The Five: Things that caught the eye at the U.S. Open

Jon Rahm is like most of us this week. He’s eagerly awaiting a chance to play at The Los Angeles Country Club for four days. We can’t wait to watch it.

Before any media members had a chance to ask a question during his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday, Rahm let slip what many in the golf world have been hoping to hear.

“(It) has the potential to be one of the best U.S. Opens we've seen,” he said.

For someone of Rahm’s historical acumen to jump to that conclusion encapsulates how much of the U.S. Open field feels about the tournament heading to one of the most historic and exclusive golf clubs in America. A peek behind the curtain of a famous George Thomas Jr. design amidst a season full of historic storylines has left me more excited for this major championship than any of the last five years.

Here are five things that caught my eye this week. From Homa’s hometown return to Scheffler’s historic runup to this event and the quirky, fantastic features of the golf course, here’s The Five at the U.S. Open.

Which Max Homa will show up?

Homa is the first to admit it. He has underperformed in majors. He won’t grandstand about a finish that is better than the golf public may deem it to be. There’s no diatribe of the various bad breaks that may have dropped him out of contention nor a hollow soundbite saying this will be the major when everything turns around. Need an honest assessment? Homa will give it.

“I just think I get here and I try too hard,” he said. “I get in these things and I can't seem to separate -- I can't seem to understand that it's okay to make bogeys and it's okay to mess up. It's okay, you're going to get on runs and do all these great things if you just let yourself, and I've done a poor job of that.”

His best major appearance to date is a T13 finish at the 2021 PGA Championship at Southern Hills. At the time it seemed to be a breakthrough for future success. Thus far it is only a blip.

That result is his only top-30 in 13 major appearances, far from the expected success of a player of Homa’s stature as a six-time TOUR winner ranked inside the top-10 in the world.

Yet Homa has been a late bloomer through much of his life. Certainly his PGA TOUR career can be described that way, from losing his card twice to finally winning for the first time in 2019 to now being one of the world’s best. And as bleak as his major record has looked, there may be no better place for his major game to finally bloom than The Los Angeles Country Club.

Forget for a moment the type of golf course LACC’s North Course is billed as – a stiff tee-to-green test that requires precision. That fits Homa’s game to a tee. Let’s even pretend Homa isn’t one of the few players that not only have played this course competitively but won a high-level event here (he shot 61 in the first round of the 2013 Pac-12 Championship en route to his first collegiate victory at this course).

Just consider the setting. Homa leads the PGA TOUR in top-10 finishes in the state of California over the last two seasons. Here’s the complete list.

2023 The Genesis Invitational – 2nd

2023 Farmers Insurance Open – won

2022 Fortinet Championship – won

2022 The Genesis Invitational – T10

2022 Farmers Insurance Open – CUT

2021 Fortinet Championship – won

2021 The Genesis Invitational – won

2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am – T7

2021 Farmers Insurance Open – T18

2021 The American Express – T21

2021 U.S. Open – CUT

Four of his six wins have come in California; he’s only missed two cuts (although one was a U.S. Open).

So which Homa will show up? In his words, it will depend more on his mental game than his golf game.

“Just got to control what's between my ears,” he said. “I think I've been waiting for the weeks to click with my golf game and realizing that it's not the golf game. This week will be a mental test for me.”

It’s a mental test he feels increasingly prepared for. He’s already thrived at The Genesis Invitational, the tournament he grew up attending. He’s dealt with waves of local support and the constant texts asking for tickets that follow for a hometown event. No doubt the scale is different for a U.S. Open, but Homa feels increasingly comfortable, if not grateful for this distraction. For once, maybe he can spend less time thinking about the actual golf in a major.

That, he believes, can only help him this week.

Scottie Scheffler and the fickle nature of putting

Scottie Scheffler tries to keep things simple. Overthinking is the last thing he wants to do. So his revelation Tuesday that he’s considering a change of putters should tell you all you need to know about how the No. 1 player in the world feels about his putting.

“I think it's strange that I've been struggling the past few weeks with my putter,” said Scheffler, who was testing out a slightly bigger putter on The Los Angeles Country Club practice green.

He’s not yet sure if he will put it in the bag, but the indecision is based on some healthy evidence that the putter has cost him opportunities to win in recent weeks. He was one shot short of the playoff at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, in what was an all-time week in many regards. He carded the second-best Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green mark (20.74 strokes gained) since the PGA TOUR began tracking the data. His putter, however, cost him 8.58 strokes, the worst in the field.

“Sometimes when you feel good, you feel like you're never going to miss, and then sometimes when you feel terrible, you feel like you're never going to make. Putting is just so different than the rest of the game, so when it comes to putters, it's all personal,” he said.

And it certainly seems to be a battle in his head. Scheffler has lost strokes to the field putting in four of his last five starts. His only positive week on the greens in that stretch was the PGA Championship, where he finished T2.

