U.S. Open preview: Possible carnage, Rory's next phase, another Scottie romp?
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Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud, irreversible.

It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at StartWithHope.com. Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Well-Being, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. Hello and welcome into this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Bryce and Lav. Welcome to the 125th U.S. Open at Oakmont. And look at us.

We're both wearing suits and ties. Rex, happy belated birthday. Thank you. Turned 58 on Tuesday. You're also playing a little bit hurt. You don't sound good. You don't feel good. What's going on at Golf's Toughest Test? Yes, I'm playing hurt. I'm glad you pointed out. I will say I did like a teledoc. Is that the way you would say it? Yes. Teledoc, however it is. And whatever it is that they prescribed, and it's two nasal sprays. Woof. I feel like a million dollars.

I don't know what's in there, but I'm a big fan. Amazing technology. How did we not have this in our lives like five or ten years ago? But yeah, anytime I get a sinus infection, which inevitably comes because I have two young kids.

Call up Teladoc, get that thing knocked out real quick. All right, let's talk major storylines as we sit here on the eve of the year's third major. Where do you want to go? Golf course? You want to go Rory sounding a little bit adrift? You want to go Scotty Scheffler being their prohibitive favorite? What's on your mind on Wednesday afternoon? Well, I think golf course. You and I just did a live film hit together. And when you start talking about this particular championship, we almost always start with the golf course. And I think it's even more so this week simply because we're

Oakmont is such a unique test. And I did speak glowingly about the idea that if you need a hype man for a major championship, there is no better hype man than John Bodenhammer, the chief championships officer of the USGA, when he talks about this golf course and it being a quote unquote cathedral and the 10th time the national championship is being played here. All of those things I appreciate. And as a golf fan, I'm looking forward to you are an agent of chaos.

I know all the reasons you're looking forward to this, so I can only imagine what you're going to say there. I am going to go in a little, I'm going to pivot and go in a slightly different direction, though, only because, and full disclosure here, I got stuck in traffic this morning for over an hour trying to get to the golf course. So I'm just going to make two points, and then I'm going to leave it alone. One, I'm not 100% sure.

this being the hardest testing golf is a good thing. I get it for this one particular week out of the year. And I'm not talking about the national championship itself. I'm talking about this golf course, Oakmont.

I don't know. This feels like to me the epitome of American golf excess. It's overly difficult. It's overly long. The grass is overly long. The rough is overly difficult to play out of. The greens are overly fast. And it's very exclusive, very expensive. So we have had this conversation before. All of the things...

that made golf so special that they created in Scotland all those millennia ago. It seems like we have ruined here in the United States, and this is the epitome of that. When you look at, yes, that's probably what's wrong with golf. What was Pinehurst last year then? The complete opposite?

where it's accessible. Public golf course, first and foremost. It's at least somewhat affordable. I think it's playable. It's somewhat playable. It's playable for a lot of skill levels, and obviously gets number two. You can make it as difficult as you want to. I get that. It's actually funny because they did these drone tours recently,

of the front nine in the back then obviously at oakmont with aaron oberholzer and paige mckenzie and i just sort of sit there watching and listening as they go hole by hole and what makes it sort of the unique characteristics and i had sort of a thought afterward is that this is how every modern golf course architect should be thinking about what you're trying to do with the golf course forget about the club forget about the exclusivity

Forget about how difficult it is. Forget how expensive it is to join invitation only and all that. I'm talking about from a pure golf course design standpoint, not a single hazard, water hazard on this golf course. Sure. Its defenses are really thick, rough, really deep, penal bunkers, fairways that are cambered, ditches and greens that are not just treacherous, but fearsome.

like fear inducing when you get on the putting surfaces, not a single water hazard. There's nothing manufactured. Everything just sort of works into the land. Nothing's built up or sort of settled down. It's just very natural. And to me,

