10 Thoughts on Round 1 of the U.S. Open

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Every first round of a major, I feel like Stefon from that SNL skit: This round had a little bit of everything!

Mostly because it did. We got angry (and disbelieving) Scottie, a Rorycoaster round, somebody shooting a “neither nine in the 30s” even par round and some of the best golf conditions of this year (or any year) … until they went away.

Let’s get right to work.

Name drops: Stefon, Adam Scott, Max Homa, Cashmere Keith and Ludde.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Turtlebox.

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You know who could use some calming music on his Turtlebox after a frustrating first round and range session (which we will get to below)?

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Turtlebox Original (Gen 3)

Thank you to Turtlebox for being a supporter of our work and now let’s get to the news.

1. First things first. You may be wondering about the questionable images above. They sprung out of a conversation I had with Shane Ryan in the media center today about who has the hairiest arms on Tour. Major weeks are long, please give me some grace.

Anyway, the consensus answers were DJ, Cam Young, Sam Burns and the guy I think is probably the medalist here, Max Homa. Not the content you pay for (that’s after the jump) but honestly maybe the content you should pay for.

[Jason here] As someone who draws a lot of forearms, Stewart Cink has my vote. All of the hair from his head has migrated to his arms.

2. Let’s talk about the golf course. I thought it ruled. Could it have been a bit firmer and faster given that the wind wasn’t quite what we thought it would be during the first round? Absolutely. Did it still play insanely difficult because the wind was up more than usual? It did … at least until the golden hour.

Listen, it was not ideal that Wyndham played 16 holes in 6 under and the scoring average dropped from +3.9 in the morning to +2.8 in the afternoon. That’s major championship golf, though. Sometimes you’re in the good wave, and sometimes you’re not. But if you’re the USGA, you can’t set it up fast and firm when 40 MPH winds are in the forecast. Because if they arrive, you have to call players off the course, and you’re criticized going that way.

It’s a difficult situation for the hosts. Maybe even impossible. And I would rather them error on this side of things and take more control of the course over the last three days than play chicken with the wind on Day 1 and churn out a mess of a golf tournament.

Two things really stood out to me in the morning wave from both being out there and watching some on TV.

1. How difficult it was to even reach some of the greens in regulation. The 16th felt like it was playing 800 yards. The scoring average there was nearly 5.4 early on, which is insanely high for any golf hole, even at a major championship.

2. It was not difficult to hold greens — even in the wind — but it was tough to catch a piece of them. Example: Rory had a hook-y lie on the 9th hole (his last of the day) and hit a draw that rode the wind too much and missed the green entirely.

These are extremely fun shots to watch when it’s windy, even when golf balls are spinning back. When the wind is down, though, they do need to firm up the greens, or it’s going to be fish in a barrel over the weekend.

Shinnecock was rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin'

3. One thing I was thinking about today as it relates to the distance debate — that the president of the United States weighed in on! normal sport! — is as follows: How far is too far for those who are anti-rollback? Yes, I was thinking about Rory hitting a drive 396 and Bryson hitting one 427 and yes both of those are outliers (that I regret using as examples!), but it got me considering the extremes a bit more.

What if someone learns to consistently hit drives 450 yards? Or 500? Would anti-rollback folks be pro-rollback at that point? Or is there not a limit at which they would be in favor of rollback? There must be, right?

The rollback debate reminds me of the way we talk about censorship. Everyone (I should say, almost everyone) is in favor of censorship when it comes to the media (TV, internet, etc.). There aren’t very many people who believe that everything should be allowed to be shown to everyone at all times. So we all agree on censorship, it’s just a matter of where your line is.

I believe the same is true of rollback. I think almost everyone agrees that regulating equipment is necessary (which is important!). It’s just a matter of where each individual draws the line and also who is drawing the lines.

I am obviously creating extreme examples (500-yard drives) of the point I’m trying to make, but it does matter that everyone (who is reasonable) is seemingly on the side of governance being good and that we’re just bargaining about what the distance limit should be. That’s an entirely different thing than being on opposite sides of the argument.

Bryson will be ready for his Friday morning tee time.

4. Here is a podcast I did recently where I talked about being a dad and living out my faith in a public forum. We’ll get to some of the individual play after the jump below.

If you haven’t joined yet, here’s the link to our Slack channel. It was poppin’ off early on Thursday and turned into a Spieth therapy session late.

5. Ludvig gained nearly 3.0 strokes putting on Thursday which is a big 👀👀👀👀 from me given how poorly he putted at a PGA Championship he probably should have won. I asked him after his round whether he struggles more with his speed or his read when he putts it poorly.

