Amateur golfer Chris Crawford, who is playing in his first major tournament, watched his second-string caddie go down at Oakmont Country Club on Tuesday during a practice round for the major.
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But Jason Day, the world’s current No. 1 golfer, enters as the favorite.
Scott, who played at Oakmont at the 2007 US Open but missed the cut after rounds of 76 and 82, believes the course’s rough is thicker this year.
Jason Day is the best player in golf.
The recent Irish Open victor has been in good form of late, his lowest finish in the last three months has been a 12 place finish and is happy with his game, particularly his putting which will be tested to the limits this week.
Oakmont also boasts 210 bunkers, including the infamous “Church Pews” on the third hole, fiendishly fast greens and the longest par three in U.S. Open history.
Danny Willett makes his debut in the U.S. Open at Oakmont.
Oakmont has changed over the decades, said four-time major victor Els, but the fast-running layout outside Pittsburgh hosting its record ninth U.S. Open remains a daunting challenge. Spieth has two wins this year already and his putting ability should come in handy this week, as the greens are very challenging.
Mickelson, who is competing in his 26th U.S. Open, understands how big one win would be.
Spieth had a slight advantage past year being at Chambers Bay, where he tried to qualify for the U.S. Amateur and where his caddie, Michael Greller, used to work in the summers when he wasn’t teaching math. “This is the tournament I want to win the most to complete the four majors”. We think Rose can make another run at a title this weekend. He led last year’s British Open at the halfway point, before wild winds and the Old Course knocked him down.
Returning to the course which started Els on the path to becoming world number one three years after his win in 1994, was a source of inspiration.
“If you lay up or you just go for the safer side to the right side and the pin’s tucked in the left, you might be dead”, Grace said.
“I feel like I handled that situation good”, Johnson said of his Chambers Bay experience. He practiced Monday at Oakmont and flew to San Diego that night to attend his daughter Sophia’s eighth-grade graduation. “You never play with a kind of a loose attitude, where we all play our best”.
He told his official website: “You have to maintain your belief and just keep grinding, keep working hard on your game as I am at the moment, because honestly things can click together in the space of one round”.
But then, Scott thinks that his rivals may be about to give Oakmont too much respect regardless of whether the heavens open or not.
“As I said in the past, I’ve got to be more careful in my associations going forward”, Mickelson said. This is a whole different style of golf, something that over the years I’ve become very effective at playing. “I do feel it’s a bit of a leveller, these greens”.
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“There’s something about the majors that gets a lot of focus from me, a lot of the best of me, and that’s been basically the case for all of my golfing career”.
