Nine Questions Ahead of the 2023 U.S. Open

Well, you’ve got to hand it to the professional golf establishment: It has certainly come up with a novel plan for navigating the post–Tiger Woods landscape. Cloak-and-dagger dealings with malevolent foreign governments! Thrilling twists and stunning betrayals! Questionably motivated power brokers pulling the invisible marionette strings of global finance! The Graham Greene influence here is strong. And what better venue for golf’s latest melodrama to play out in than Los Angeles Country Club, which sits just a short iron away from Hollywood itself?

Whatever your position is on the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, the DP World Tour, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, predatory mergers, 54-hole tournaments, and what is arguably the most prismatically strange 24-month stretch of any top-tier sport in history, you can’t say that the past couple of years have been boring. That is the backdrop for the 2023 U.S. Open, traditionally golf’s most grueling major and the best excuse this side of the Ryder Cup to indulge in semi-benign nationalism. We’re here to get you ready for the USGA’s annual forensic exam of nerves and temperament, which is taking place at a moment when practically everyone tangentially involved in this tournament is a trembling shell of their previous self. The new, weird face of golf is ready for its close-up. —Elizabeth Nelson

What should we expect from LACC?

Matt Dollinger: So many firsts. For starters, it’s the first major since that whole “PGA and LIV are merging but not really but also probably” story. It’s also the first time a major has been hosted at the Los Angeles Country Club, the first U.S. Open in the L.A. area in 75 years, and the first U.S. Open to feature five par 3s in more than seven decades. And, in general, it’s going to offer up even more firsts for players. First putts. First angles. First looks. First shots. You name it. That’s because LACC is such an exclusive golf course that even some of the biggest names in the sport haven’t been able to get on it.

The par-70, 7,423-yard beauty represents a fascinating equalizer this week. There’s a horse for every course, but what if none of the horses actually know the course? While Max Homa holds the course record (drink every time you hear that this week) and Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler played it during the 2017 Walker Cup, most golfers are seeing LACC for the first time this week. That includes Rory McIlroy, who admitted at the RBC Canadian Open that the only LACC research he had been able to do was on YouTube.

To give the public a glimpse at the new major track, the third in nine years to host a U.S. Open for the first time, the USGA opened the LACC to media members last month, and I (unlike McIlroy) got to play it. While the grounds crew had yet to fully trick it out, you could see how every hole would soon be turned into a walking double bogey. The tees and pins could be downright treacherous, turning good shots into terrible outcomes. And though the course is plenty long and features the U.S. Open’s prerequisite shin-high rough, players’ short games are what will be put at a premium. One of the course’s most daunting features is its lack of fringe on the green—you go straight from tabletop putting surfaces to hosel-clenching rough. Good luck with all that. And the hole locations will be downright diabolical. We may even see the par-3 seventh hole play longer than the par-4 sixth. (Which, since you asked, I birdied. Sorry, just wanted to put that on the internet somewhere. Yes, I did lay up.)

The course has been tweaked and tweezed in recent weeks to be absolutely pure and up to the USGA’s standards. Expect some big numbers and for anything in the vicinity of even par to be a good score. And if anyone finds a Titleist 3 with a blue dot in the heinously long rough on no. 15, it might be mine.

What is the latest on the PIF-PGA union?

Nelson: In public relations terms, the “situation is fluid,” which is another way of saying that no one knows their ass from first base. The PGA Tour and PIF seemingly struck their initial agreement without having resolved relevant details about funding, power sharing, their approach to integration, and other crucial components of their new partnership, meaning the future of the game remains a mystery. What we do know is that LIV Golf and the PGA Tour were staring down the barrel of potentially years of costly litigation, with the Saudi Public Investment Fund war chest eclipsing the PGA’s by exponents in the thousands. Once Saudi Arabia got its teeth into golf, there was never any other outcome, no matter how patently ridiculous and unpopular the initial LIV product rollout was. In television rating terms, the PGA had all the watches. But LIV had all the time.

