Ferocious Oakmont ready to identify golf's ironman
Scottie Scheffler on the 10th hole during a practice round ahead of the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. (Logan Whitton/USGA)
Ask the world’s best players what they face at Oakmont in the 125th US Open and the adjectives flow.
The great Pennsylvania course hosts for a record tenth time and while the identity of the winner remains a mystery, there will be pain, torture, hurt and heartache.
Perhaps the only thing more certain than suffering at Oakmont is that it will do what the USGA demands: identify the best player.
The 1935 Oakmont champion Sam Parks Jnr might not be household name, but who hasn’t heard of Tommy Armour (1927), Ben Hogan (1953), Jack Nicklaus (1962), Johnny Miller (1973), Larry Nelson (1983), Ernie Els (1994), Angel Cabrera (2007) or Dustin Johnson (2016)?
The wettest Oakmont spring on record has taken some of the sting out of a 7,372-yard. par-70 monster and with a chance of weekend rain, the USGA will likely turn the screw to ensure few, bar the champion, break par.
Given all he has achieved to date, Scottie Scheffler is the shortest-priced US Open favourite since Tiger Woods in 2009.
He’s notched three wins in his last four starts and possesses more control, mental resilience and competitive nous than anyone in the game right now, one has to wonder if anyone can stop the world’s most dominant player in the majors since 2022 in all the major statistical categories.
“I think great players are ones who rise to the occasion and ones who know how to play coming down the stretch in important events,” Nicklaus said after Scheffler followed his win in the PGA with a successful defence of the Memorial.
His dominance over the last three years has been astonishing.
“He's a more complete player at his best than all of these players were at their best,” Paul McGinley said on Golf Channel as he analysed the game’s stars at their peak — McIlroy in 2014, Jordan Spieth in 2015, Jason Day in 2016 and Jon Rahm in 2023. “And that's what makes us think that, going forward, this guy is going to be something special.”
What impresses McGinley is Scheffler’s ability to find a way. After all, McIlroy wasn’t the only player to have his driver ruled non-conforming at the PGA.
As the Holywood star said, “It wasn't a big deal for Scottie, so it shouldn't have been a big deal for me.”
Scheffler struggled with a new driver at Quail Hollow but still managed to go into the weekend just three shots off the lead and then win by five.
“That takes a lot,” McGinley said. “It just shows you the mentality of this guy… As well as he has all those other traits, the mental ability to compete is what I love most about Scheffler.”
So, who can stop him?
McIlroy is playing better than his drifting odds suggest and has pride at stake.
"I think I learnt a lot on Thursday and Friday last week and did a good bit of practice at home and feel like I'm in a better place with everything going into this week,” said McIlroy, who also felt Oakmont’s bite.
At the 333-yard second, where he laid up with an iron, he watched his wedge dance around the pin before spinning off the green, leaving a 40-yard pitch.
Shane Lowry also had troubles.
A bunkered tee shot at the ninth forced him to chip out, but after missing the green with his third, his fourth from heavy rough left him a lengthy putt just to save bogey.
Given how everything slopes towards the traffic-filled Pennsylvania Turnpike that bisects the course, the severely sloped and lightning-fast greens make most putts treacherous, especially from above the hole.
“It's going to be a great test,” said McIlroy, who played the front nine with Lowry and Lucas Glover at 6:45 am. “It’s very penal if you miss. Sometimes it's penal if you don't miss.”
Even after playing just 27 holes in practice to McIlroy’s 18, Lowry reckons it’s enough,
“It's exhausting,” he said of the concentration required to avoid turning a mistake into a disaster. “If you're not ready by now, you're probably not going to be ready to play. It's going to take a lot of mental resolve this week.”
Even for a man with magical hands, he knows the rough is no place to be. Chipping from greenside cabbage at the first, his delicate third rolled off the green into more rough on the far side.
“This is probably the hardest golf course that we'll play, maybe ever,” Scheffler said.
Second at Brookline in 2022 and third at Los Angeles CC the following year, Scheffler will likely face stiff competition from two former champions..
Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau is going for his third win since 2021, but even the big-hitting LIV Golf star is apprehensive.
“I think everybody knows this is probably the toughest golf course in the world right now and you have to hit the fairways, you have to hit greens and you have to two-putt, worst-case scenario,” he said.
Xander Schauffele pointed out, you may be forced to take not one spoon of medicine but two.
“There's going to be a point where you lay up into a bad spot and it goes to laying up again from that lay up spot,” he said. “If you're a premier ball striker, you'll be licking your chops.”
Rahm fits that bill.
“I think you embrace it,” he said. “You know how great it is. But to be honest, once you start the tournament, all of those things kind of go away. It's business at that point. It's time to post a score.”
Tiger Woods is absent but even the 15-time major winner knows this is serious business.
“You just have to hit the golf ball well around there,” Woods said. “There is no faking around Oakmont. The golf course is big, yes, but there is no way around it. You just have to hit the golf ball well, and it favours longer hitters, just because of the greens, the complexes.
"It just helps so much to be coming with shorter iron, to be able to stop the ball. It's about missing the ball on correct spots because if you don't, it's an auto-bogey.”
