The 126th US Open could not even start on time, which felt about right for a week that has been billed as a reckoning. Heavy fog rolled in off the Atlantic and settled over Shinnecock Hills, and the championship was suspended barely half an hour after James Nicholas struck the opening tee shot. Only eighteen of the 156 players had made it onto the course before the horn sounded. Play did not resume until just after nine in the morning local time, by which point the whole field had been pushed back two hours and the afternoon wave was staring at a forecast nobody wanted.
When the fog finally lifted, the wind arrived to take its place. A sustained southwest breeze, gusting well into the twenties and beyond, turned a links-style par 70 into the examination the USGA had promised, although for once an honest one rather than a tricked-up one. Red numbers were scarce all day. A handful of players in the morning wave found something under par, and as the afternoon groups ground their way round, that number barely moved. Shinnecock did not need to embarrass anyone to be hard. The fescue and the wind did the work between them.
McIlroy finds the eye of the storm
Into all of that walked Rory McIlroy, out at 9:52 alongside Ludvig Aberg and Tommy Fleetwood, and he played the kind of round that wins US Opens before anyone has lifted a trophy. A one-under 69 does not sound dramatic written down, but on this golf course, in this wind, it was one of the rounds of the day. The shot that defined it was an eagle at the par-5 fifth, a hole that gave back almost nothing to the rest of the field, and from there McIlroy did the unglamorous work of keeping the ball below the wind and out of the long stuff.
What stood out was not the scoring so much as the temperament. McIlroy has spent enough US Opens fighting his own impatience on courses like this, and there was little of that on Thursday. He took his medicine when he had to, leaned on the eagle when it came, and walked off a course that humbled most of the field sitting comfortably inside the top handful. Sam Stevens and Xander Schauffele were among those who also found a way to two under at points in the day, so McIlroy is not alone at the top, but he is exactly where he would want to be.
Scheffler’s slam bid stumbles out of the gate
The other story, inevitably, was Scottie Scheffler, who arrived chasing the win that would complete the career grand slam and left the course with a good deal more work to do. A 72 is not disaster at a US Open, particularly one set up like this, but it was a frustrating two over for a player who has made a habit of putting himself in position on Thursdays. He could not find the fairway early, and at Shinnecock there is no surer way to bleed shots than to keep handing them back from the rough. He is still in the championship, which on this course at this stage is most of the battle, but the cushion he usually builds was not there.
Bryson DeChambeau, out in the teeth of the afternoon with Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick, scrambled to something around level par, his early distance control gradually deserting him as the wind got up. Keith Mitchell produced the oddity of the day, a six-over 41 on his first nine followed by a six-under 29 coming home for an even-par 70 that says everything about how quickly Shinnecock can turn from villain to accomplice and back again.
What Friday holds
The weather has, in effect, split the draw into two halves with very different experiences, and the second round will go some way to evening that out. The men who battled the worst of Thursday afternoon will hope for calmer conditions, while McIlroy and the rest of the morning starters know that the advantage they have banked can vanish if Friday turns nasty. That is the nature of an Open played on the coast.
For now, the picture is a pleasing one for anyone who likes their majors hard but fair. The leaderboard is thin at the top, the rough has already swallowed a few reputations, and the man with the most major-shaped hole in his recent record is right in the thick of it. There is a long way to go on a golf course that has a history of late drama, but the opening round did exactly what a US Open opening round should. It sorted the patient from the rest, and it did so without the governing body having to reach for a hose.