U.S. Open Thursday: Midway through a lost year, big-game Brooks Koepka reemerges
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Hello and welcome into this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Rob. Round one of the 125th U.S. Open is in the books, and there were certainly some surprises. Sky Scheffler shooting over par. Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, very much in the mix here at Oakmont. Before we begin on this mini-podcast, Rex, is there anything that you want to apologize for, whether it's to the fine citizens of Oakmont, club members at Oakmont, just podcast listeners in general after your performance on Wednesday?

Yeah, I caught a lot of heat. I do want to apologize on complaining about the commute. No one wants to hear about how bad the commute is for my hotel out to the U.S. Open Golf Course. I get it. I heard it as soon as the word came out of my mouth. I'm sorry. I don't do that as a rule. As far as my take on Okamana, the golf course, no, I'm just going to double down.

The idea that the goal of this golf course was to build the toughest course in the world. And by all accounts, it did that. I think most people would agree. Fine. You accomplished that goal. Is that really a worthy goal? Is that really something that we should have been doing? Because my argument is everything that's wrong with golf, I would argue in the United States, that's right with golf in the UK and essentially Scotland.

It is the epitome of that at Oakmont. The golf course is too difficult. The rough is too long. The greens are too fast. There's too much undulation. It's too expensive. It's too exclusive. All of the things that we would argue and be like, ah,

That's not really what golf meant to be. That's not what we want it to be. Oakmont is at the top. It's at the pinnacle of those things. And with all apologies to John Bodenhammer, who referred to Oakmont as the cathedral, the moment I thought about it, at golf's real cathedral, which I would argue is St. Andrews, the old course in Scotland, that when whoever is hoisting the trophy on Sunday, as they're hosting that trophy on the 18th green, there are dogs and children playing in the bunker on the road hole.

I mean, it's a public park, essentially, is what it is. It's not overly long. It's not overly expensive. It's part of the community. I know that that's not a realistic goal in the United States. I just don't think it's a worthy goal in the United States. It's a worthy goal for the U.S. Open.

Sure. It's supposed to be a complete examination. It's supposed to be, to use John Bodenhammer's words, a golf test, which you're going to get all 15 clubs in your bag during the 14 in your bag, as well as the one bit between your ears. I think in that respect, Oakmont is the quintessential U.S. Open venue. And it's actually funny that we're talking about, you know, the Oak monster and what we were anticipating. There was a lot of hype about the difficulty. Roy McIlroy saying he birdied the last two holes.

about a week and a half ago just to shoot 81, thinking that the potential winning score here could be between 5 and 10 over par. I had some texts on Thursday, Rex, and I'm sure you got some as well, like, where's the carnage? You guys promised me carnage. And I really didn't see all that much carnage. Scoring average was roughly 74.5. There was more than 100 double bogeys, more than 20 others. But I think all things considered,

This is about as benign as the golf course could have played, particularly on Thursday morning. And yet there was still just four players who finished the morning wave under par with very little wind. I think Friday afternoon still has the potential.

After a day in which temperatures soared to nearly 90 degrees that you could see some spiciness on this golf course. We're still anticipating some rain and some softness over the weekend. But I think it's fair to say, Rex, that the Oakmont isn't playing quite as tough today.

as maybe players initially feared. Keep in mind, we had a lot of rain on Sunday, but even the USJ admitted the golf course is not quite as firm as they probably would have liked, both in the fairways. So I think you're seeing not as many balls kick into the five-inch rough as maybe was forecasted. And certainly the putting surfaces are just a little bit more receptive than the USJ intended.

Yeah, there was a lot of hand-wringing when I showed up at the golf course this morning. You had J.J. Spahn, who was bogey-free. He was four under par for the day. And I think you had quite a few players who were actually in red figures for that time of day. It was probably a little bit before lunchtime. And I think everything sort of righted itself. Right now, I think there's 13 guys under par, which is just about what you would expect. And no disrespect to J.J. Spahn, but I think most of us, including you and I, picked a winning score somewhere around four under par.

