SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — When Scottie Scheffler arrived at Shinnecock Hills for his first round of his ninth U.S. Open early on Thursday morning, he had to be thinking, somewhere in his large and impressive head, that he could be four days away from becoming the seventh player to win the career Grand Slam. That prospect is out there, in the universe. Not even Scottie Scheffler can block out all the world’s noise.
But by high noon on Friday, with his second-round tee time still more than two hours away, Scheffler was closer to the cutline than the lead in this 126th U.S. Open.
The issue was his first-round score, 72, that put him six shots behind the first-round leader, Wyndham Clark. The issue was surprisingly low first-day scores, despite the windy conditions. The issue was the weight of golfing history. (See: McIlroy, Rory.) The issue was the nature of this U.S. Open at Shinnecock and, very possibly, most of the U.S. Opens Scheffler will play for the rest of his career.
“Would it be a dream to win the U.S. Open? Of course,” Scheffler said in a pre-tournament press conference. “But at the end of the day, the Grand Slam has never been a motivating factor for me. I always just wanted to be the best version of myself, and that got me this far.
“When it comes to this golf tournament, I’m going to step on the first tee and remind myself I’ve done everything I possibly could in order to play well and now it’s just a matter of going out there and trying to execute and enjoy the competition, versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.”
Scheffler is so insightful, in his own keep-it-simple way. When he’s in the mood to talk, he’s one of the most interesting people in golf. His approach to life is there for all of us to see.
Then came the Thursday 72. Not a disaster. Not what he was looking for.
“Today felt like a day where a lot of good shots were going to get punished,” Scheffler said. “You had to be hitting a great shot if you wanted to avoid punishment.”
Scheffler is an expert in golf, so his opinion should surely carry more weight than the opinion of any walking-in-the-rough observer. But you could make the case that the opposite was true. With fairways here that are often 40 to 50 yards wide, with easy (relatively speaking) pin positions, with soft and slow greens, the world’s best golfers didn’t really need to play a long series of great shots to shoot par or better.
What they needed to do was avoid major problems off the tee and into the greens, followed by a seize-the-moment mentality whenever a slow flat birdie putt from 20 feet and in presented itself. This course is not set up, as Augusta National is every year, to produce golfing magic. Scheffler knows all about what Augusta National requires. He’s won two green jackets. This is a different exam.
This discussion of the USGA’s U.S. Open setup is not a criticism. But it is a necessary starting point when you bring the national championship to this spectacular course to this spectacular place, and the forecast calls for wind and more wind.
The R&A deals with the exact same thing every year, whether the Open is at Royal St. George’s in the south of England or Carnoustie in northern Scotland. Scheffler, much like Phil Mickelson before him, didn’t imagine that British Open golf would be his thing. But when he won last year at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, he actually made it look easy, winning by four. It was nothing like a high-wire act, with all manner of golfing excitement. What he did was produce a relentless series of good shots. His winning score was 17 under par. Seventeen under!
What golf-heads say about the people behind the R&A really is true: They do not care about the scoreboard totals. The Open goes to old-line, tried-and-true golf courses again and again and again. The R&A attitude is, whatever happens, happens. It speaks volumes about their collective golf IQ, and about their confidence as golf administrators.
Scheffler turns 30 on Sunday. He’s been intimately involved in golf at a high level for more than half his young life. Over the course of those years, the USGA has reinvented itself. Its day as the stern overlord over all you do in golf course is over. The modern USGA is now golfer-friendly, and it does not worship 280 as a Sunday-night score to the degree it did for decades.
Along those same lines, and at its greatest championship, the USGA does not prize point-to-point golf as it once did. Trees are not even a thing anymore at U.S. Opens. U.S. Opens and British Opens are more alike than they have even been. Not just here at Shinnecock Hills, where the course looks like a Scottish immigrant. At most U.S. Open sites. Pinehurst No. 2 (talk about firm terra firma) and Oakmont (now that it has no trees) and Pebble Beach (full name Pebble Beach Golf Links), to cite three anchor sites.
“I always felt like The Open would be one of the hardest ones for me to win because I didn’t have a lot of experience playing in the UK,” Scheffler said the other day. “I didn’t really play much internationally at all. Not having the experience on links golf, I would have said that would probably be the most difficult for me to win.”
And then he won at Portrush last year. Handily.
Will Scheffler win a U.S. Open sometime between now and when he calls it a day? You would have to think yes. But to do it, he’ll have to be in touch not with old-school U.S. Open values. The Opens are melding. He’s won one. That means he can win the other.
