U.S. Open 2025: The busy person's snappy guide to the 10 most important stories from Round 1

OAKMONT, Pa. — A person like you? You don't have time to read endless prose about golf! You're on the go! With you in mind, here are the 10 stories, presented with utmost snappiness, that are of utmost importance from the first day of the 2025 U.S. Open. Read only the headlines if you want, peruse the text if you have a spare momentaand click a link or two if you feel especially captivated. Here we go!

1. J.J. Spaun will simply not go away

Remember the Players Championship, when it seemed like J.J. Spaun was the fluky challenger, only there to highlight Rory McIlroy's return to glory? Well, the fluke take is stale, because this man has stubbornly remained in the mix. Yet again, he showed up at a big event, with a hugely impressive 66 to take the solo lead on a day when Oakmont kinda-sorta lived up to the terror-hype.

At this point, Spaun has somehow earned squatter's rights at the top of the sport; you didn't expect him, but he's not going anywhere. The guy is 13th in the Ryder Cup standings and will go even higher if his strong week continues! He is very slowly making the evolution from "who?" to "I think this guy could be a giant-killer at Bethpage, put him out against Rahm."

2. The Rory-coaster continues

I walked the back nine with Rory McIlroy, it was rough (pun sort of intended). The basics are that he came out and shot two under on his front, against form, and then blew up with a 41 coming home. In the process, McIlroy’s new driver looked sterling and then broken, and he went from totally in command to, one assumes, praying for the round to end. He's certainly not out of it yet, but you also don't get the feeling he's going to crawl back in ... and we still have no answers for what happened to the man after the Masters. Why aren't you happy, Rory?

3. Oakmont is hard, but maybe not as hard as you want

How do you feel about 13 players finishing under par from a field of 156? That's pretty tough! But if you wanted Oakmont to be 2007 tough, when Angel Cabrera won with a score of five over, you're probably a little disappointed. It's OK—I’m with you, having demanded carnage from the USGA. However, it was still a very nasty course, and there's potential for it to become harder. Robert MacIntyre even said that if you gave him a score of even for all four days, he'd walk home with a trophy. This feels wrong, though, and the forecast of rain threatens to make it softer—and scores lower. I think in the end we're going to have to live with Oakmont as tough but not prohibitive. Players will complain, but nobody will cry, and that's too bad.

4. Brooks is back from the dead

Aside from one second-place finish in Singapore, Brooks Koepka hasn't even been that good on LIV this year, and he's missed the cut at the first two majors. So, what is he doing scoring 68 and in a tie for third? We don't know! But an eagle at 4 spurred his hot start, then he lost both strokes by 16. But THEN he went birdie-birdie to close out the day, the last with a 16-footer. Look at him go:

Is this at all sustainable? Probably not. But it would certainly be fun to have ole Brooksy swaggering down the fairways again.

5. Si Woo Kim had the quote of the day

"Honestly, I don't even know what I'm doing on the course."

Heck yeah, Si Woo. That's what we like to hear. Now consider that he shot 68, better than 100-plus other golfers. If he's clueless, imagine how they feel.

6. Scottie didn't quite hang in there, but he's not dead

For a long time, this seemed like one of those, "Scottie doesn't have his stuff, but he's hanging in there" type of rounds. But in the end, we can't in good faith claim he hung in there. The damage was a 73, and while the World No. 1 is absolutely in the mix—all this guy does is hunt down entire fields on the weekend—it's also true that Oakmont got a piece of him Thursday. Scheffler was pretty mad about it, too—he took a rage chunk out of the fairway at one point—which shouldn't surprise you because he is quietly one of the most competitive human beings on the planet.

7. There was a real, live albatross

Patrick Reed hit the shot of the day on the fourth, smashing this heat seeker from 286 yards for only the fourth recorded double eagle in U.S. Open history:

He played the rest of the holes in six over, but subtracting those other three on a single hole certainly helps, and he's hanging in at 73.

8. Jon Rahm is lurking dangerously

For a moment in Charlotte, it looked like Rahm might seriously challenge Scheffler for the PGA Championship, but an emphatic ejection from the Spaniard and a quintessential knuckle-down for Scheffler ended that dream quickly.

But there's a history of LIV guys needing a practice run in the major mix to remember how to win a major (Koepka lost the Masters, won the PGA in '23; Bryson DeChambeau lost the PGA, won the U.S. Open in '24), and Rahm battled to a 69 and is probably the scariest name on the leaderboard in red numbers. (If Koepka reads that last sentence, which he won't, it will be exactly the kind of disrespect he needs to win.)

9. The lesser-known contenders

Thriston Lawrence, the South African who seemed like he was going to win the Open Championship at Troon last year until Xander Schauffele went wild, is alone in second with a 67. Among those who shot 69 are New Yorker and first-time Open competitor James Nicholas and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, a 25-year-old member of the Danish invasion.

10. The struggling big names

Jordan Spieth did Jordan Spieth things, finishing with a 70 despite surging into the mountains of hope and sinking into the valleys of despair several times each. Collin Morikawa battled all day and finished even. Viktor Hovland looked better than he has in some time and came scored 71. The Great Swedish Hope, Ludvig Aberg, was a shot worse, along with Xander Schauffele, who still doesn't seem quite himself.

Sam Burns got as high as three under before finishing bogey-double-bogey-bogey to dampen his day with a 72; Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley couldn't get it going (73), and the big names that joined Rory with a 74 included Tommy Fleetwood, Hideki Matsuyama, Matt Fitzpatrick, Phil Mickelson and Wyndham Clark. Among the marquee crew that got savaged were Cam Smith (75), Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas (76), Justin Rose (77), Sepp Straka (78) and Shane Lowry (79). I can confirm from up-close viewing that Lowry was not a happy camper.

That's it for today, so get back to your busy lives and we will see you on Friday.

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