Unmissable Oakmont Carnage Was Proper US Open Test

How much fun was that? Didn’t it warm your heart to see that best players in the world nearly losing their minds - and the plot - at Oakmont as the US Open unfolded? 

They told us that it was going to be a brutal test and it most certainly was.

We saw Shane Lowry picking up his ball on the green without first marking it. Trust me when I tell you that when he did this the former Open champion’s mind was utterly fried. We saw Rory McIlroy throwing golf clubs and smashing a tee marker and giving the grumpiest media interview of his entire career. 

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We saw Scottie Scheffler, the sport’s most dominant force, showing his frustration time after time. Even when shooting a commendable 71 in the second round. He said: "With the way I was hitting it, was easily a day when I could have been going home and I battled hard to stay in there."

And there, in a nutshell, is the difference between Scheffler and most of his rivals. He dropped plenty of shots but he simply refused to be beaten and kept bouncing back. This was the US Open - it is not meant to be easy to win any major and the USGA prides itself in making this the most difficult of the lot.

Many of them were beaten before they even hit their first tee shots. They had made up their minds that the course was unplayable. As Sam Burns proved on day two, it was anything but if tackled properly. 

Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton? It got to both of them. Pass the swear jar please!

We saw Justin Thomas take four putts for goodness sake. A pair of 76s sent him packing. In his last 13 majors, Thomas is a combined 72 over par and has missed seven cuts.

I honestly believed that Oakmont was made for Tommy Fleetwood. It turned out that I could not have been more wrong. He arrived at the par-four ninth hole on Friday, his final of the day, one shot inside the projected cutline. He then drove it into the fairway bunker and had to hack out. His third landed on the green some 40 feet from the pin. He then three-putted for a double bogey to end his tournament.

Joaquin Niemann may have won four times on the LIV Golf tour in 2025 but Oakmont was too much for him too - two rounds of 75 saw him packing his case for home.

Justin Rose nearly won The Masters in April. Oakmont is a course that should have suited him but he struggled from the off with a pair of 77s.

I have repeatedly said that the only way to truly test these men is to provide them with a course that features narrow fairways, proper rough and fairway bunkers that punish them in the way these hazards are meant to.

After 36 holes there were just three players under par. Thriston Lawrence went from six under par to one over in the blink of an eye. The cut fell at seven over par, players complained bitterly about how hard the course was. Many refused to speak to the media afterwards.

George Duangmanee shot rounds of 86 and 89 to miss the cut on 35 over par. He is a 23-year-old who only turned professional last year and was playing in his first US Open. It is an experience he won’t forget in a hurry - although he will be trying to do precisely that. He took 47 blows to complete the front nine during his horrific second round, making double bogeys and worse for fun. 

There had been much speculation about how an 18-handicapper would get on at Oakmont. If a player of Duangmanee’s quality can barely play to an 18 handicap over the course of two days then you can be 100% certain that your average club golfer would be looking at a score in the region of 120.

Defending champion Bryson Dechambeau missed the cut because he attempted to overpower Oakmont. He missed too many fairways and left himself a series of impossible approach shots - and paid the price. But at least he spoke to the media afterwards. More surprising was seeing Ludvig Aberg heading home after rounds of 72 and 76.

But then there was Burns. The young American shot a 65 on day two and recorded 11 birdies in his first 36 holes. And the reason he did so was because he found lots of fairways and applied some common sense with his approach shots. He only attacked flags that were set up to allow him and his rivals to do so. 

Viktor Hovland is meant to be one of the worst chippers among the world’s elite but he made his second round of 68 by consistently getting up and down, and even holing out from off the green.

And when all was said and done, JJ Spaun was the only player under par.

There will be many who claim that Oakmont was too tough. I don’t subscribe to that view. For me, this was a classic US Open test - the way golf at this level should be played. The final round was utter carnage but it was unmissable.