Current modern golf course architecture is the complete opposite of that. It's the antithesis of that where everything is manufactured, everything is built up, everything is sort of contrived. There's nothing contrived about this golf course. It works seamlessly. And after seeing the drone tours, I could not be more excited for this thing to get started because, to your point,

with John Bodenhammer being the hype man for this national championship. Like the USGA does not have to put their thumbprint on this at all. You could let Oakmont be as it is. In fact, a lot of members will tell you they actually have it more difficult to

Then when the U S open comes to town, just regular, you know, Wednesday play out here at Oakmont country club, they don't have to do anything, but I think there's a challenge of, of going to be threading the needle of challenging them, the best players in the world without embarrassing them. Because I think that could get out of hand pretty quickly too.

Yes, and I appreciate the golf course. Please don't at me. I know this is a special place. There's a reason why it's hosted the national championship for 10 times. I simply have an opinion when it comes to what it represents when it comes to American golf, that this seems like the height of excess. With all the things we kind of talk about sometimes that maybe American golf doesn't get it quite right compared to what it started out as.

and Scotland. You and I have spent a good amount of time in the UK and we appreciate what they have there, what they created. My bigger issue that you did not let me get to, however, is as a major championship venue, and I'm just going to throw this out there, as a major championship venue, and we ran into this the last couple of years, I think Brookline, we ran into it. I think Marion, we ran into it.

Some places just are not equipped to host a major sporting event. I would argue the little sleepy town of Oakmont is probably one of them. There's a little tiny two lane road that comes in and a little tiny two lane road that goes out. And when it comes to hosting these events, and I will immediately point to the Orlando Magic and the Orlando Arena where I live.

have never hosted a major sporting event, not at least in the last two decades. They're just not a very good basketball team. However, they are built to host a major sporting event. They don't do it because they're not a good team. But my point is they could host the NBA finals if they needed to. They have the infrastructure, they have the parking, they can figure it out. Augusta National has built something very special. They can host a major sporting event. I

I can keep going on and on down the list of places that, yes, you can pull this off in the modern era because there's a lot of infrastructure. There's a lot of traffic control. There's a lot of things that need to go into making this a truly special event. And I'm going to lean back into a point that I think I've made in the past, that as special as these classic venues are to the U.S. Open specifically, Marion, Brookline, here,

Maybe time has passed them by. Not as far as how far we hit the golf ball, and I'm sure we'll talk about that, but as a place and time to host a major sporting event. Because I don't know that Oakmont is where I would pick to do something like this. Two counters. Actually, three counters. Pittsburgh is a metropolis. It's a big city. We're not in Pittsburgh.

But we're about 20, 25 minutes. I was on the 7 a.m. show. I was an hour on Wednesday. I had zero trouble. 22, 23 minutes to get to the golf course. The second thing, which I think is important, is that Oakmont has established itself as what the USJ is calling one of these anchor sites.

where they're just going to, they're going to head to these venerated golf courses more often. I think next one is 2033 here and it's on the books for sometime in 2040s. But the whole point of doing that is yes, going back to these classic golf courses, these quintessential US Open golf courses, but they can also have the learnings

and improve upon the experience every time you do it. They've not been here since 2016 when Dustin Johnson won. I'm sure they're going to take your criticism and any other fan who's trying to arrive. I think they're expecting like 40,000 fans a day and make adjustments to traffic patterns, traffic,

parking, you know, from, from a media perspective, it's certainly better than it was nine years ago with where we're set up. The driving range is exponentially better than it was not just for our purposes, but for the players as well. So they're making these tweaks and that's sort of the purpose of these anchor sites. You're going to have learnings from 2025 that they, that he can apply in 2033, the thinking being it will only get better. It will only get bigger. Most likely it will only be a better experience for the players. And most importantly,

for the fans. How about the golf course, Rex? What are you anticipating? Do you think winning score is going to be a five under par? Is it going to be even par? Five over par? We've seen a little bit of everything over the years at Oakmont.

