By DOUG FERGUSON AP Golf Writer
OAKMONT, Pa. — Sam Burns avoided a meltdown that ruined his opening round at the U.S. Open and wound up with a big par save on his last hole for a 5-under 65 and the 36-hole lead. Best of all, he was long gone before the real calamity arrived late Friday afternoon at Oakmont.
Rory McIlroy threw a club in disgust and smashed a tee marker. For punishment, he gets to come back for two more rounds because he birdied the 18th to make the cut.
Shane Lowry absent-mindedly picked up his golf ball on the 14th green without marking it.
Thriston Lawrence became the only player to reach 6-under par. He promptly made six bogeys and a double bogey over his next nine holes. Thomas Detry can appreciate the suffering. He was challenging for the lead until three double bogeys in a three-hole stretch.
And then there was Phil Mickelson, in what likely is his 34th and final U.S. Open. He was just outside the top 20 until two double bogeys in his last four holes for a 74 to miss the cut.
The cut might not be official until Saturday morning. If the second round wasn’t brutal enough, play was halted by bad weather just as Lawrence had a 4-foot putt on the last hole to finish a wild round that was approaching six hours. The day ended with rain pounding the course.
Scottie Scheffler, coming off three wins in his last four starts, had his sixth straight round over par in the U.S. Open with a game that didn’t look familiar. He still scratched out a 71 and was seven shots behind.
“Today was, I think with the way I was hitting it, easily a day I could have been going home,” Scheffler said. “And battled pretty hard to stay in there. I’m 4 over. We’ll see what the lead is after today, but around this golf course I don’t think by any means I’m out of the tournament.”
Burns was a regular birdie machine – at Oakmont, no less – playing in the morning under cloud cover and little wind and flushing his irons so well that all six of his birdies were inside 10 feet.
He was at 3-under 137, one shot ahead of J.J. Spaun, who fell out of a share of the lead with a bogey on the 18th, his sixth in his round of 72.
Burns and Viktor Hovland (68) each have 11 sub-par holes over 36 holes, the most in three U.S. Opens at Oakmont since it switched to a par 70 in 2007. Hovland was two shots behind.
Only three players remained under par, the fewest in seven years the U.S. Open.
Burns can only imagine where he would be if not for a shocker of a finish Thursday, when he was one shot out of the lead and then played his last four holes in 5-over par.
“I played really well yesterday other than the finishing holes. So I think today was just kind of getting mentally ready to come out and try to put a good round together,” Burns said.
“It was unfortunate, but there was too much good to focus on the little bit of bad.”
Hovland twice holed 50-foot shots from off the green – a putter from the collar on No. 10 when he started his round, and chipping in for eagle on the reachable par-4 17th. He also chopped up the second hole for a double bogey. But he was happy to be done.
“Definitely tired, exhausted because you’re just focusing so much on every single shot,” he said. “I’m very pleased with 2-under par, but also I know that I was 4 under at some point. So it’s like very pleased, but also, ‘Man, that could have been a little bit lower.’ But we’re in a really nice spot after two days, so I’m just kind of happy.”
Adam Scott, playing in his 96th consecutive major, had another 70 and joined Ben Griffin (71) at even-par 140.
Burns is among the top putters on the PGA Tour, though he did miss a 5-foot putt to win a playoff in the Canadian Open last week and three-putted the fourth playoff hole to lose. This was more about staying in position and eliminating as much stress as possible on a course that can be relentless.
No putt was more important than his 20-foot par putt up the ridge on No. 9 to finish off a great round the right way. He tugged his drive to the left on the tough par-4 ninth into a ditch, took a penalty drop, hit safely on the green and made the putt.
“That putt was, I don’t know, 6 feet of break,” he said. “Yeah, it was a nice one to make for sure.”
Scheffler was among those who had little room left for mistakes. He opened with a birdie on No. 10, but then didn’t find another fairway until he came up just short of the green on the 17th, 50 feet away for eagle. Four putts later, he had a bogey.
It was a grind all way, battling his swing and the rough, making a number of key par putts that kept the round from getting worse.
“Mentally, this was as tough as I’ve battled for the whole day. There was a lot of stuff going on out there that was not going in my favor necessarily,” Scheffler said. “Overall, definitely not out of the tournament.”
Neither is Brooks Koepka, who had a 74 but was only five behind.
Jon Rahm went from red numbers to red in the face with a 75, leaving him in the same spot as Scheffler. Rahm, who took 35 putts, was asked if his score could illustrate how tough Oakmont was playing.
“Honestly, too annoyed and too mad right now to think about any perspective,” he said. “Very frustrated. Very few rounds of golf I played in my life where I think I hit good putts and they didn’t sniff the hole. So it’s frustrating.”
That’s not just Oakmont. That’s most U.S. Opens. In that respect, Hovland was a curious contender. He has been all over the place with his swing, his expectations, his confidence. He won during the Florida swing and is making progress. Perhaps no expectations helped him.
“For some reason I’ve just been in a really nice mental state this week,” Hovland said. “Both my rounds have been very up and down. I feel like a couple times if it would have happened at another tournament, for example, I could have potentially lost my mind there a little bit. But I felt like I kept things together very well.”
DeCHAMBEAU MISSES CUT
Bryson DeChambeau was the only player beating balls in the rain on the driving range as sundown approached Friday at Oakmont.
Those were the last shots he’ll hit at this year’s U.S. Open.
