OAKMONT, Pa. — Sam Burns avoided a meltdown that ruined his opening round at the U.S. Open and wound up with a big par save on his last hole for a 5-under 65 and the 36-hole lead. Best of all, he was long gone before the real calamity arrived late Friday afternoon at Oakmont.
Rory McIlroy threw a club in disgust and smashed a tee marker. For punishment, he gets to come back for two more rounds because he birdied the 18th to make the cut.
Shane Lowry absent-mindedly picked up his golf ball on the 14th green without marking it.
Thriston Lawrence became the only player to reach 6-under par. He promptly made six bogeys and a double bogey over his next nine holes. Thomas Detry can appreciate the suffering. He was challenging for the lead until three double bogeys in a three-hole stretch.
And then there was Phil Mickelson, in what likely is his 34th and final U.S. Open. He was just outside the top 20 until two double bogeys in his last four holes for a 74 to miss the cut.
The cut might not be official until Saturday morning. If the second round wasn’t brutal enough, play was halted by bad weather just as Lawrence had a 4-foot putt on the last hole to finish a wild round that was approaching six hours. The day ended with rain pounding the course.
Scottie Scheffler, coming off three wins in his last four starts, had his sixth straight round over par in the U.S. Open with a game that didn’t look familiar. He still scratched out a 71 and was seven shots behind.
“Today was, I think with the way I was hitting it, easily a day I could have been going home,” Scheffler said. “And battled pretty hard to stay in there. I’m 4 over. We’ll see what the lead is after today, but around this golf course I don’t think by any means I’m out of the tournament.”
Burns was a regular birdie machine — at Oakmont, no less — playing in the morning under cloud cover and little wind and flushing his irons so well that all six of his birdies were inside 10 feet.
He was at 3-under 137, one shot ahead of J.J. Spaun, who fell out of a share of the lead with a bogey on the 18th, his sixth in his round of 72.
Burns and Viktor Hovland (68) each have 11 subpar holes over 36 holes, the most in three U.S. Opens at Oakmont since it switched to a par 70 in 2007. Hovland was two shots behind.
Only three players remained under par, the fewest in seven years the U.S. Open.
Burns can only imagine where he would be if not for a shocker of a finish Thursday, when he was one shot out of the lead and then played his last four holes in 5-over par.
“I played really well yesterday other than the finishing holes,” Burns said. “So I think today was just kind of getting mentally ready to come out and try to put a good round together.
“It was unfortunate, but there was too much good to focus on the little bit of bad.”
Hovland twice holed 50-foot shots from off the green — a putt from the collar on No. 10 when he started his round, and chipping in for eagle on the reachable par-4 17th. He also chopped up the second hole for a double bogey. But he was happy to be done.
“Definitely tired, exhausted because you’re just focusing so much on every single shot,” he said. “I’m very pleased with 2-under par, but also I know that I was 4 under at some point. So it’s like very pleased, but also, ‘Man, that could have been a little bit lower.’ But we’re in a really nice spot after two days, so I’m just kind of happy.”
Adam Scott, playing in his 96th consecutive major, had another 70 and joined Ben Griffin (71) at even-par 140.
Burns is among the top putters on the PGA Tour, though he did miss a 5-foot putt to win a playoff in the Canadian Open last week and three-putted the fourth playoff hole to lose. This was more about staying in position and eliminating as much stress as possible on a course that can be relentless.
No putt was more important than his 20-foot par putt up the ridge on No. 9 to finish off a great round the right way. He tugged his drive to the left on the tough par-4 ninth into a ditch, took a penalty drop, hit safely on the green and made the putt.
“That putt was, I don’t know, 6 feet of break,” Burns said. “Yeah, it was a nice one to make for sure.”
Scheffler was among those who had little room left for mistakes. He opened with a birdie on No. 10, but then didn’t find another fairway until he came up just short of the green on the 17th, 50 feet away for eagle. Four putts later, he had a bogey.
It was a grind all way, battling his swing and the rough, making a number of key par putts that kept the round from getting worse.
“Mentally, this was as tough as I’ve battled for the whole day,” Scheffler said. “There was a lot of stuff going on out there that was not going in my favor necessarily. Overall, definitely not out of the tournament.”
Neither is Brooks Koepka, who had a 74 but was only five behind.
Jon Rahm went from red numbers to red in the face with a 75, leaving him in the same spot as Scheffler. Rahm, who took 35 putts, was asked if his score could illustrate how tough Oakmont was playing.
“Honestly, too annoyed and too mad right now to think about any perspective,” he said. “Very frustrated. Very few rounds of golf I played in my life where I think I hit good putts and they didn’t sniff the hole. So it’s frustrating.”
That’s not just Oakmont. That’s most U.S. Opens. In that respect, Hovland was a curious contender. He has been all over the place with his swing, his expectations, his confidence. He won during the Florida swing and is making progress. Perhaps no expectations helped him.
“For some reason I’ve just been in a really nice mental state this week,” Hovland said. “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.”