We did a punch shot on NBCSports.com slash golf where we had to come up with a winning score. And I was stuck between last time we were here, 2016, when Dustin Johnson won at four under par, and the time before that when Angel Caprera won at five over par. I think it's going to be under par simply because we are still talking about the best players in the world. I know how difficult this golf course is. I think Lucas Glover probably said it best on his XM radio show when it feels like this golf course fights back.

There's nothing passive about this golf course when you're trying to play it. Roy McIlroy's comments yesterday during his press conference about he was here last Monday playing just a practice round, a scouting trip. He had to birdie the last two holes to just shoot 81. So we know how difficult this golf course is, but it's on the softer side, which essentially widens the fairways a little bit, makes approach shots a little bit easier. And I don't think the greens are going to be quite as fast as maybe you anticipated. So I anticipate under par, but not by very much.

Yeah, I'm with you. Sort of a similar line of thinking. Like when Rory had his outing during the last two holes to shoot 81, he said, you know, the greens were cut or excuse me, the whole locations were cut on four to five degree slopes. They're not going to do that in the U.S. Open. At these speeds, it'd just be out of control. The rough was actually longer. They've had the wettest moment.

month of May, I believe in Allegheny County history, uh, I think 13 inches of rain over the past 13 weeks. We had a dousing on Sunday, also a little bit of precipitation on Monday. It has been dry. It has been windy. It has been warm. Today's the warmest day of the week so far about temperatures in the mid eighties. We're supposed to get that the next couple of days as well on Thursday and Friday before the forecast actually on the weekend looks quite dreadful. Uh,

close to an inch of rain on Saturday, rain on Sunday, rain if things do not go according to plan, rain on Monday as well. So I do think by Friday afternoon, Rex, we could have a situation where the golf course plays a little bit closer to what the USGA had hoped for.

a little bit closer to what we saw in 07, where the rough got a little bit less dense. It was a little bit more wispy. The greens were rock hard and baked. They were lightning scary fast. I think that's what the USJ would like to see. I don't think we're necessarily going to get there. And if we do, it'd probably be just on Friday afternoon. But I think the word that I've heard most often from players is that it's playable.

where, you know, if you find the fairway, you're not necessarily in position to score, but you're in position to survive. You're in a position to endure. You're in position to grind. And if you get out of position, yeah, you're looking at probably a half shot penalty just by finding the rough. It feels like a quintessential U.S. Open that way. There's a premium on find the fairway, yes, but this golf course is so beefy and the greens are so hard

There also needs to be a combination of power and accuracy because you still need to approach these greens with enough loft to be able to hold them. No, and I think that's all fair. I think it's going to be fun to watch how you could possibly play this golf course. I was talking with Randy Smith, Scotty Scheffler's,

swing coach earlier in the week about the idea because I was trying to get a handle on how many drivers is Scotty going to hit and is that above average or below average I actually talked to Paul DeSore who's Tom Kim's caddy and he said that Tom will probably hit nine drivers and I go is that a lot and he goes that's a lot he goes Tom isn't one of the longer players on the PGA Tour so you anticipate something maybe in the sixth

seven range when it comes to, but Randy Smith brought up a good point. And he goes, you could end up not hitting any if you want it to. And I'm like looking at him, like, that's not what I think of Oakmont at all. And his point was you can go for iron for iron. I'm pretty much every hole it would get exhausting. And you're probably not going to score very well, but the alternative is trying to play from the rough. And you and I had this conversation, I think earlier in the week about the idea that whatever it is, Bryson D Shambo did in 2020, the wing foot,

And some could say that maybe he was trying to reinvent the game. Some would say he was trying to break the game over his knee. Whatever it is that he was doing there, he cannot do it here. And it remains to be seen. I could be proven cosmically wrong, comically wrong on this particular front. But I don't see a Bryson DeChambeau type character, whoever that might be.

