focusing so much on every single shot. I’m very pleased with 2-under par, but also I know that I was 4-under at some point, and missed a short putt on 6 and three-putted No. 8, even though I did make really nice two-putts on 7 and 9. So it’s like very pleased, but also, man, that could have been a little bit lower, as well. But we’re in a really nice spot after two days, so I’m just kind of happy.”
Rory McIlroy extends streak of consecutive major rounds without comment to six (Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
McIlroy ekes out another major cut
Rory McIlroy birdied 15 and 18 late Friday to make the U.S. Open cut with a shot to spare. As a Daily Drive reader service, here is the full unabridged transcript of every Rory McIlroy post-round interview at major championships since completing the career grand slam at the Masters.
“No, I’m good.”
Just a reminder, Scottie Scheffler once spoke for more than 20 minutes after getting thrown in jail before the second round of a major championship.
Shane Lowry, the 2016 runner-up at Oakmont, had a miserable 17-over experience this time. (Warren Little/Getty Images)
Lowry turns the page to Portrush return
By Alex Miceli
OAKMONT, Pa. — Shane Lowry had more blemishes on his card than a young kid with acne. After a 79 that including an eagle on Thursday, it was an 8-over 78 on Friday, including two double bogeys, five bogeys and an early trip home.
The lone birdie on the par-4 seventh hole was just Oakmont’s way of testing the Irishman’s mental resolve. It was as if finishing 17-over par and T134 wasn’t rough enough for the man who finished runner-up in 2016 at Oakmont.
Lowry couldn’t put the 48 hours into words when asked what happened over the two days. Another feature of the difficulty of playing Oakmont is the five-plus inches of rough and greens that looked oiled and polished.
“I let it do what I sort of said I wouldn’t do,” Lowry said, explaining his shortened week in Western Pennsylvania. “I just made, obviously, too many doubles, too many big mistakes, and then when they got a couple of chances, I didn’t really do much right, to be honest, other than I drove the ball as well as I’ve probably driven the ball in a long time.”
Inside the ropes, Oakmont is a beast. And even with Lowry hitting 17 of 28 fairways (23rd in the field), it did nothing to stop his early exit.
By his own estimate, Lowry’s season has been a strange sort of year. He’s seen some great results and feels very satisfied with himself. His majors ledger, however, has some unsightly scars — a closing 81 at Augusta to plummet from contention; a missed cut at Quail Hollow; and a relative no-show at an Oakmont course where he was widely expected to contend. After a second straight missed major cut — after missing only two major cuts in the previous 23 majors — Lowry goes back to the drawing board.
Lowry has one more event (next week’s signature Travelers Championship) before he heads home to Ireland for six weeks. His next major opportunity will be an emotional one as he returns to the Open Championship at Royal Portrush, where he won the claret jug in 2019.
The stresses of Oakmont hit the pinnacle for Lowry on the 14th hole when he picked up his ball off the green before marking it.
“Probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” Lowry said of the gaffe that incurred a one-shot penalty. “I just picked the ball up, had the ball in my hand, turned (and caddie Darren Reynolds said) ‘What are you doing?’”
Lowry said his mind was somewhere else, but he still fought.
“I still tried, like I fought over every shot,” Lowry said. “I still tried over every shot. That’s all you can do, I suppose.”
It never seemed a fair fight, and Lowry would gladly like to forget this week.