So if you're JJ Spahn, you have to like your chances, but I wouldn't imagine he's able to keep this up. Last time around in 2016 when Dustin Johnson won here, there was just one bogey free round. That was on Thursday. I think it's going to be a similar scenario this time around where I agree with what you just said. This is probably going to be the easiest scoring day. This is probably going to be the easiest day as far as pin placements go. And to your point, it's going to only get a little bit more firm, not a lot firm. Like as you pointed out, there was a lot of rain, but it only gets more difficult from here.

JJ Spahn, Tristan Lawrence, two players near the top of the leaderboard, both putted magnificently well on Thursday. That does not usually – like that's really hard to sustain over four rounds. I think you've seen the most important statistic at OVC

at Oakmont U.S. Opens is ball striking, in particular approach play, and greens and regulation. I think a player who is at least top three in that category by the end of the week is going to have a very good chance to win this golf tournament. To me, Rex, the most interesting name at the top

of the leaderboard. I know we want to get to Scottie Scheffler in the 73 that he shot in the opening round, which matched his second highest score of the entire 2025 season, is Brooks Koepka, two-time U.S. Open champion, five-time major winner overall. We have not seen much of anything

from Brooks over his last seven major starts in particular, not a single top 25 finish. This year in the majors has been completely MIA, missed cuts in both the Masters and the PGA Championship. First time he's ever done that in his career. How surprised are you to see big, bad Brooksy, the big game hunter, back in the mix, just two shots back heading into the second round?

I'll take a little bit of a victory lap in our punch shots on Wednesday. I think I actually picked him as my dark horse. And the line for that, I believe it was 55 to 1. And Brooks was right at 55 to 1. And I didn't feel great about it. I'm not going to lie. My argument was, no, we have not seen major championship Brooks in a minute.

And ever since he won the PGA Championship right after joining Live Golf, he didn't seem to have that switch anymore where he just showed up at major championships. And regardless of what he had done that season or the last few events, he just flipped the switch. And suddenly he was this guy who was going to win major championships. My argument for picking him as the dark horse is for all the things that we just talked about.

This golf course is exactly what brings out the best in him. He's a brawler. He wants to go toe-to-toe with the best players on the toughest track. That is, by definition, where we are right now. I thought Oakmont could possibly be the tonic. And I saw his dad yesterday, and we were kind of having a conversation. His dad was asking me, Brooks' dad was asking me, like, who do you like? And Scotty is who I picked. And I go, actually, I went with Brooks. And I kind of explained it to him, and he sort of smiled and goes, that's exactly what I was thinking.

I mean, six or seven years ago, I think it would have been a no-brainer that Brooks Koepka and this golf course are just the ideal fit. Big, brawny, strong, patience, grit, perseverance, toughness. Like, those are all the things that you associate with Brooks Koepka. I am surprised because, quite frankly, we haven't seen anything remotely resembling major championship Brooks form. Yeah, I'm not going to say I'm not surprised. I'm just taking a little bit of a victory lap, yeah, to be fair.

I mean, yeah, and you can take that victory lap. I'll sort of underscore why I was surprised because Brooks Koepka, I think, in some sense, was surprised as well. He said, he told reporters after his round on Thursday, he got about a 45-minute tongue lashing from his swing coach, Pete Cowan, on Monday. He sort of stood there in the bunker with his head down, just taking it. If this sounds familiar, this is not the first time that

Pete Cowan has done this with Brooks Koepka. In fact, if you go back to the first major championship that he won in 2017 U.S. Open at Aaron Hills, a very similar thing happened early in the week. Brooks did not want to go into detail exactly what was said, but I think it obviously relates to he needs to get his head out of his you-know-what. They have been working really hard over the past couple weeks. There was a real-versus-feel issue that Brooks said where his swing positions were about

We're about nine inches away from where he actually thought it was. And it was just causing a two-way miss with his ball striking. Anytime he thought he was fading, he was actually going to draw. Anytime that he thought he was drawing it, he was actually going to fade it. Anytime he thought he was hitting it straight, it was going either of two directions. He said they spent a lot of long hours on the reins last week. The live golf event in Virginia did not play well.

