PITTSFORD, NY — Scottie Scheffler had a stake in leading the PGA Championship, at least for now, when he made an ominous prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already threatening in the first round, was only going to get better even more terrorizing.
Strong winds are expected. rain is coming Last but not least, the East Course was recently restored to recreate the devilish, centuries-old wizardry of architect Donald J. Ross.
“It’s just one of those places where you might hardly ever hit a shot offline, and sometimes you can hit a good shot and end up in a place where it’s quite punishing,” said Scheffler, the Masters winner. Tournament 2022, who nevertheless had his first bogey-free round in a major championship on Thursday. “There are a lot of difficult holes out there.”
The rough is proving wildly unforgiving, the fairways so tight that balls rarely stick – even after the frost that delayed Thursday’s start by almost two hours had sodden the turf. Four-time major champion Rory McIlroy hit two fairways throughout the day as he dueled crosswinds off the tees.
But there was no parade of disgruntled players publicly angry at the setup just outside Rochester, New York. Instead, as the tight rankings took shape, a kind of resentment and knowing admiration spread, even as the odds of a clear winner seemed dwindling.
“Very difficult golf course,” said Bryson DeChambeau, who later took the lead from Scheffler with a four-under par of 66. “As I’ve been looking at him all week, I’ve been like, man, I don’t know. How it’s even possible to hit under par on some golf holes out here.”
“It’s a tough game,” said Kurt Kitayama, who was level. “I don’t think anyone is really comfortable.”
“It rivals some of the toughest major championship venues I’ve ever played,” said Corey Conners, who has three top-10 finishes at the Masters, after his three-under par round.
The superb performance from DeChambeau, who has regularly stuttered at Winged Foot since his 2020 US Open win in New York and is often seen as similar to the recharged Oak Hill, came after an early bogey on the 12th hole. (With a 156-man field, tournament organizers opted for a two-tee start. Due to the frost delay, the last group’s tee time was moved to 4:32 p.m., less than four hours before sunset.)
On his seventh hole – #16 – he hit under par for the first time and finished his first nine with an under average. Three birdies on his back nine, including one on number 6, the hole golf course restorer Andrew Green has rated as Oak Hill’s most threatening hole, put him in fourth. After that, having “got so used to slamming everywhere,” he enjoyed a day of straight rides that he admitted could be little more than a memory until Friday night.
“You always think you have it one day and the next it just goes away,” DeChambeau said. “You just have to be careful.”
Scheffler, who was just a week away from a round near Dallas where he birdied or eagled five of his first six holes, found what appeared to be a groove on the par-5 #4. His tee shot went astray and landed miserably near a tree. In the end he still kept par.
“We got a wind switch and had a really good up and down to keep the lap going,” said Scheffler. “You would hate to curve a par 5, especially when there are only two of them here. That was a good dynamic.”
For others, the day was more confusing.
There was Kazuki Higa, a Japanese golfer who missed the cut in the other two majors of his career and opened his day with birdies on four of his first five holes, but then ended it with four consecutive bogeys or double bogeys. Jon Rahm, the No. 1 official golfer in the world and winner of last month’s Masters tournament, later finished with six overs, the worst single-round performance by a world No. 1 in a PGA championship since 1987. And Brooks Koepka , who dueled Rahm in the final round of the Masters but found himself on Thursday with a two-over-par score of 72, said the first round “was the worst I’ve beaten in a long time.”
Jordan Spieth, who withdrew from a tournament last week with a wrist injury, played Thursday and signed for three overs, level with former Major champions Shane Lowry and Gary Woodland. McIlroy, who has been struggling lately and missed the Masters cut, ended his day with an over. But his outing included an uphill putt from nearly 37 feet to save par at number 2, delivering the shot he suspected might hold as a competitor.
“Depending on what happens over the next three days and what I do next, I might look back on this shot as sort of a turning point of the week,” he said.
The rigors of an event like this week shaped Green’s mind as he began work on the course, which has hosted PGA Championships in 2003 and 2013, as well as a Ryder Cup and three US Opens.
“Knowing that the course has a wonderful legacy in major championships and that the club wanted to continue doing so, we needed to blend Donald Ross design elements with modern championship golf,” Green said in an interview earlier this year.
Greens again took on unorthodox shapes, bunkers took on greater brutality and more chocolate drops appeared – the turf-covered mounds that were a Ross trademark.
“You play really well and hit fairways and greens, you can make some putts, you can hit some under par,” said Viktor Hovland, who finished Thursday with two under par. “But if you’re a little off, the rough is just a penalty. If you’re short or you’re doing a few bogeys, you want to attack the pin and you hit it in a bad spot more often and it’s just an endless cycle.”
The cut is expected for Friday night, with the top 70 and duels pushed back to the weekend. Then the rain starts.