Every few years, the U.S. Open returns to Oakmont Country Club, and the world’s best arrive knowing that they are likely about to get their teeth kicked in for the next week.
They do so mainly without complaint. This is, after all, Oakmont.
Bryson DeChambeau dubbed the Henry Fownes’ masterpiece the “toughest golf course in the world.” Xander Schauffele noted that at the U.S. Open, the carnage is the point.
For Rory McIlroy, his first dose of Oakmont in 2025 came with a humbling and shocking score during a scouting trip where he played with Adam Scott.
“Last Monday felt impossible,” McIlroy said Tuesday at his pre-tournament press conference. “I birdied the last two holes for 81. It felt pretty good. It didn’t feel like I played that bad.”
Last time Oakmont hosted the U.S. Open in 2016, McIlroy missed the cut as Dustin Johnson went on to win the first major championship of his career. That was during a stretch where McIlroy missed three straight U.S. Open cuts before a mindset switch saw him become one of the best U.S. Open players of the 2020s.
“I missed the cut at the U.S. Open in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and we were here in ’16, Erin Hills in ’17, which is what it is, and then 2018 at Shinnecock I felt — Shinnecock was a really hard one because I love that golf course, and to perform the way I did there, it really hurt me,” McIlroy said. “I made a decision to be like, okay, I want to — and then I would go back, I’d play Hartford the next week and I’d feel really comfortable on a PGA Tour setup, and then I think it was that week where it clicked. It was like, why am I so comfortable here in Hartford but last week I had no clue what to do? So that’s when I made the decision at that back end of 2018 into 2019, I want to try to build my game around the toughest tests that we have in the game.”
As for Oakmont, the rainy weekend softened the big brute up a touch.
After missing the cut at the RBC Canadian Open, McIlroy arrived back in western Pennsylvania to find a course that was more manageable than the one that fed him his lunch last week. But just marginally easier.
“It’s much more benign right now than it was that Monday,” McIlroy said. “They had the pins in dicey locations, and greens were running at 15 1/2. It was nearly impossible. But yeah, this morning it felt — it was a little softer. The pins aren’t going to be on 3 or 4 percent slopes all the time. If you put it in the fairway, it’s certainly playable. But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that’s a bonus.”
The reigning Masters champion spent the weekend after his missed cut finding a new driver after his old gamer was deemed non-conforming ahead of the PGA Championship. McIlroy tried out a version of the Taylormade Qi35 in Canada, but it didn’t suit him. He has a Qi10 back in the bag this week and believes the time spent at home finding the right driver has paid off.
“I think especially trying to — hitting a lot of drivers, every driver sort of has its own character and you’re trying to manage the misses,” McIlroy said. “It’s definitely a little bit of both [equipment and swing]. I feel like, as the last few weeks go, 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.”
He’ll need that to be the case, or else McIlroy will have a tough walk around the famed country club and might be heading home early.