Well, there again, but thought that he'll see something. The next key then Rex was, was getting there mentally. So if the, if technically he was in a better spot with the positions of his golf swing mentally, that is what Pete Cowan was trying to unlock in Brooks Koepka. We've seen it before where he sort of switches into the terminator mode. It certainly appears at least through round one, that that sort of thing can be unlocked once again in him.

No, and I think those are all good reasons why. I mean, look, Pete Cowan's the best. And as you pointed out, he's done this on numerous occasions where he's not afraid to get in his players' face. Not many swing coaches are willing to do that. And I think that's how you handle Brooks. Like some players need to be handled with the kick gloves a little bit. And you can't really do that. You can't.

chip away at their confidence because they probably don't have enough confidence to start with. That's not Brooks. He's always going to have plenty of confidence. And this golf course was always going to be the perfect fit for him. It's just a matter of seeing if his game fell into place. Now, given that it's Oakmont and every single player in the field, just not Brooks, is one swing away from disaster and they're pretty much their week's ending. I'm still don't know how confident I am going into the final 54 holes, but it's obviously an awesome start. All right, Rex. And what about Scotty Scheffler?

a player you and I both picked to win this golf tournament. I predicted he would win by four or five, six shots. If that comes to pass, he's going to have to make up a seven shot deficit after the first 18 holes of the player, uh,

Rex, who has made the fewest bogeys, who leads the PGA Tour in bogey avoidance, actually had six dropped shots in his opening round. Hit just half the fairways, just 11 greens, scrambled less than 50% of the time. How surprised were you by Scottie's round one performance here at Oklahoma?

I mean, surprise, anytime Scotty Scheffler, being Scotty Scheffler, the version that we have right now, when he finishes three over par, you're always going to be stunned. I think you need to take a little bit of relevance to this when you consider that this golf course is so demanding. He played in the afternoon, so he probably got the most difficult of the conditions. And he didn't do anything specifically well. He didn't drive the ball particularly well. His irons weren't sharp. I think he had 30 putts.

Like, it wasn't like there was one part of his game that you could point at and say something was off. So my guess is that being Scottie Scheffler, I'm sure he was aggravated. He marched to the range with Randy Smith like he always does. And I'm sure there was a level of frustration that we normally see out of him. But of all the players that struggled on day one, and we can go down and do Scottie, we can do Bryson, we can do

We can do JT. There's plenty of top players who struggled on day one. I still have the least amount of concern for Scottie because I don't know about making up seven shots after one round, but I do know that eventually he's going to figure it out, whether that's tomorrow or over the weekend, whatever the case may be. I'm still going to be shocked if he's not somewhere in the hunt on Sunday.

I'm totally with you. He's the king of adjustments, both he and Randy Smith, his longtime swing coach. It just seems like it's always something small, right? And they just need 25, 50 balls,

after a competitive round to tweak something, whether it's posture, whether it's setup, whether it's grip, this very small adjustment. So there's a bunch of left misses that Scottie had. It certainly cost him on the front nine, missing in the church B bunkers on both three and four, uncharacteristic to then see him miss the other way

on the opposite side. It just seems like it's a very small adjustment. Watching him in practice rounds, there was no indication that he's off his game at all. So it does seem like a small tweak. Would not be surprised if you see a little bit better on fresh greens when he comes out.

on Friday morning as you go down the rest of the leaderboard racks, like Bryson turned into 73, which he said he was disappointed with, but I still think he would probably take it at the end of the day. He sits right outside the top 50 at this point, Roy McElroy really struggled on his inward nine, had splits of 33, 41 to shoot a 74 in what is a, another sort of mystifying situation.

performance from Roy McIlroy, just when you thought that it was okay to get excited again after he goes out in two under par. A little bit of a head scratcher coming home, particularly on the greens. What did you think? Well, I think both of us picked him to miss the cut, if I'm not mistaken, on Wednesday. I picked him to finish like 50th.