DeChambeau became the first defending champion to miss the cut at the national championship since Gary Woodland in 2020 – his round wrecked by errant drives, knucklers out of the rough and putts that would not drop.
DeChambeau shot 7-over 77 to finish the two days at 10 over – three shots off the cutline.
Where his signature shot last year at Pinehurst was that 55-yard blast from the bunker that set up the win on the 18th hole on Sunday, the moment that told the story this year was the wild lash he took into the rough – also on No. 18 – then the TV cameras picking him up saying “What was that?” as he regained his balance and headed toward the green.
He saved par there and looked in line to make the cut with nine holes to go. It was a stretch of double bogey (bad drive), bogey (missed 6 footer), bogey (missed 7 footer) on 5, 6 and 7 that did in DeChambeau.
And so, the fan favorite who also tamed Winged Foot for a title in 2020, and who has starred in four of the last five majors – winning last year’s U.S. Open, paying with McIlroy at the Masters and finishing second to Scheffler at this year’s PGA and Xander Schauffele the year before – won’t have a role this weekend.
Schauffele extended his streak of cuts made to 66 tournaments, the most since Tiger Woods made 142 straight, ending in 2005. Schauffele hasn’t missed a cut at the majors since the Masters in 2022 – that’s 14 straight.
Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 champion, made one of only five birdies on the uphill, par-4 ninth hole to make the cut on the number.
Some other former champions didn’t fare as well. Among them are Dustin Johnson (10 over), the winner at Oakmont in 2016, Woodland (10 over), Lucas Glover (8 over) and Wyndham Clark, whose 25-footer for par just missed and left him one off the cut line.
Also missing was Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen, who teed off into a ditch on 18, had to take a penalty shot and finished with a double bogey to move to 8 over.
PEREZ MAKES RARE OPEN ACE AT OAKMONT
Victor Perez capped a nice second-day rally with a tournament highlight – the first U.S. Open ace at Oakmont since 1983.
Perez hit a 7-iron on the sixth hole, a 192-yard par 3. The ball landed short of the hole, took a couple of bounces and rolled in. Perez ended up shooting an even-par 70 on Friday despite an early triple bogey. He’s at 1 over through two rounds and was tied for sixth when play was suspended because of rain with only a few players left on the course.
“Obviously, a hole-in-one takes a bit of luck,” Perez said. “I was trying to hit something maybe 15, 20 feet past the hole.”
A double eagle, or albatross – like the one Patrick Reed made Thursday – is much more rare than an ace. However, the last time Oakmont yielded a hole-in-one during this national championship was 42 years ago, when Scott Simpson had one on No. 16.
The 1994, 2007 and 2016 U.S. Opens, also held at this course, all came and went without an ace.
Perez, a Frenchman who earned a spot for this tournament at a qualifier in Canada, said he’s on a bit of a hole-in-one run.
“I’ve actually had two this month, against all odds,” he said. “Back in the Bahamas, where I live.”
After shooting a first-round 71, Perez started Friday on No. 10 and quickly made a triple-bogey 8 on No. 12.
“Obviously, it wasn’t an ideal start. Kind of put myself a little bit behind the 8-ball after three holes,” he said. “It was a bit unfortunate, but I was able to kind of keep my head going and bounce back.”
He was at 4 over when he birdied the par-4 fifth hole. Then came his ace, which he celebrated by doing a leaping chest bump with his caddie.
“You try to just make pars and survive,” Perez said. “When you get kind of a chip-in, bonuses, something like that, it definitely kicks off. So it was nice to have a little bit of emotion.”
By the time Friday was over, Perez was just four strokes off the lead. He said he’d have happily signed up to be 1 over through 36 holes.
“A hundred percent,” he said.
SAVOR THE MOMENT
James Nicholas clearly wanted to enjoy himself at Oakmont this week.
The 28-year-old from Scarsdale, New York – who played football in addition to golf at Yale – qualified for the U.S. Open in New Jersey earlier this month and then turned some heads with a first-round 69 on Thursday.
Friday wasn’t as kind as Nicholas shot 45 on the front nine, including a quadruple bogey on No. 5. But he rebounded with a 33 on the back, smiling and egging on his supporters after making three straight birdies.
Nicholas flipped his putter and caught it out of the air after missing a par putt on No. 18. Perhaps he thought that would cost him the weekend, but he ended up making the cut right on the number at 7 over.
HASTINGS HANGS AROUND
Justin Hastings shot a second straight 73 to become the lone amateur to make the cut.
The 21-year-old Hastings is the first player from the Cayman Islands to compete in the U.S. Open. He earned his spot by winning the Latin America Amateur in January in Argentina. That win also got him into the Masters, where he missed the cut by two strokes but was the top amateur.
Hastings just finished his senior season at San Diego State, where he won the Mountain West individual title.
HOPING FOR SOME HELP
The rainstorm near the end of the second round was significant enough to halt play, and there’s a chance for more of that over the weekend.
That could be welcome if a softer course becomes a bit more manageable.
“It was starting to look like another day of hot, dry weather and the weekend would be very difficult out here,” said Adam Scott, who is three shots off the lead. “There were certain greens that had a slickness about them and a firmness too. Fairways even getting a little bit like that. So the rain might keep it under control, hopefully, and spare us some frustrations.”
AP sports writers Eddie Pells and Noah Trister contributed to this story.