standing on every tee, wailing away with driver and just playing it from wherever it lands. Because I don't think that's going to be an option because of how thick the rough is. I think Johnson Wagner did a brilliant job last night pointing out that a lot of times when you get to this type of classic golf course that's going to demand so much from you off the tee, fairway bunkers are your

or your friend, where if you can end up there that, well, at least I'm not in five inches of rough. At least I can get it to the green. That's not necessarily the case here. These fairway bunkers almost feel like pot bunkers in the UK where you just can't advance it as far as you would like to. Sometimes you're stuck with a wedge or a nine iron in your hand, and that's probably going to leave you 20, 30 yards behind.

short of the green i keep coming back to one stat and i said this last night on live from we are going to fixate on driving driving accuracy roy mccroy can he figure it out in time can scotty sheffler continue to do what scotty sheffler does we're going to focus on gir just get it on the green give yourself an opportunity but if you go back to 2016 dustin johnson he got up and down 75 of the time 75 of the time he was able to scramble the field average that week was 40

And so I think that's a better indication of what we'll end up seeing out of the champion than maybe what Bryson DeChambeau did in 2020 at Wingfoot. Yeah, you brought up Wingfoot. I think it's an interesting comp just because of the thickness of the rough, if you remember that week. Different time of year. And it is important. It was in September. It was COVID. Yeah, I get it.

But that was a unique test because those fairways became so hard to hit that no one was hitting him. And it became obvious that the best strategy was just hit it as far as you possibly could have less club into the green. That way you could do what Bryson did was basically hammer down on nine irons, pitching wedges, gap wedges, et cetera, and just run them onto the putting surface. And he did that better than anyone. That is why with the softer conditions that we have here,

at Oakmont, even with the cambers in the fairways, which a lot of slope from left to right and right to left, there's still going to be a premium on putting the ball in the fairway. Now, combining that with distance, you brought up scrambling and Dustin Johnson. I would argue that Dustin Johnson won the golf tournament in 2016 because of his driving.

He led the field in driving distance. Look at Angel Cabrera, one of the longest drivers on the PGA Tour that year, one of the longest drivers in the field that week. Ernie Els, one of the longest drivers in the PGA Tour in 1994, one of the longest drivers that week at the U.S. Open. There has to be a combination. It can't just be sheer bashing and going and finding. Bryson DeChambeau, it admitted as much. I think it was even your question.

where he said that he did not anticipate just whaling away on driver 14 times. He's going to have to be more strategic. He's going to have to worry about placement. Now, if you're Bryson, it's going to bring up an interesting point because Bryson laying back with a three wood, even though it does go farther, he's a minimizing his greatest advantage, uh,

which is his greatest weapon, which is his driving. And B, he's putting more emphasis and more importance on his approach play, which at least to this point in the major championships has been as great as Bugaboo. And the reason why he has not won a major championship in 2025.

No, and that's fair. I just think with the question that I asked Bryson had to do with, he had made a mention of him getting comfortable on the tee being fearless off the tee. And I think he was speaking more in general of just the way he wants to play the game. And the obvious question was, can you be fearless at Oakmont where there is so much trouble waiting? And I guess what you hear when you talk to players on the range or what I have heard over the course of this week is it just forces you to steer the ball a lot. Like, you know what you want to do.

And you know what you would like to do, but a lot of times you're just trying to guard against one way or the other. And neither way ends up being very good. And so that's the kind of question that someone like Bryson is going to have to answer. Can you stand on every tee and play fearless when the penalty is so severe that you're pretty much going to play your way out of the turnaround? Because I do not believe whoever wins here is going to do so from the rough.

Yeah, I think I would certainly agree with that. It's also interesting to look back, I think, at the last three winners in particular, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera, Dustin Johnson. Those are big, strong, physically imposing characters, which I think is a sort of a fitting summation of what this golf course is as well. It's big, brawny, strong, like it literally requires size and strength.

