Among the 3,517 things that make Oakmont difficult: its slick and sloping greens.
After his second-round 68, Viktor Hovland spoke of the importance of distance control and lag putting at Oakmont, a point echoed by the Tour’s best putter, Sam Burns, who shot a inconceivable 65 on Friday and then admitted that he wasn’t even trying to make his 15- to 20-footers and was instead trying to “snuggle” them next to the hole. Jon Rahm, after a second-round 75, said he was frustrated by the number of “good putts” he struck that “didn’t sniff the hole.”
On Thursday, the fiery surfaces got the best of Jason Day, who missed five swipes from 12 feet or closer, gave up 1.61 strokes to the field in putting and shot a gloomy six-over 76.
Following his round, Day went to the back of Oakmont’s sprawling 9th green, which serves as a practice area. Day’s TaylorMade Spider Tour putter didn’t feel quite right to him, so he took matters into his own hands and bent his putter into a more pleasing shape.
“Just manually bent it myself, stood on it,” Day said Friday after his second round. “That’s kind of how I used to do it back in the day. It just hadn’t been looking very good to me personally, kind of looks a little bit hooded, the grip’s on a little bit closed too, so that’s not a positive for me. But I bent it enough to make it look more open, which is good.”
More like great.
In his second round, Day’s putting went from meh to marvelous. On a day when the scoring average was hanging around 76.4, Day made four birdies and an eagle and shot a three-under 67; as of this writing, he’d picked up 1.66 strokes on the field on the greens. Among his highlights were a 24-footer he jarred for birdie at 7 and the 19-footer he made at 12 for an eagle 3.
“Putted a lot better today,” he said. (And, by the way, yes, the rules permit between-round putter tinkering.)
Day had an outstanding season on the greens a year ago, finishing 9th on Tour (+0.541) in strokes gained: putting. This year, he has been far less proficient, ranking 113th (-0.060) in the category.
