OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — Gary Woodland, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, waved the rules official over. Certainly, a ball buried that deep must have embedded into the soft turf below when his off-line drive on the 12th hole landed with a thunk, about 10 yards right of the fairway.
No such luck, the official told him. The rough at Oakmont is just that deep — and thick and hard to escape. Instead of taking a free drop that's allowed for an embedded ball, Woodland had to replace it where he found it, get out his wedge, take a hack and pray — leading to his first blemish on the way to a round of 3-over 73.
His was a common story during the opening round of the U.S. Open on Thursday, where the rough was gnarly, thick and sometimes downright impossible.
“Even for a guy like me, I can’t get out of it some of the times, depending on the lie,” said defending champion Bryson DeChambeau, who makes a living on overpowering golf courses and gouging out of the thick stuff. “It was tough. It was a brutal test of golf.”
DeChambeau was at even par when he nuked his second shot over the green and into the rough in back of the 12th green. The grass opened up his club face on the third and rifled the ball into more rough. He needed two more shots to advance the ball from there to the fringe. He also shot 73.
“If you miss the green, you miss it by too much, you then try to play an 8-yard pitch over the rough onto a green that’s brick hard running away from you,” Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre said, in describing some of the challenges Oakmont presents after his round of even-par 70. “It just feels like every shot is on a knife edge.”
Punishing the best in the world is exactly how the superintendents at what might be America's toughest golf course planned it.
For the record, they do mow this rough. If they didn't, there's a chance some of the grass would pillow over on top of itself, allowing the ball to perch up instead of sink down. The mowers here have blades that use suction to pull the grass upward as they cut, helping the grass stand up straight and creating the physics that allow the ball to sink to the bottom.
Which is exactly where Rory McIlroy found his third shot, then his fourth, after failing to reach the fairway from the deep fescue after his wayward drive on the par-5 fourth. He made 6 there on his way to 74.
On No. 3, top-ranked Scottie Scheffler hit his tee shot into the famous church pew bunker, then cooked his second shot up the hill and over the green. The rough opened up his clubface on the chip, sending the ball into the second cut of fringe. He got down in two to save bogey there.
Patrick Reed hit the shot of the day. It was a 286-yarder from the fairway that hit the green and dropped in for only the fourth albatross — a 2 on a par 5 — in recorded U.S. Open history.
If only he could have stopped there. He closed the day with a triple-bogey 7 that included a shot from a downhill lie just outside a fairway bunker that he advanced about 40 yards. He shot 73.
"If you get in the rough, good luck," Reed said.
Maybe J.J. Spaun figured it out the best.
With the dew still slickening the grass for his early tee time, Spaun chipped in from a gnarly lie on his first hole to open the Open with a birdie. He only hit eight of 14 fairways and 12 of 18 greens, but that was good enough for a 4-under 66, which sent him home with the lead and a chance to watch the afternoon players suffer.
“I like feeling uncomfortable,” Spaun said.
Not everyone did.
Austen Truslow might have finished the day tied with McIlroy at 74 had it not taken three shots — one of them a whiff — to move the ball from the greenside rough onto the putting surface on his last hole, the par-4 ninth. Truslow made 6 — one of 137 scores of double bogey or worse in Round 1 — and shot 76.
Maybe the most fitting scene came late in the day, after Byeong Hun An tapped in for a par on No. 18 to finish his own round of 74. He plucked the ball from the hole and tried casually tossing it to a boy waiting behind the ropes. The ball bounced twice, but got stuck in the rough, so An had to walk over, pick it up and hand it to the kid.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Eddie Pells, The Associated Press