And I think when you look at the list of favorites that we're going to now get into for this tournament, I don't think it's any coincidence that like it's a Scotty who's a big man.

John Rahm, big man. Shane Lowry was a 54-hole leader here, leading by four shots in 2016. Sepp Strzoka, I've heard his name mentioned to us. He joined us on the Live From Desk on Wednesday. These are all characters who I think sort of fit the lineage of U.S. Open winners at Oakmont. I think that's interesting to point out as well. I'm surprised it took us this long, Rex, to get into it, because to me, I think it was the most revealing moment

of this week so far, and it related to Roy McRoy. And in particular, the question that was asked by our friend, Gabby Herzig of The Athletic, who asked him, what is your five-year plan? You've won the career Grand Slam. You're 36. You're very much in your athletic prime. And he said, quote, I have no idea. Was that as much of a mic drop moment to you as it seemed to me listening in? Do you have a five-year plan? I mean, I have a general idea of what I'd like to do.

Really? Yeah. I don't. Wow. You're way ahead of the game because when Gabby asked that, my mind immediately went to, huh, I don't know if I ever played. I mean, when you're 58 and you got some of the health issues you're dealing with, who knows? You know, just sort of take it year by year. I am a senior wait for it writer. Yes, that was a funny moment last night on Live From. It was a mic drop moment, but I will go back to when I wrote Rory Kudlow's

yesterday for NBCSports.com slash golf. I thought the more telling quote, and Gabby did ask a really good question, got an interesting response. But the quote that I leaned into was the idea that he said, you dream about standing on that green at the Masters and winning the green jacket, creating the career grand slam, all of those things that were unsaid. What you don't dream about is what comes afterwards.

And to me, there was so much real estate on the back end of that sentence that didn't seem to be finished because now you're having to deal with the things that I think a lot of us in the media probably alluded to. Me personally, I don't know that I believed it. I didn't believe that he was going to go the David Duvall route and get to the top of the mountain and realize this is it.

This is what I've worked my entire life for. And maybe this isn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. That's probably not fair because I think what's happening here, at least in this moment in time, is a little bit more of just a hangover from the celebration and deciding, determined that I'm going to enjoy this. It took me the better part of two decades to get here. I'm going to take a minute and savor this.

I think all of us should be able to appreciate that. But when you have a player of that caliber who just a month ago, you and I were talking breathlessly about the idea that now he is unburdened by all of these things that were weighing him down, trying to complete the career grand slam. Imagine what he can do from here. Imagine the grand slam tear that he can go on. He'd be quote scary moving forward. I think I went so far. My hyperbole went so far as can you imagine him doing the single season slam this season? Now look how silly.

I feel like now the punch shot yesterday was, will Rory contend or miss the cut? I wrote he would miss the cut. Spoiler alert, simply because of the way he's played the last few weeks. It's such a fascinating case study. And in Rory's case, he lets the world into a certain degree that where he's able to admit that, yes, I dreamt of that moment on Sunday at Augusta. I'd never even thought for a moment to dream of what would come afterwards.

Yep, that sound you hear is me scurrying to my phone to delete the reel they made for Instagram where I point out the Rory McIlroy single season super slam, which was certainly possible, it seemed like.

after he won the players and the Masters. I mean, it made sense at the time, just looking ahead to Quail Hollow, looking ahead to Oakmont and this driving test as we just outlined for the past 15 minutes. It certainly made sense looking ahead to Royal Portrush in a home game for the Open Championship. What I think we probably overlooked or underestimated is the power of

of a life altering achievement. And if nothing else, I think Rory has been humanized over these past couple of past couple of months. Cause like very quickly after that master's victory, even in his press conference immediately afterward, he was quick to point out that his is a very human, you know, American story of here's a guy who failed and failed and failed and

And yet he still put himself out there. He still kept trying and look what happens when you do that. You can still achieve something great. Like he said, that message resonated over and over again. He received countless messages, not from, that's just from fans posting on social media, but other celebrities, actors, people in all walks of life who could resonate with that message of trying and failing over and over again until you eventually get over the line. I think that was a pretty human experience for,

that he had at the Masters. Flash forward now two months and where we sit here at the US Open, I also think he has been humanized because to your point, he just had a life altering achievement, something that he's been trying to do for the past 30 years of complete the Grand Slam. He is now immortal. He is one of the legends of the game. And he's wondering what next?

