Let’s go back to May 18th, it hasn’t even been a month. The first round of the PGA Championship was being contested at the East course of Oak Hill (Rochester, New York). In the previous days, by the way, the voices of the players had warned with meridian clarity: you have to get used to the idea that this is a US Open. They were not bluffing: everything was confirmed as soon as the game started. The rough, fierce; the fairways, mostly narrow and the shooting lines very challenging; only two par 5s and with a lot of crumb, you had to work hard for the birdie; truly monstrous holes and major flag positions, among other niceties.
The average number of strokes on that first day of the PGA went to 73.69, almost two and a half strokes more than in the first round of the US Open (71.32) that was contested yesterday at the North course of the Los Angeles Country Club. In Rochester, barely 16 players finished below par on that first day, compared to the 37 who won yesterday at the field in Los Angeles. In any case, it is advisable to wait and see if at the end of the week the roles have indeed been reversed, with the PGA being a US Open and the US Open a PGA.
To say it all: it’s true, that May 18th the wind blew more, but nothing of gales or hurricanes. And the voices of the players in the days leading up to this US Open were not the same as a month ago. That, the Oak Hill thing, “was a US Open” with all the letters and no half measures. That’s how they expressed it. This, the Los Angeles Country Club thing, too, no doubt, but with nuances, many nuances: “there’s quite a birdie out there”, “the fairways are generous”… Things like that have been said. Always with due caution, but they have been said.
There, at the PGA, there were those who really thought in the days leading up to it that the accumulated PAR in 72 holes would easily make the top ten, if not the top 5 (in the end, the PAR was placed twelfth, so such prediction was not far off). In California lands, let’s be honest, not even the most pessimistic predicted such a sieve, whether they said it out loud or not.
Is it worse? Is it better this way? It is as it is and there will be opinions to suit all tastes. The PGA at Oak Hill with that Saturday of downpours included, was a tough test and, in general, a wonderful tournament. And this US Open is not too hard to find the good side, unless one still thinks that the only mission of the USGA was, is and will be to annoy the high competition golfer (a wink: this has always been one of its main objectives, of course, but not its main reason for being).
It’s curious. In that first round of the PGA there were fewer big names that stayed at the bottom of the classification. Unfortunately, Jon Rahm was one of them with that 76 that stuck in his side like a dagger. Cantlay, Spieth, Fitzpatrick or Hatton also had a hard time. Yesterday’s list is longer: Hatton, Spieth, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay and Day repeat, and others like Thomas, Morikawa, Matsuyama, Fleetwood, Reed, Scott… And Brooks Koepka are added.
It turns out that in the end the USGA was right in its day: high-level golfers, we make things difficult for you, (sometimes almost impossible, it’s true) precisely to identify the best among the best.
By the way, speaking of Koepka, whose 71-stroke card, one over par, was perhaps the biggest surprise of the day. If he said it and the facts have proven him right: “birdie festivals are not for me, they are not my style”. So, going out to play in the afternoon shift, he was probably already wilted with those two 62-stroke cards from Fowler and Schauffele shining brightly at the top. (Let’s be serious: you can’t talk about a birdie festival either, but it’s true that Brooks (and most of them), yesterday, the pars didn’t taste like birdie, at least not all of them, which is the position in which he feels at an advantage over the rest).
Anyway, let’s give them their time. To Koepka and to the USGA. To Koepka, because at Oak Hill, on Thursday, he delivered a 72, two more on the day, and was six strokes from the lead and three from the top ten of the tournament, so that was not the best start either and we saw how he had plenty of margin to return and even settle at the top. And to the USGA… Because nobody conceives that those greens (what a wonder: how the ball runs) are not going to gain in firmness and speed, nor that they are not going to show a little more bad temper when placing certain flags.
