U.S. Open 2025: Scottie Scheffler and company play opening three holes at Oakmont in 71 minutes

Warren Little

By Greg Gottfried

June 13, 2025

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Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa finished up Oakmont’s par-4 11th hole this morning at 8:07 a.m. EDT. Forty-four minutes later, at precisely 8:51 a.m., the trio got through the brutal par-5 12th. It’s not as if there were any rules shenanigans or lost balls; three of the world’s best golfers took three quarters of an hour for three pars.

As our own Jamie Kennedy pointed out, it took the featured group 71 minutes to take on three holes to start Friday’s second round of the 2025 U.S. Open. You stretch that out to 18 holes, and we have a potential seven-hour round on our hands. Luckily, things sped up—well, a little—with the crew taking just under three hours to reach the turn.

Obviously, we’re using this pairing as the example, but this is far from unusual, the way Oakmont is built to play and the way these U.S. Open rounds usually go. Deliberate is the conservative word used to describe pace of play at the USGA’s marquee championship. We can definitively say that no one will be rewatching these first two rounds to see speedy golf and quick decision-making.

Gregory Shamus

MORE: Is this proof that par is just a number?

That aforementioned 12th hole, in particular, has been quite the second-round pickle, par 5 stretched to 642 yards with a demanding back-right pin and a front-to-back sloping green. And yet, it feels part in parcel with the rest of what Oakmont’s offering (or not offering) to golf’s top players. Just over the first two days, there’s been a good deal of waiting at the tee, along with pros slowing things down to figure out the course’s eccentricities.

According to the USGA, time par for the first two rounds at Oakmont has been set at 4 hours and 45 minutes. However, the opening threesome on Thursday played in 5 hours and 35 minutes, which is going to happen when the opening round relation to par is a +4.78. As Justin Ray pointed out, that’s the highest number since Shinnecock Hills in 2018.

Justin Thomas has admitted that Oakmont demands “patience and discipline,” and we can certainly see where the patience comes in. It’s tough enough to take on Oakmont on a normal day. We can only imagine how difficult things get after a four-putt (looking at you, Scheffler) and then needing to wait at the tee and ponder where everything went wrong.