You and I have not had as much as we joke about your sports Emmy that you had as a member of the 150-man crew with the Paris Olympics. You and I cannot relate to that. But we can probably guess how we would feel if all of a sudden – I'm not even sure what the award would be. But let's say I won some very significant writing award or media award. I think the human temptation is to be content with

to grow a little bit complacent, to probably not work as hard, to probably coast a little bit. You look at what has happened to Roy McIlroy over the past two months. I think you could probably argue he has been content with,

He has been coasting a little bit. Didn't help he lost his driver at the PGA Championship. Yes, but to be fair. But he has been savoring his achievement. I think you could probably make the argument he has not worked as hard on his game over the past couple months to figure out the driver issue, which I think it seems convenient that he's just pointing to the equipment. But as Ayo pointed out, as Brando pointed out, I think there's something technically wrong there as well. Again, these are all very human, basic human reactions of players

You are content. You are satisfied. There's a little bit of complacency that can set in. That's why I don't I really don't think this is like a David Duvall situation of like, oh, what's next? I look at this more as like a Tiger Woods. Oh, one Tiger Slam thing where it's going to take a little bit of a reset. Keep in mind, most team sports, if you get down to the end and you win a championship, you then have what?

six months or so before training camp begins. And all of a sudden that like, that's a, that's a period of celebration. That's a period of, you know, analyzing what went wrong. It's there's a resetting process. Roy McIlroy won the first major championship of the year. He has a lot of really important golf, uh,

to set himself up for the rest of the year, but it's going to be harder for him, I think, to lock back in at this point in time. And that's a great comp, and that's the comp that I actually tried to make in the column yesterday, where one of the more underappreciated things that Tiger Woods accomplished in that Hall of Fame career of his is he kept winning.

That even after he accomplished so much, even after he completed the career Grand Slam and then did it again, he just kept winning. He kept trying. He kept working. I think that's one of the most overrated things because you're right. I think human nature is that once you've reached that and you've worked that hard, I don't want to dismiss the idea that, oh, this somehow was easy to Rory. We know how difficult this was. He's been grinding since October just for that week.

I mean, and that's just such a small snapshot because one of the quotes that I'd loved going back to from Augusta, and I believe it was actually Friday afternoon that he said it is it.

It was a struggle for him to show up every year at Augusta and try to have a good attitude because it got to the point where you kind of felt like you knew the outcome that I'm going to come agonizingly close again and leave here with another broken heart. It's hard to do that time and time again, especially when you're 30, mid 30 years old, 36 years old. And you know that I've got another decade of this and it's starting to wear me down a little bit. So I,

I understand entirely where he's coming from when I'm going to savor this, but it is shocking. I think losing his driver at the PGA because it was deemed nonconforming because of the CT test that it went to did not help because now, and we kind of joked about it on Sunday's podcast about the idea that we always knew he was dependent on the driver, but man, this is really dependent on the driver. He's lost more than five shots to the field and strokes gain off the tee in his last two starts. If he does that this week, I don't think he's around for the weekend.

