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BROOKLINE, Massachusetts – So who do you like from this entanglement of six people near the top of the US Open leaderboards after the first round? Do you take players known only to golf eggheads and ranked 592, 445, 296, 130 or 105? Take the 445th-ranked Englishman whose clubs are stranded at Toronto airport, so he had to walk here on Sunday with only a wedge? If you take the 592nd-ranked Swede who hasn’t competed in five years but entered this one after playing his last three holes in the qualifiers in the dark of Ohio, then he doesn’t qualify, then he enters when Martin Kaimer retired?
Or are you taking Rory McIlroy?
Of course you do it for the last one, but everyone is there, so much so that at 5:42 pm on Thursday there was a seven-way relationship between some people you know and some you never thought you’d know: MJ Daffue , Joel Dahmen, Matt Fitzpatrick, Adam Hadwin, David Lingmerth, McIlroy and Callum Tarren.
That’s right, obviously, and then by night they shook a little: the Canadian Hadwin led at 4 under par and only a five-way tie for the second among Englishman Taren, Swede Lingmert, South African Daffyu, American Damen and world icon McIlroy (who is from Northern Ireland) ).
“You’re going to take this course at 67 every day,” McIlroy had said earlier, and, boy, you’re going to do it because apparently five people did it.
The group was dense and crowded under Hadwin’s 66, although it lost Fitzpatrick, the best choice of acquaintances when he beat number 18. Fitzpatrick will be the 27-year-old Englishman from Sheffield, ranked 18th in the world. won 2013 in the United States Amateur of this particular course of country club, which rarely conducts specialties, which makes his experience here unusual in this field and who approached last month’s PGA Championship in Tulsa, lamenting his graduation 3-over 73, as make precision with: “I shoot a level today and win it straight.”
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Until Thursday night, in the competition again at 2 under, he called it “different” as a hip and said: “I have great memories of the place and all the time I was outside, I see shots that hit and I see the places where I was. I think that’s why I’m a little calmer. “
He succeeded in a course that the players seemed to like, but could not bury him. No one reached 5 less all day, only Hadwin and McIlroy ever reached 4 less, but many were below par: 25 of them all said so. They include 12 people on the 1st floor and two former US Open champions (Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose) among the seven in the 2 juniors.
This became the second consecutive major in which McIlroy announced a dispute early, after the opening of the 65th PGA. (He finished eighth.) “I’m coming in tomorrow with the ‘Let’s move on’ attitude, not ‘Where’s the cut line?’ during some of the 28 long and blurry races since his last big victory in the 2014 PGA Championship.
With the closing and winning of the 62nd at the Canadian Open on Sunday, McIlroy questioned whether he was motivated by loud retreats to Saudi-backed LIV Golf. “Not really,” he said. “It’s been eight years since I graduated and I just want to get one again.”
John Ram, Colin Morikawa fight through the strange to start the US Open
It started early and those who did it often prospered. Five holes without wind, defending champion John Ram had a moment when he said, “I thought, ‘We’re going to blow up the roof in this place.’ , postponed, if not sentenced at most US Opens. They both shot 1-under 69s. Then Rahm et al began to feel the side winds and the side winds became resilient until the afternoon and the results turned out to be good, if not wild.
The galleries are constantly getting to know people all the time.
Here came Hadwin, 34, late in the day, ranked 105th, third among Canadians, his only PGA Tour winning the 2017 Valspar Championship.
“It really was a year in the making,” Hadwin said. “I think we went on a trip last March, [swing coach Mark Blackburn] and I. Not to change the swing of the golf, but to change the face of the bat in the swing, which may be more difficult in itself. ”
Here came the 315-year-old Taren, ranked 445th, a participant in two major competitions in his life (US Open 2019, the other), so make two big tournaments in which his clubs did not arrive when taking the luggage. “I am going there [from Toronto]”No clubs,” he said. “There were five other players on my flight. Everyone has golf clubs, so this was the second US Open I played at, and the second time there were no golf clubs. ” He managed to solve the problem by Monday with the help of some of these 38 million useful people: Canadians.
Here came the 342-year-old Lingmert, ranked 592nd, seven long years after winning the Memorial in 2015. “Yes, I have had difficulties since the end of 2018.” He said. “I had a lot of injuries and whatnot. There have been some difficult days not to lie and somehow you start asking yourself these questions. But I’m pretty stubborn and I’m not one to give up. “
Here came the 34-year-old Damen, ranked 130th in his ninth degree and enjoying a course that is kind enough to refrain from demanding that everyone hit him like Hercules (or McIlroy). “If you look at my game and who I am,” he said, “to be on tour for six years and play so well is probably great, some would say. I was not entirely American. I was not the best. . . . I knew I could compete here because it wasn’t too long. Yes, like the Winged Foot [in 2020] it stood out to me. I didn’t have a chance to fight there. “
And here came the 33-year-old Dafu, whose life changed to 11 when he and his father played a round with two-time US Open Retief champion Goosen, a fellow South African who still encourages him. “We’ve never really talked about advice,” he said. “One time when I asked him, I said, ‘Hey, how are you doing so well under pressure from the US Opens?’ He said, ‘I just did it a few times.’ In fact, it makes a lot of sense. The more you do it, the more you get used to it. “
And, of course, McIlroy came here. You’ve heard this before.
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