COVERAGE: Burns Lights Up Oakmont, Takes Lead In Wide-Open Open

OAKMONT, Pa. — Halfway home, the U.S. Open is wide open.

And unlike previous national championships at this outdoor torture chamber, the big names are shying away from the top of the leaderboard.

At least so far.

Sam Burns impressed early, leaping from 2 over to 3 under with a sizzling 65 on a steamy Friday, then watched the rest of the field slowly creep downward. By the end of the evening, the 28-year-old former LSU star and current PGA Tour stalwart led alone in his pursuit of his first major championship.

“Look, it’s a 72-hole golf tournament, and if you can get a round under par out here, no matter if it’s 1 under, you’ll take it,” Burns said. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to the weekend.”

J.J. Spaun, 34, is one back at 2 under after holding mostly steady with a 72. Former FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland, 27, is the only other player under par after 36 holes, as he once again put on a ball-striking exhibition en route to a 68 that left him at 1 under.

Spaun won the Sony Open earlier this season in Hawai’i, then nearly nabbed the Players Championship before Rory McIlroy prevailed in a Monday playoff. Spaun said in previous years he might have expected a catastrophe following a round as tidy as Thursday’s 66.

“I was definitely anxious to get back out here and see how the game would pan out, and it ended up being a pretty good day,” said Spaun, who made six bogeys and four birdies. “It was more of a true U.S. Open round I feel like, a lot of back and forth, a lot of grinding, bogeys.

“A few years ago I would probably expect to play poorly today. But I knew it would be hard to back up a bogey-free 4-under at Oakmont in the U.S. Open. So I’m just glad that I kept it together. Granted, at the venue we’re at, a pretty good score.”

Just four players shot in the 60s — Burns, Hovland, Jason Day (67) and Max Greyserman (67) — and all of those rounds were done by early afternoon. Continued high temperatures and lack of moisture (until an evening shower) further firmed up a course that needs no assistance when it comes to tormenting elite golfers.

South African Thriston Lawrence started the day at 3 under and rose to 6 under after birdieing 11, 12 and 13, but some old-fashioned U.S. Open carnage struck as his swing got loose and he posted six bogeys and a double on his way home. He had a five-foot putt to finish at 1 over entering the weekend, but play was suspended due to lightning at 8:15 p.m. Lawrence is one ahead of Belgian Thomas Detry, who plummeted from a brief tie for the lead with three double bogeys in a four-hole stretch.

In the end, there’s only one player in the top five who’s won a major championship: 44-year-old Australian Adam Scott, whose biggest triumph (2013 Masters) occurred more than a decade ago. Scott’s at even par, level with this year’s PGA Tour phenom Ben Griffin. Victor Perez, who made the second hole-in-one ever at an Oakmont Open, is tied for sixth with Lawrence.

Rounding out the top 10, Brooks Koepka dropped back from an encouraging first round with a 74, but he’s still tied for eighth, just five behind Burns, alongside Russell Henley, Si Woo Kim and Detry.

Burns went out in the morning and leapt into contention with a 65 that marked the first round that low at Oakmont since the second round in the 2016 Open, when Daniel Summerhays and Louis Oosthuizen posted that number. Burns is one of just 11 players in 10 all-time Oakmont Opens to shoot 65 or lower, and his 9.4 Strokes Gained on the field made it the best major round of the year in that regard.

Burns, a five-time PGA Tour winner and playoff participant in last week’s RBC Canadian Open, actually got it to 3 under through 14 holes during Thursday’s first round, only to stumble to a bogey-double-bogey-bogey finish that dropped him to a 72.

“I played really well yesterday other than the finishing holes,” Burns said. “So I think today was just kind of getting mentally ready to come out and try to put a good round together. I feel like I’ve been playing well coming off last week and into this week and my round yesterday. Really just trying to get yourself in position out here and give yourself as many looks as you can.”

And it doesn’t take many looks for Burns, who is the PGA Tour’s leader in Stroked Gained: Putting this season, to drain a few. Even on these treacherous greens, which Burns admitted require more caution.

It wasn’t all about his six birdies either, as he knocked down a 25-footer for par on the ninth, his final hole of the day.

“We play on greens that are pretty quick (on tour), but the speed of these with how much slope is in them, that’s what makes them very difficult,” Burns said. “I think a lot of times you have putts where even from 15 or 20 feet where you’re not really trying to make them, you’re just trying to get the speed right and hope that it snuggles up next to the hole.”

Hovland vaulted himself into red figures with a 2-under 68, starting with a 55-foot birdie bomb on the par-4 10th, his first hole. That marked a refreshing departure from the previous day’s 71, when he hit 10 fairways and 13 greens but lost three strokes to the field on the greens.

Hovland said he’s been working on getting “off the ball” on his backswing, meaning that he’s trying to get more of his mass behind the ball for the start of the downswing. The 2023 FedEx Cup champion and notorious nitpicker noted that he’s “super happy” with the trajectory of his game after more than a year of searching.

“Definitely feel a lot better,” Hovland said. “Some of the shots I’ve been hitting the last couple days, it’s been just fun. Even (when) I make a double on No. 2, it’s way easier to handle those moments because I feel like, “OK, I can just go back to hitting good shots and I can make a few birdies coming in,’ versus before it didn’t feel good, so I had to get max out of my game.”

As tempting as it is to flesh out the stories of the early contenders, it’s as much of a story to note who’s not near the lead. Scottie Scheffler’s push to win a second consecutive major isn’t dead, but he’s a longshot at 4 over, tied for 23rd. 2021 U.S. Open champ and trendy pick Jon Rahm is also at 4 over, as is fellow two-major man Collin Morikawa.

Burns’ good friend Scheffler didn’t shoot himself out of this thing, but he’s certainly further back than most would have imagined coming into the week. Fighting an erratic swing, the golf world’s top gun followed his first-round 71 with a 3-over 73 that left him comfortably inside the cut line, but well back in his quest for his first U.S. Open title.

“Overall, definitely not out of the tournament,” Scheffler said. “Today was I thinking with the way I was hitting it, it was easily a day I could have been going home and battled pretty hard to stay in there. … Any time you’re not hitting it the way (you want) or playing up to my expectations I think it’s frustrating. Mentally this was as tough as I’ve battled for the whole day.”

Scheffler was spotted on the practice range after his round, putting in a lengthy session with his instructor Randy Smith and caddie Ted Scott. He hit just six fairways and seven greens, losing strokes to the field off the tee.

Masters champ McIlroy and Xander Schauffele are at 6 over, but while they’ll likely need something crazy to contend come Sunday, at least they’re still in it. Defending U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau seemed fine through nine holes Friday, but staggered during a front side 40, losing shots left and right and finishing at 10 over — three below the cut line.

In what might’ve been his final U.S. Open, six-time runner-up Phil Mickelson made a costly double bogey on the drivable par-4 17th, then narrowly missed a saving birdie on 18 to miss the cut by one. Wyndham Clark (2023 U.S. Open champion), Gary Woodland (2019 champ) and Dustin Johnson (2016 champ at Oakmont) are all headed home early as well.