All right, let's talk a little bit about Scotty Scheffler, the prohibitive favorite here at the U.S. Open. You've taken Scotty, you've taken the field. I took Scotty in our punch shot. I'm not quite sure how good I felt because the idea is because of there's so much uncertainty with this golf course, because I think any player, including Scotty Scheffler, the greatest in the world right now by a large margin, can get into so much trouble so quickly at the blink of an eye and not really feel like it.

you've hit bad shots. I was talking with one player earlier in the week that said, I was playing a hole and hit three good shots and still did not make par. PGA Tour players don't do that. If they hit one good shot on a hole, they're probably going to make a par. So there's the fine line between success and failure on this golf course throws such a wrench into it that the only way to go was chalk. I understand why Vegas and the odds makers want to make him the easy favorite, but even for Scotty Scheffler, it's not going to take much to get the rails off.

I agree with that. I also picked Sky Shepherd to win this golf tournament. I think we all did. It wasn't a very good punch-out question. Not a good punch-out question. Sorry, Fred. It's not your best work. I think you could make a compelling case for probably like a dozen other players, whether it's Jon Rahm, whether it's Bryson, Devin.

I like Shane Lowry. I'll be interested to see how players like a Colin Morikawa, a Sepp Strzok, a Russell Henley, all of whom are very even keeled, all of whom are very good iron players, but all of whom are below average driving distance players, how they perform this week. You know, even though we've had a, you know, an Ernie, an Angel and a DJ win this golf tournament, you've also had players like Lauren Roberts, like Jim Furyk,

like Andrew Landry, even Shane Lauer, the 54-hole leader. He was not very long at the time. You've had all of those players in the mix as well. I don't think it's necessarily one style of play that can do it. However, when you make reasonable cases for all of those other players that I just mentioned, that's like with the caveat that Scottie's going to be off his game. And we have zero evidence...

over the past two months that Scottie is or will be off of his game. He's the best driver on the PGA Tour. He's the best iron player by miles. He is a top five scrambler on the PGA Tour. He has now developed into an elite putter. So you have all of those physical capabilities coupled with, I think, which are some pretty –

Envy inducing gifts as well, whether it's his grit and his bounce back ability or his patience, the bogey avoidance. I mean, there's so many stats that portend a Scotty Scheffler victory at Oakmont. It would not surprise me as I just predicted on live from. But this thing could get, as we just saw at the PGA Championship, four or five, six shots very, very quickly as we get to the weekend.

And the item I did on Monday's live from alongside Todd Lewis had to do with the idea of last year going into the U.S. Open. It was one of those rare instances when Scotty admitted he this was his words, not ours, that he wasn't prepared for. To be fair, Pinehurst was a very unique test. It was not a normal U.S. Open venue. It wasn't a normal anything venue. What they've done there is pretty special and pretty different than what you play in a week in and week out basis. And it was clear over the course of that week that Scotty Scheffler ran into situations that he wasn't prepared for. He hated.

that. He hates that so much, not being prepared for every possible contingency. This is an entirely different week. Speaking with Randy Smith, he got here early. He got here on Sunday, played 11 holes on Sunday, nine holes on Monday. He's continued that pace through the week as we get closer to Thursday. The one thing that Randy pointed out that is probably going to separate him from the rest of the field, the ball striking, you're right, is always going to be phenomenal. And I think that goes without saying.

when it comes to Scottie Sheffler. The part that Randy said impressed him the most is how these greens bring out the artist in him. He said it really inspires him to kind of sit and study. It has a little bit of Augusta to it where there's so much movement and so much undulation and you can play longer putts. And there's going to be a lot of 40 footers on these greens this week. You can play them a bunch of different ways. There's just not one way to get from point A to point B that brings out the best in

And Scottie Scheffler. So, A, he's prepared. Like, I don't think anything's going to get by him. I don't think he's going to be surprised by anything that happens. And when he's on and around the greens, which I think is a safe bet given his ball-striking prowess compared to the rest of the field, I think he could possibly be brilliant. Yeah, I mean, these greens are so difficult to...

