Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka have been paired up in the first two rounds of the 123rd US Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
At 1:54 p.m. (2054 GMT) on Thursday, the 2021 Masters winner Hideki Matsuyama will join them on the par-70 North Course. This is the first time the US Open has been in Los Angeles since 1948, when it was held at Riviera Country Club.
When Koepka won the PGA Championship at Oak Hill last month, it was his fifth major title. This put him ahead of McIlroy, who had won four majors.
McIlroy hasn’t won a major since 2014, when he won the PGA Championship and the Open Championship. Koepka made fun of this when he said in 2019 that McIlroy hadn’t won a major “since I’ve been on the PGA Tour.”
“I just don’t view it as a rivalry,” Koepka said back then. “I’m not looking at anybody behind me.”
When Koepka switched to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit and McIlroy won the PGA Tour, they were also on different teams.
The shocking news last week that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour will join forces with the Saudi backers of LIV has raised a lot of questions, and the anger won’t go away overnight.
McIlroy said after the deal was announced that he still “hates” LIV, but he did say that Koepka’s win in the PGA Championship, which was the first major win for a LIV golfer, showed that he should be in the Ryder Cup.
Masters winner Jon Rahm, who is ranked second in the world, and Xander Schauffele, who is ranked sixth, and Viktor Hovland, who is ranked fifth in the world, will tee off on the 10th hole at 8:24 a.m. Thursday, along with Schauffele and Hovland.
Scottie Scheffler, who is number one in the world and will win the Masters in 2022, goes off at 8:13 with Collin Morikawa and Max Homa. Morikawa has won two majors, and Homa has won one.
The three of them are some of the few people in the field who have played in a golf tournament at Los Angeles Country Club.
Morikawa and Scheffler were on the US Walker Cup team that beat Britain and Ireland on the North Course in 2017. Homa holds the course record of 61, which he shot in the first round of the 2013 US collegiate Pacific-12 conference championship.
Matt Fitzpatrick of England, who won last year, will play the first two rounds with Cameron Smith of Australia, who won the British Open last year, and Sam Bennett of the United States.
Since he got the worst amateur award at the Masters, Bennett has turned pro.
As of Monday, both Fitzpatrick and Smith were still getting to know the course. Smith said that based on what he had seen so far, it might be a different kind of US Open challenge.
“I guess we’re used to that kind of really thick, juicy rough,” Smith said. “It’s a little bit different here. I think the Bermuda rough, I think you can get kind of lucky or unlucky.
“There’s patches out there where they’re actually quite thin and you can get away with kind of a bad shot and other patches where if you’re in there it’s no good at all. I think that’s a little bit different.
“I think the way you go through the hills there a few times, there’s lots of shots where you almost have to work the ball into the hill. It’s a really good challenge.”
Photo by EPA/ERIK S. LESSER
