By ED TRAVIS
Golf fans are eagerly anticipating the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club to see if world number one Scottie Scheffler can win his second major championship of the year or will Rory McIlroy win to compliment his April victory in the Masters.
Scheffler had a remarkable month of May capping it off with a win at the Memorial last week. After his win at 31 under par in the CJ CUP Byron Nelson Scheffler May 4 two weeks later, he took home the PGA Championship trophy (his third major), then after a T4 in Charles Schwab Challenge he had another “hanging tough” win at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament to repeat last year’s victory.
Not surprisingly Scheffler is the betting favorite and when this is being written he is at 3.2/1 and trailed by Rory McIlroy at 5.5/1.
Last year’s champion Bryson DeChambeau, who is plays full time on the LIV circuit, is 9/1 and Jon Rahm another LIV player, who stumbled badly at the PGA Championship, is 12/1. Also in the mix may be Xander Schauffele (17/1) and a true dark horse Ludvig Aberg (18/1).
Long shot lovers may want to pay attention to Ben Griffin at 80/1. He has two wins in 2025 including the Charles Schwab Challenge with a second place behind Scheffler at Jack’s tournament. And, if those odds are too long for you, Jordan Spieth is only at 65/1.
The 156-man field will tackle Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh which opened 1904 with restorations by Tom Fazio in 2015 and by Gil Hanse in 2024. It will play to a par of 70 and 7,372-yards which only tells part of the story.
This is a very difficult layout. I played it once when I had a four handicap but felt lucky to finish under 90…and we played the member’s tees.
Two facts stand out about Oakmont, the first being this is the tenth time our national championship has been played there going back to 1927 won by Tommy Armour. The most recent was in 2016 when Dustin Johnson took the trophy and probably the most memorable (at least for my generation) was in 1962 when 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus made the Open his first win as a professional by besting “The King” Arnold Palmer in a playoff.
The other fact is the narrow fairway/high rough layout with lightning-fast abruptly contoured greens has 175 bunkers, but none better known than the famous (infamous?) Church Pews bunker between holes three and four. It is an immense 26,000 square feet and has 13 three-foot grass covered ridges running horizontally to the line of play. Being able to recover out to the third fairway much less reach the green on this 462-yard par-4 may require a truly heroic shot.
For the record the USGA received a record number of 10,202 entries for the Championship with the 60 lowest 36-hole scores and ties playing for a purse to be divulged this week but it will be at least $21,500,000.
