Placeholder while loading article actions
BROOKLINE, Mass. – So who do you like in this six-man wrapper near the top of the U.S. Open standings after the opening round? Do you catch players known only for golf egg heads and occupied in places 592, 445, 296, 130 or 105? Do you take the English guy who ranks 445, whose clubs got stuck at Toronto airport and had to walk around here on Sunday with just one wedge? Take the 592nd-ranked Swede who hadn’t been in a major in five years, but who entered it after playing his last three qualifying holes in the dark of Ohio, then not qualifying and then entering when did Martin Kaymer retire?
What about Prince Rory McIlroy?
Sure you do in the latter, but they’re all up there, so many that on Thursday at 5:42 p.m., there was a seven-way tie between some people you know and others you never thought you’d know: MJ Daffue, Joel Dahmen, Matt Fitzpatrick, Adam Hadwin, David Lingmerth, McIlroy and Callum Tarren.
That’s right, and then, in the evening, they had shaken a little: Canadian Hadwin in the lead at 4 below par and a simple tie at five for the second between Englishman Tarren, Swede Lingmerth, South African Daffue, the American Dahmen and the global icon McIlroy (who is from Northern Ireland).
“You’d have 67 around this course any day,” McIlroy had said before, and you’d do it because five people clearly did.
The group remained thick and populated below Hadwin’s 66, although it lost Fitzpatrick, the hip-hop selection of acquaintances, when it reached number 18. Fitzpatrick would be the 27-year-old Englishwoman from Sheffield, ranked in the 18th place in the world that the U.S. won in 2013. He is a fan of this same country club field that rarely performs major, which makes his experience here unusual in the field, and he approached last month the PGA Championship in Tulsa, lamenting its 3 out of 73 close by compromising accuracy with: “Shot. Level pair today, and I win straight.”
Svrluga: Rory McIlroy defeated Phil Mickelson, but the era of golf between us and them is just beginning
On Thursday evening, again in the 2 p.m. that I hit and I see the places where I was. I think that’s why I’m a little more comfortable. “
He prospered in a field that seemed to wish the players well, but which he could not bury. No one got 5 below all day, only Hadwin and McIlroy never got 4 below, but a lot of people were below par – 25 of them all. They included 12 people in 1 under and two former U.S. Open champions (Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose) among the seven in 2 under.
He became the second consecutive major in which McIlroy announced a restraint soon, after his first 65 in the PGA. (He finished eighth.) “I came in tomorrow with the ‘Let’s keep it up’ mentality instead of ‘Where’s the cut line?’ or whatever, ”he said, having refrained from digging into the chasm he has had during some of the 28 longest and most blurry majors since his last major victory at the 2014 PGA Championship.
With a closing and 62 wins at the Canadian Open on Sunday recently in the books, McIlroy asked if he is motivated by the strong dropouts in the LIV Golf, backed by Saudi Arabia. “Not really,” he said. “It’s been eight years since I won a major and I just want to get my hands on it again.”
Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa fight for the weird to start the U.S. Open
It started early, and those who did often prospered. Five holes without wind, defending champion Jon Rahm had a moment when he said, “I was thinking, ‘Let’s blow up the roof of this place.’ The reigning British Open champion Collin Morikawa, a two-time big winner at the age of 25, called it “achievable”, an abandoned word if not condemned at most US Open. Both shot 1 under 69. Then Rahm et al began to feel the crosswinds, and the crosswinds became lingering in the afternoon, and the results settled in good if not wild.
All the while, the galleries were introduced to the people.
Here came Hadwin, 34, at the end of the day, ranked 105th, third place among Canadians, his only PGA Tour winning the 2017 Valspar Championship.
“This has been a year in progress, really,” Hadwin said. “I think we started a trip last March, [swing coach Mark Blackburn] and I. Not to change the golf swing, but to change the face of the club in the swing, which can be more difficult in itself.
Here comes Tarren, 31, ranked 445th, participating in two lifelong majors (the 2019 U.S. Open the other), so make it two majors in which his clubs failed to reach luggage collection. “I am going there [from Toronto], without clubs, “he said.” There were five more players on my flight. They all had golf clubs, so it was the second U.S. Open I played, and the second time, there are no golf clubs. ” useful: Canadians.
Here came Lingmerth, 34, in 592nd place, seven years after winning the 2015 Memorial. “Yeah, I’ve had a tough road since the end of 2018 basically,” he said. “He had a lot of injuries and whatever. There have been tough days, without lying, and you start asking yourself those questions. But I’m pretty stubborn and I’m not one to give up.”
Here came Dahmen, 34, ranked 130th and in his ninth major and savoring a course kind enough to refrain from demanding that everyone hook him like Hercules (or McIlroy). “If you look at my game and who I am,” he said, “for me touring for six years and playing so well is probably a success, some would say. I wasn’t totally American. I wasn’t the one. better … I knew I could compete here because it’s not too long, yes, like the Winged Foot [in 2020] it stood out to me. I didn’t have a chance to fight there. “
And here came the 33-year-old Daffue, whose life changed at 11 when he and his father played a round with two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, a South African compatriot who still the soul. “We never really talked about tips,” he said. “The only time I asked him, I said,‘ Hey, how are you doing so well under pressure at the US Opens? He said, “I’ve done it a few times.” It makes a lot of sense, in fact. The more you do it, the more you get used to it. “
And of course here came McIlroy. You’ve heard it before.