I picked him to miss the cut. So actually, I was a little nervous through nine holes this morning because it looked like he had found a switch. But it goes back to what the struggles have been really the last two tournaments and really since the PGA Championship. He just doesn't have a driver that he feels comfortable with the last two tournaments. He's given up more

more than five shots to the field off the tee. That's not Rory McIlroy. He cannot contend. He cannot compete when he's doing that to the field. And this particular golf course was always going to demand something out of him that he simply doesn't seem to have right now. That being said, I think what we saw on the front nine probably was very encouraging. Of those two players that you just mentioned, I would have more concern for Bryson DeChambeau in this particular case, more so than Rory, because of what we talked about on Wednesday, the idea that

whatever it is Bryson did in his own mind,

in 2020 at Wingfoot to win that U.S. Open. I think both of us agreed he's not going to be able to do it here. Bryson's own words were, I can't do that here. That's not something I can pull off. The rough is thicker. It's more dense. I can bomb it down there and I'll have a wedge in my hand, but it's so much more difficult to get those wedges somewhere close to the green than it was at Wingfoot. So that strategy wasn't going to work. And I was curious how he was going to react on day one because he can play this course two different ways. And I don't think

He has the bandwidth right now to play it in a conservative fashion.

I would agree with that. I was actually somewhat encouraged by the way that he struck the ball, particularly with his iron. That's been the bugaboo, particularly in the two major championships. He hit it quite well with his irons. What really cost him was his scrambling and in particularly his putting. He made just 50 feet worth of putts. I know it's really difficult to putt on Oakmont's fearsome greens, but that was a point of emphasis after his round. Went straight to the practice putting green, trying to dial in his speed, try to eliminate the two three putts that he had. He had a couple of the three putts, if you include those.

from which he was putting from the collar. So I think those are probably easy mistakes to clean up. And I still think that his strength to extricate himself from the rough, if he does find the rough on occasion, will be advantageous for him. I'm not discounting Bryce DeChambeau whatsoever. I think it's a pretty exciting lead. Obviously, a huge mix of players. A headline by Brooks Koepke, just a couple of shots back. But John Rahm under par, Jordan Spieth even par, Kamu Okawa underpar.

even par. Those are all players, I think probably with the exception of Spieth, we all felt pretty good about heading into the tournament. A little bit of news, Rex, on the PGA Tour front that I wanted to end this podcast with. Longtime NFL executive Brian Rolap is reportedly going to take the CEO job with PGA Tour Enterprises, which of course is the tour's for-profit arm. How surprised are you by this move and what does it mean?

I'm not surprised at all. I think there was a little bit of pushback. As a rule in the industry, the PGA Tour wouldn't make any kind of announcement or any kind of leak about news like this during a major championship. The U.S. Open is run by the USGA. To be clear, this news came from the NFL side. This was reporting by ESPN on the NFL side. This did not come from the PGA Tour. I heard his name had been in the mix for a couple of weeks now that I was reading the story. And you see all of the jobs that he's held at the NFL, which we can imagine.

I'll agree is wildly successful and lucrative business venture. He seems to be the right person for the job. I will say there is some reporting that doesn't seem to have it right. To be clear, it seems as if Rolap will be in charge of PGA Tour Enterprises, the for-profit entity that was created after SSG and everything that happened in that Jay Monahan will stay in charge of the PGA Tour, which.

are essentially going to be two separate entities. One is going to be the competition side, one is going to be the business side, and they will both essentially be on the same level and report to the board. I think that's probably for the best, at least in the short term. And I think there's a policy board meeting on Monday. My guess is, I talked to one policy board member, this is going to be a rubber stamp and they should have an announcement by Tuesday or Wednesday.

I follow a lot of NFL writers. I follow a lot of NFL people. Brian Rolap seems incredibly well-regarded for what he's been able to accomplish in his 22 years with the NFL executive vice president.

thought by some to be Roger Goodell's potential successor, has really been in charge of the NFL's media strategies and business operations. They have become an absolute giant in the sports world. I think PGA Tour fans could probably feel pretty good with Brian Rollout reportedly at the helm. For more on that, make sure to go to NBCSports.com slash golf. All right, that is going to do it for this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Lab. Rex and I will be back on Friday night for a recap of

of the second round of the 125th U.S. Open. In the meantime, you guys have a drill. NBCSports.com slash golf for all latest news, notes, and updates. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you guys Friday night. This Father's Day helped Dad be all he can be with a gift from the Home Depot because he's not just Dad. He's the handyman of the house, the plumber in a pinch, and the emergency mechanic.

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