I've now played two events with this new putter that I'm using, and I've had some really good rounds that I've liked. Then at Memorial a couple of weeks ago, the only really bad round that I had with the putter was a windy day, and I felt myself getting really tentative with the speed.
It was gusting, and I was playing the wind too much. I was overplaying it. I was getting too caught up in what the wind was doing rather than what the actual putt was doing.
That was one of the things that I tried to do today before I went out is really lean forward and try to hit the putts all the way to the hole and those things. Today it paid off. You're not going to make all of them when it's gusting 40, but at least you can do is put a good stroke on it.
Ludvig Aberg

His speed is generally very good — he’s in the top 10 on the PGA Tour in approach putting on the season — and it was again on Thursday. He got unlucky with the draw, but he’s certainly a threat right now to take down Shinnecock and break through with his first major championship.

As an aside: I followed the Rory-Ludvig-Tommy group on Thursday for a bit, and it was so fun to see how differently they all drive the golf ball. How unique their swings are and how all can be successful in different ways, especially in the wind.

Here’s a good example.

6. Look no further than Rory’s last appearance at Shinnecock to see how much he has evolved as a golfer.

He shot 80 in the first round last time out (field average was 76.5). This time around, he shot 69 (field average was around 74), and he talked about why he’s more complete now. I thought this was the most interesting thing he said all day.

I remember flying back from Dubai at the end of 2018, and I would keep, like, a journal or a diary. I wrote in it that from 2019 going forward, I'm going to build my game to compete at the major championships and excel at the toughest tests that we have.
Again, working on the things that you need to do well to excel at these, which is flighting the ball, hitting your numbers, wedge play, short game, putting, which is all the stuff that I feel like I've improved over the last few years.
Rory McIlroy

He was great with driver on Thursday, sure, but he scored because of everything else. It’s a little early to talk about what a Shinnecock-Old Course (2027) double slam would do for his legacy — though I’m not necessarily above it! — but he looks very Tiger-like in terms of playing his way into this tournament and making a run to win it on the weekend.

That was the old Cat playbook, right? Rarely led after the first round and then just started to build and build his week until he peaked on Saturday evening and then defended his position on Sunday. It’s a great way to win U.S. Opens, but it takes a lot of patience and discipline, two things Rory has a lot more of in 2026 than he did in 2018.

7. Keith Mitchell did one of my favorite things in golf on Thursday: He shot even par 70 with neither nine in the 30s.

Data Golf had it as the fourth best nine holes on the PGA Tour since 2010.

He started on the back and lost 4.0 strokes to the field on that side …

… before turning and gaining 7.8 strokes on that side.

Absolutely electric stuff.

And as someone in our Slack chat pointed out, he looks exactly like a man who just shot 41-29 at a major championship.

29 x 41 trousers flying high in Player Hospitality.

8. I think I’ve sort of underrated this Adam Scott (73) stat about playing 100 consecutive major championships. That is so, so many. He’s spent nearly two years of his life practicing for and/or playing in major championships.

That is nuts.

9. This is the best golfer on earth.

He shot 72, which is not that bad, but nothing really seems to be working all that great. He found himself in the hay multiple times, which makes it difficult to make par. But he still hit 12 of 14 fairways, which shines a light on the real place where he’s fallen off a bit this year, approach play.

He laid up into a bunker on 16, only hit nine of 18 greens and finished 113th in SG on approach shots. Take this shot from the middle of the fairway on No. 6 from 204 out. Left to right wind, and he misses way out to the right and cannot get up and down.

It’s a U.S. Open, and these things happen, especially in windy conditions. But he just seems a little more … off right now than he usually is. That shot above is one that, when he’s controlling his ball, he seems to be able to hold against the wind and make an easy two-putt par.

While I’m not ready to declare anything ridiculous about Scottie or the state of his game broadly, these are just shots that he’s mostly been hitting for the last several years. These aren’t red flags, but they at least have my attention.

10. Golden hour major championship golf, there is nothing like it. I was out late with the Spieth-Rahm-Rose group, and there was almost nobody at the golf course taking it all in. Nirvana for a sicko, watching Spieth flop his way around Shinnecock (in several ways) and Rahm try to take advantage of such easy conditions.

Pro golf is at its best on Sunday afternoons when everything is crackling and guys are feeling things they rarely feel. But it is at its most peaceful on Thursday and Friday evening when everybody has gone home to prepare for the weekend.

Rarely do we get superstars out at that portion of the day, but because of the fog delay, that’s what we got in Round 1. It was wondrous. A dumb game that has an outsized spiritual and emotional effect on us.

I didn’t have any reason to be out there. In fact I had a lot of reasons to not be out there — mostly to wrap up this newsletter and get back home for an early Friday.

But that particular hour when the summer sun is giving up and the to-do lists are all but done and you wonder where the time went and everybody is tired and tipsy but glowing from another great day of major championship golf.

Well, there’s not much like it, I suspect. Not in any other sport. Not in any other game. In this exhausting digital age, these moments feel less like entertainment or sport and more like just how we’re supposed to live.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. We are grateful you’re here and that your membership helps send us to places like the U.S. Open!