The Seven Biggest Storylines Ahead Of The US Open

The US Open comes at a time when there is more confusion in the professional game over its future than ever before. The good news is that Los Angeles Country Club offers something very different and, for the next few days, will provide some welcome respite from the guessing games that are going to be a feature of the coming months.

1) Expect a Hollywood spectacle 

Many golf fans have been licking their lips that Los Angeles Country Club will be hosting the US Open since it was announced in 2015. Since then we’ve witnessed a Walker Cup where an all-star US team demolished Great Britain & Ireland. This will be the first Major in the LA area since Riviera hosted the PGA Championship in 1995 and we have to have to go back to the 1948 US Open for the area’s first US Open when, again, Riviera played host. Expect lots of Hollywood headlines, a vast course, comparisons with Riv and, hopefully, as spectacular a US Open as we’ve had in recent times. We’re expecting a lot from Major debutant LA Country Club and, with the course drying out, it should comfortably deliver.

2) The small matter of the PIF  

Last Tuesday the golfing world was blown up by the ‘merger’ between the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour. Oh, and the DP World Tour. The questions have already begun in the pre-tournament press conferences and, to date, have been flat-batted away with ignorance the common theme. The timing of this week probably couldn’t have come at a better moment. The past 18 months have been dominated by talk of LIV Golf and the subsequent fall-out between some of the game’s big names, and it’s been a fairly toxic time. Now we’re in line for a different type of finger-pointing but this week should prove to be a welcome break from all that. Once the golf gets going we’re all quite good at switching our attentions to what really matters. Roll on Thursday.

3) Will Brooksy be the star show?

That said, many were expecting most of the LIV cohorts to slip away into the night, under-golfed and over-paid, but the lighter schedule seems to have worked a treat for the likes of Brooks Koepka. The now five-time Major winner was second at Augusta before landing a third PGA. A win this week and he’ll have three US Opens. Is there a US Open-type course that doesn’t suit the American? Probably not. It’s a bizarre point to make but his all-round skill at unravelling any type of course might be one of his greatest attributes. 

Otherwise Phil Mickelson, yet again, will be attempting to sign off on a career Grand Slam. We know all about the six second places in his 31 starts and most of us had written off Mickelson as a Major force a few years ago. Then he won the 2021 PGA, beating Koepka head to head, and he was second at Augusta. As unlikely as it would be, if anyone can dull down the noise of the past seven days it’s Mickelson.

4) What about the top two in the world?

The two favourites, ahead of Koepka, are Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler. The American was part of that 2017 Walker Cup team when, in among a team of absolute superstars, he only played twice, winning one and losing one. Home boy Collin Morikawa would win all four of his matches.

To state the bleeding obvious, if Scheffler putts OK then he’ll feature (win). He was a ridiculous 20.69 strokes gained from tee to green at The Memorial, the second best in the PGA Tour ShotLink era, starting in 2004. Conversely he was bottom of the putting stats at Muirfield Village, losing 8.5 shots to the field. He was second behind Matt Fitzpatrick last year and second behind Koepka at Oak Hill. So good is Scheffler these days that he’s almost overdue a second Major.

Rahm now has that second Major W and he was the last Californian Major winner at Torrey Pines. The Spaniard has been, relatively speaking, quiet of late following his Masters triumph which was all of two months ago. He’s had the odd putting wobble too but he’ll be on many punters’ coupons and rightly so, even at pretty slim odds. Should he pull it off he’ll join some rarified company, doubling up in a Major year. 

5) Will Rory be the story?

If there was to be a Hollywood storyline then McIlroy would be many fans’ leading man. He was scheduled to talk to the media on Monday but that was cancelled which is almost certainly a good thing. For too long he’s been wheeled out as the mouthpiece of the PGA Tour and it’s been an exhausting year for the Northern Irishman. We’re always prone to looking at recent results and his last three starts have all been top 10s on the PGA Tour, including the PGA. There have been a couple of wonky final rounds but his game is there or thereabouts so there are more positives than negatives. The US Open was McIlroy’s first Major and that was two months after that Augusta meltdown. Since then it’s been a mixed bag but his last four US Opens have also been top 10s - fingers crossed.

6) The rough stuff

The last time we saw Bermuda grass at this Championship was at Pinehurst in 2005 and it plays differently to your typical US Open rough. Generally speaking it performs better in warmer climates and, according to the USGA, it creates a ‘green canopy that looks like it might be easy to play from. However, just beneath the surface are the stiff and intricately woven stems that produce great resistance to the clubhead compared to cool-season rough’. It is expected to be capped at 3.5 to 4 inches.

Cam Smith had this to say after seeing a few holes of LACC.

“We're used to that kind of really thick, juicy rough. It's a little bit different here. I think the Bermuda rough, I think you can get kind of lucky or unlucky. There's patches out there where they're actually quite thin and you can get away with kind of a bad shot and other patches where if you're in there it's no good at all. I think that's a little bit different.”

7) A second-shot course

Another local boy, Max Homa, is the course-record holder here with a 61 at the 2013 Pac-12 Championship. The course underwent a restoration project in 2010 by Gil Hanse and the home stretch is particularly tough but Homa would birdie four holes on the bounce from the 14th. Nobody will likely come close to that.

The par-70 North Course measures 7,423 yards and isn’t your typical US Open test. It’s a vast property with equally wide fairways in places and there are five short holes and five par 5s. It starts with a par 5 and it has a drivable par 4 at the 6th.

A big talking point will be those short holes. The 7th measures 284 yards but that is eclipsed at the 11th which is six yards longer. On the flipside the 15th, and this was brilliant during the Walker Cup how it tripped up player after player, is 124 yards on the card and can play as short as 80-90 yards. Imagine that, in a Major.

“I typically love short par-3s. I think a lot of the greatest courses that we play around the world all have a short par 4 and a short par 3, and they can end up being kind of the trickiest,” explained Smith.

There will be a premium on length, but not overly so, with more of a focus on your second shot. Berry Henson has played on every tour under the sun and is making his US Open debut this week.

“The course is spectacular. I can't think of a hole that I don't like. It's fun to play. It's hard. It's big. If you hit it in the right places, it's playable. If you hit it in the wrong places, you're going to struggle. Around the greens, around the bunkers is very, very difficult. It's going to be difficult to run the ball up around the greens. You're not going to be able to just hit it willy-nilly. You're going to have to pick your spots and play to proper places.”

The last three US Opens have had winning scores of -6. Not many are predicting double figures this week and, obviously it depends on the set-up, but we really should be guaranteed a genuine spectacle.