Scheffler’s season has been stunningly impressive by any expectation. He’s won twice and finished inside the top-12 in 15 straight events. A look through his stats elicits eye-popping numbers. He leads the PGA TOUR off-the-tee, in approach play and ranks sixth around the green – all of which are career bests. Except, of course, for the putting. That ranks 148th.

Oh, the perils of golf. Given Scheffler’s extraordinary tee-to-green form, even an average putting week could mean a second major championship. The 26-year-old is trying to stay patient.

“Putting has that finality attached to it where the ball either goes in or it doesn't, and you're kind of judged by that, and I'm trying to get more and more away from that, to where if I hit a really good putt I'm more happy -- if I hit like a really good 7-iron into a green and I think it's going to be 2 feet and it comes up 25 feet short, I'm not overly pissed off because I'm like, wow, I hit a great shot. And so if I'm sitting on the greens and I can hit really good putts, it's a lot easier to live with the results,” he said.

Will that be with a new putter?

“You guys can find out Thursday,” he said.

Keep your eyes on No. 6

The drivable par-4 has become quite the mainstay in modern major championships, but not often do they require much nuance. While almost every major has one or two of these holes that offer the hope of a risk-reward decision, we frequently don’t see it come to fruition. When posed with the option of laying back with an iron or going at the pin with a driver, a majority of players have opted to take the latter, bombing it as close as they can get and dealing with the potential consequences later.

The sixth hole at The Los Angeles Country Club may be the exception. The 330-yard hole has caught the attention of major winners during the practice rounds thus far. It’s downhill 54 feet from tee to green, only 292 yards in the air to the front of the putting surface. But it’s the smallest, narrowest green on the course. The fairway is described by our resident architecture expert Bradley Klein as a “reverse camber chicane – canted right to left against the grain of a hole turning left to right.”

Jon Rahm began his answer on the hole saying he wasn’t committing to one strategy over the other, but by the end of his answer, it seemed he had talked himself into one.

“There will be people that go for it and make eagles, hit great shots, give themselves a lot of good looks at birdie, but I think it's also the way you're going to see the highest numbers … people that go for the green and put themselves in a difficult spot,” Rahm said. “I think if you hit the layup to the spot you want to every day, which isn't the hardest layup, I think your scoring average will be lower than going for it every day. That will be my belief just because you don't have much of a margin of error.”

That’s the strategy Collin Morikawa thought he was going to implement, too. He’s not so sure anymore.

“Before this week, I hadn't talked to my caddie, and I thought I was going to lay up. He convinced me in like two minutes that we might be going for it,” said Morikawa, who also compared it to the 10th hole at Riviera (both courses are designed by George Thomas Jr.), considered one of the best short par 4s in the world.

If it fits that billing, it will be the most enjoyable hole to watch all week.

One thing everyone can agree on with the hole: there’s a wide range of outcomes, which should make it the exact risk-reward that a drivable par-4 hopes to be.

“We're going to see a lot of different numbers, I think. You might see some eagles; you might see some doubles; you just don't know what you're going to get there,” Morikawa said.

Can an underdog prevail?

Recent major championships haven’t been kind to the long shots. Of the last 45 major championships played, only one was won by a player ranked outside the top 50 on the OWGR at the time. The last 12 U.S. Opens were won by players inside the top 30, the longest streak since 1986.

With LACC a first-time major venue, it’s hard to know exactly what to look for, but given recent history, it is likely a top-ranked player coming in with form. Here’s a look at the best players on TOUR over the last 30 days, per Strokes Gained data.

1. Viktor Hovland

2. Scottie Scheffler

3. Rory McIlroy

4. Tyrrell Hatton

5. Justin Rose

6. Patrick Cantlay

7. Sepp Straka

8. Tommy Fleetwood

9. Si Woo Kim

10. Xander Schauffele

Only Kim (No. 31) and Straka (No. 33) are ranked outside the top 30 in the OWGR. Looking for a longshot? Austin Eckroat ranks 14th in Strokes Gained: Total over the last month. He’s ranked 113th in the world.

The best U.S. Open trophy tour

Reigning U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick was sad when the USGA came calling for the U.S. Open trophy. Like the Stanley Cup in hockey, players who win the U.S. Open only get to keep the trophy for the year before they have to give it back for the next champion.

That day came too quickly for Fitzpatrick.

“I didn't feel like I spent enough time with it, really,” he said. Though the trophy apparently did make it on an epic trip to Italy last summer.

“We were on a boat, so to Capri, Amalfi, Positano,” Fitzpatrick said.

Sipping Limoncellos on the Amalfi Coast while parading about with your first major championship trophy sounds about as perfect as it gets, but it got me thinking, could anything top that?

Honestly, I’m not sure. My goal would be to never miss a good moment with the trophy. I’d take my $3.15 million in prize money and hire someone to carry it around with me wherever I go. Like the president and his nuclear codes. So whether I’m on the southwestern coast of Italy, in a PGA TOUR locker room or making a quick dinner run to Five Guys, I’ve always got the trophy alongside me.