The best golfers in the world returned to play as the 123rd annual U.S. Open began on Thursday at the Los Angeles Country Club.
The tournament is the third of the four golf majors, following the Masters and the PGA Championship and preceding next month’s British Open.
This is the first time the U.S. Open has been played in the Los Angeles area since 1948, and the field features several golfers from Southern California — including Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay, Phil Mickelson, and Xander Schauffele.
“There’s just that extra added touch, specialness when you’re playing at home, when you’re playing in the state of California for me,” Morikawa explained to the media on Tuesday. “Hopefully, [I] put together four really good rounds out here and see what happens.”
Homa holds the course record, shooting nine-under-par 61 as a collegiate golfer at the University of California-Berkeley during the 2013 Pac-12 Championships.
“We’ve all had those days in golf as professionals where just everything is clicking,” Homa told the media Tuesday. “It was just really cool that it happened during the Pac-12 championship on this golf course. It’s nice when those things line up and when they really matter and not when I’m playing my friends who I’m giving six shots to at home, and it doesn’t really matter. I just remember it all clicking, but it just felt so easy. Then we had to play 18 holes right after that because we had a 36-hole day, and the golf course was not nearly as easy as I remembered it one hour prior, and I just hung on for dear life for three more rounds.”
The field also features other top PGA members like Scottie Scheffler, Jason Day, and John Rahm, PGA Champions Tour members like Padraig Harrington and Stewart Cink, and LIV members such as Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, and Dustin Johnson.
LIV Tour members are allowed to participate since it is a major tournament. While the LIV and the PGA TOUR recently announced a merger to help fix their issues with each other, LIV Tour members have not been able to play in most PGA tournaments.
“I don’t think there’s really been too much animosity between players in general,” Koepka explained to the Media on Tuesday. “I think that’s been a lot more constructed from the media side than the player side… I’ve been trying to prep for this week. I’m just trying to make sure I come into a major championship — there’s four weeks a year I really care about and this is one of them, and I want to play well.”
The United Kingdom’s Matt Fitzpatrick, the eighth-ranked golfer on the PGA Tour, returns as the defending U.S. Open champion after clinching his first PGA Tour win in last year’s event.
“I think for me winning last year gave me the boost that when I played my best or when I play well I can compete with anyone and I can win a major,” Fitzpatrick said as he met with the media on Monday. “I think that was the biggest thing for me to take away turning up to events, knowing that, okay, my game feels in good shape. I’ve got a chance to win this week, whereas maybe previously I’ve almost felt like I played well and not necessarily competed in majors.”
According to the USGA, five players in the field are listed from Texas, including Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Paul Haley, Mac Meissner, and Texas A&M alum Sam Bennett, who stood out with a 16th-place finish as an amateur at the Masters in April.
The U.S. Open continues through Sunday afternoon when the new champion will be crowned.