The first major to be played at Riviera on the women’s side was always going to ask hard questions, and on Thursday it did exactly that. The course gave up very few low numbers, the rough swallowed anything wayward off the tee, and the field spent the afternoon learning that a famous venue does not hand out compliments. Through all of it Jennifer Kupcho went about her round with the calm of someone who had stopped fighting the place and started reading it, and a five-under 66 left her a shot clear at the top of the 81st U.S. Women’s Open.
A round built on the iron play
What made Kupcho’s day stand out was not a run of holed putts or a lucky bounce off a slope. It was the quality of her approach work, which on a course like Riviera is the thing that actually keeps a card clean. She gained better than four strokes on the field with her irons alone, and the shot that summed it up was a 133-yard approach on the second that finished inside a foot. When you are stopping the ball that close on greens this firm, the rest of the round tends to look after itself, and hers did. Seven birdies on a U.S. Women’s Open setup is a haul most players would take across two days, let alone one.
There was a small story behind the score, too. Kupcho admitted she had finally taken her parents’ long-standing advice on how to prepare for a U.S. Open, leaning into patience rather than trying to overpower a course that punishes greed. It is the sort of thing players say after a good round and forget after a bad one, but the way she managed her misses on Thursday suggested it had actually sunk in. She left herself uphill putts, took her medicine when the rough grabbed her, and refused to turn a stray drive into a double.
Korda’s frustrating start
The contrast at the other end of the marquee names was sharp. Nelly Korda, the world number one and the player most of the pre-tournament conversation had centred on, never got going. She finished at two-over 73, undone mainly by a driver that would not behave, and on a course where the penalty for missing a fairway is severe, that is a quick way to leak shots. She has the game and the temperament to make the cut and climb the board over the weekend, but she will need to find something off the tee in the second round, because Riviera does not let you score from the rough.
There was a lighter footnote to her day. Korda had started in a new pair of shoes sent to her by Nike and LeBron James, who has become a keen golfer and a fan of hers, and she switched out of them after six holes. She was at pains to say the shoes had nothing to do with her score, which is almost certainly true, and the swap made for a good story on an otherwise grim afternoon for her. Sometimes a struggling player just wants one variable they can change, even if it is only the thing on their feet.
The golf course is the story
Underneath the names, the real headline of the first round was Riviera itself. The course has hosted plenty of big men’s golf over the years, and the questions it asks translate directly to this championship. The kikuyu rough, that dense, grabby grass that lines the fairways out west, turns every missed tee shot into a guessing game about how the ball will come out. Players who found it spent the day chopping out sideways and scrambling for bogey, while those who kept it in play had a genuine chance to make birdies. That is exactly how a U.S. Open is supposed to separate a field, and it did.
Sei Young Kim sat a single shot back of Kupcho, a reminder that experience and a settled short game count for a great deal on a setup like this. Behind the top two the scoring climbed quickly, which tells you how thin the margin was between a good round and a frustrating one. There was also a welcome reminder of the game’s future further down the board, with sixteen-year-old amateur Aphrodite Deng holding her own among the professionals, the kind of debut that gets quietly filed away and remembered later.
What the weekend needs
One round of a major settles nothing, and Riviera has three more days to rearrange this leaderboard however it likes. What Thursday established is the shape of the test. This is a ball-striker’s championship, where the players who can find the short grass and control their irons will be rewarded and everyone else will spend the week wrestling the rough. Kupcho has shown she can do both, at least for a day. The question now is whether she can keep her approach play sharp while the greens get firmer and the pressure of leading a U.S. Open settles onto her shoulders. If she can, the first women’s major at Riviera will have found a worthy champion. If she cannot, there are plenty behind her ready to take advantage of a course that forgives nothing.