I don't think anyone's going to make putts. You look at the past winners here at Oakmont, putting has almost been sort of a throwaway stat. Greens and regulation is the most important set. Every player who has won here has been at least top three in that particular category. Who's the best iron player by miles? It's got a shuffle. I'm glad you brought up the U S open last year at Pinehurst and sort of lack of preparedness to use his words that he felt there in the sand Hills of North Carolina. That was also remember Memorial had a different week,

It was a week later. It was the week leading into the U.S. Open. So you had a brutal U.S. Open type test at Jack's Place directly in

to a Pinehurst US Open, which also has its own unique challenges. Not the same situation for Scottie Scheffler this time around. Obviously did not play last week in Canada. Had his typical time off. Took a couple of days to recover from Jack's place, the difficult test at Beardfield Village. Then got back in to his typical intensity. I remember talking to Ted Scott at Quell Hollow after Scottie won the PGA Championship. He said, Scottie is so difficult to work for on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. His point being, this guy is so intense that

and is processing so much information that it just makes for really long days.

But when he gets to Thursday, Scottie Scheffler does when Ted Scott does like it's just fun from there. Then it's just competing. It's grinding. It's trying to put together a score. But when Scottie Scheffler steps on the first year, the 10th, they haven't looked at where he's starting on Thursday. He feels completely prepared. That's where his comfort from and other players find comfort in different ways. Right. Bryson finds comfort from his equipment. Roy finds comfort from how he's hitting his driver. Scottie finds comfort.

in his process, in his preparation. I don't think there's any reason to think this will not be another great week for Scotty Scheffer. Before we get out of here, Rex, it's been a very special day to watch you in your element because you are an Elser Statesman here in the media. And you've had two wonderful scholarship award winners with the GWA, the Golf Writers Association of America. They've been shadowing you. You've been mentoring them. If anyone who has listened to this podcast is a future GWA,

has future aspirations of getting into journalism. What have you been espousing, uh,

early week at the U S open. It was fun to wildly impressive young, a young man and a young woman, Amanda, who goes to Penn state, not far from here. She wants to go into the TV part of it. She does some TV work already at Penn state. So having the chance to take her on the live from set you were on earlier, having her a chance to see that, see how the process works, see how the sausage is made. Cause it's not always pretty. It is ugly. Yes. Yes. It's not pretty that the compounds gross and muddy and,

You're usually yelling at an editor, Fabs, I'm talking to you. Like you're usually getting yelled at, Fabs, I'm talking to you. So it's not exactly what you would expect. And then Aman, who is actually a professor at the University of Tennessee, wildly impressive young man. He wants to go into the history side of the game and he's got some amazing ideas about some of the

that he wants to write, some of the things he wants to explore in the game. The way he sort of explained it to me is golf is reaching sort of the second half of its history. And it's time to revisit that first half of that history from a different lens. So it was fun to watch. I don't know if they learned absolutely anything. I did make one critical error, and it's only because of proximity. Eamon Lynch is close to us this week. Yes, yes. And that did not go well. He had some nasty things to say about other media members. He had some nasty things to say about players. And I think...

I think the worst was, and finally, I'll just tell you this, don't trust any managers. And I was like, whoa, whoa, you can't disparage all of them, Eamon. Some of them are very good people.

Oh, God, that's that's just about the last person I would ever want. It was not going to meet. It's going to be a busy week. It already has been a busy week for you and I. We're actually we're on something called All Access on Thursday and Friday with Trey Wingo. Looking forward to doing that. You and I will be doing live from on the weekend.

on Saturday and Sunday before, of course, we do the full 52-minute edition for TV on Monday. You and I will also be doing mini-pods after each and every tournament round. We're going to try to keep those 15, 20 minutes so they can hit your inboxes, they can hit your Spotify's, they can hit your YouTube channels, wherever it is you get your content. Of course, NBCSports.com slash golf.

follow latest news notes and updates we also have brettly romine here on site with us filing copy as well it's gonna be a great week here at the 125th us open appreciate you guys tagging along with us thanks for listening thanks for support talk to you guys thursday night what is in that nasal spray

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