Oakmont Country Club is the toughest test in the US Open rotation. It is unrelenting, with dybolically fast greens, fairways faster than most golf courses' greens, unrelenting rough and an aura that puts a mental strain on even the best golfers -- including Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy knows Oakmont is going to be tough this week, and he knows it from experience. In a practice round last Monday, ahead of the championship, McIlroy shot 81. Eighty-one!
“Last Monday felt impossible. I birdied the last two holes for 81,” McIlroy said Tuesday of his June 2 practice round. “It felt pretty good. It didn’t feel like I played that bad.
“It’s much more benign right now than it was that Monday. They had the pins in dicey locations, and greens were running at 15½ (on the Stimpmeter, which is a measure of green speeds). It was nearly impossible."
McIlroy acknowledged that the version of Oakmont he saw a little more than a week ago was about as hard as it was going to get. The USGA typically sets up their US Open championship courses to be more difficult than the actual championship level so that they can dial it back in advance of the actual tournament. The governing body wants to know the absolute limit of the course to identify the best way for it to play, including finding hole locations that are fair but offer a variety of challenges.
“This morning it was a little softer," McIlroy said, suggesting some water of surfaces to soften them. "The pins aren’t going to be on 3 or 4 percent slopes all the time. If you put it in the fairway, it’s certainly playable. But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that’s a bonus.”
McIlroy's driving has been a problem since the USGA identified his gamer driver as non-conforming after testing it in a sample of the field at the PGA Championship. It's a common problem for pros with modern equipment designed to reach the limits of performance standards. He looked out of sorts in a bad way at last week's RBC Canadian Open, but he says he has a driver now that feels more comfortable in his hands.
The 2011 US Open champion knows he has to find the fairways this week to have any kind of chance.
"You miss a fairway here, you can’t really do anything with it unless you’re in the middle of a fairway bunker and you can get something over the lip.
“Much more penal (than the Masters) if you do miss it, and hopefully -- I feel a little better with the driver over the weekend at home and even today playing a practice round, so hopefully I can hit a few more fairways than I have been hitting and give myself some opportunities.”