Questions have been raised as to whether the union will draw scrutiny from the Justice Department under antitrust grounds, and Congress has belatedly expressed a desire to investigate the mechanics behind the agreement. But given that the deal was brokered by mergers and acquisitions whiz Jimmy Dunne of the investment bank Piper Sandler—and that the PGA Tour appealed to Congress over the past year for help and was mostly ignored—it’s difficult to imagine that either side would have left itself vulnerable to meaningful legal redress. There are no heroes in this story—just the brute-force sound of money trucking over conscience and the resulting uphill moral knife fight that professional golf fans will deal with moving ahead. Enjoy this year’s U.S. Open, but bear in mind those left behind in the swirling vortex of cash.

What are the players saying?

Megan Schuster: Oh so many things. The first wave of player statements came almost immediately after the deal was announced. One group took to Twitter to lament the way they found out (on social media, with the rest of the public); others railed against the decision altogether, with PGA member Dylan Wu saying, “Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf in the world by going back on everything he said the past 2 years. The hypocrisy. Wish golf worked like that. I guess money always wins @PGATOUR”; and still others gloated: Brooks Koepka asked how Brandel Chamblee was holding up, and Phil Mickelson went on a reply-guy victory lap.

Then there were the guys who waited and held off on interviews and press conferences to get their full thoughts out there. Bryson DeChambeau went on CNN to defend the Saudi Public Investment Fund, saying the deal was “the best thing that could ever happen for the game of golf” and, uh, stumbling a bit when asked about the country’s record with regard to 9/11 and human rights issues. McIlroy was probably the first big PGA Tour player asked publicly about the deal, and in between shots of him just looking exhausted, he said things like, “If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy? At the end of the day, money talks, and you would rather have them as a partner,” and he agreed with any folks who think that what the PGA is doing is hypocritical.

More will come out and has come out already this week: Cameron Smith said Monday he didn’t know whether LIV would continue to exist beyond this season; Brooks Koepka said he hasn’t been paying attention, as he’s too busy prepping for this major.

But rest assured the questions have only just started to be asked. And we’ll get more and more player insight with each new detail.

Who should feel most aggrieved by the deal?

Schuster: There are a number of acceptable answers here, depending on how you’re looking at the deal. From the perspective of golf fans? Probably McIlroy, who has been trotted out as something of a “sacrificial lamb” (his words) over the last year only to see the tour he was protecting join forces with the entity he believed it was fighting against. Now, he gets to answer fun questions about antitrust violations, what he knew and when, and what sort of financial compensation he and other tour members should receive once the deal is finalized. From the PGA side? Definitely the lower-level golfers who were offered big paydays with LIV but stuck around out of a sense of loyalty, a desire not to be associated with Saudi Arabia, or another reason.

From a much more serious point of view? The 9/11 families, who were invoked early and often by PGA commissioner Jay Monahan last year and who released a statement last week detailing their ire. “Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the statement read. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”

Even sitting U.S. senators seem pretty peeved about the whole thing. Last week, Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted: “So weird. PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport. I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?” And Richard Blumenthal, the chair of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent letters to both LIV and the PGA Tour seeking insights into the deal and how it was reached. All in all, there’s plenty of distaste and distrust to go around; now, we’re left to see the fallout.

How much of this will seep into the tournament?

Nelson: Best guess? Not much. When LIV defector Brooks Koepka bagged his fifth major last month at the PGA Championship, it was all the evidence you needed to understand an elite golfer’s capacity to compartmentalize. Most players not named Rory McIlroy are disinclined to wrestle publicly with the implications of a partnership with Saudi Arabia and its abhorrent human rights record, and most of the PGA Tour’s network partners will presumably abide by whatever non-disparagement pacts the PGA and LIV have inevitably entered into. This is how this stuff works. A gigantic check gets written, and a lot of abhorrent acts get quickly forgotten. I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised, but my strong suspicion is that little will be said from the first tee on Thursday to the trophy presentation on Sunday night. Money talks, and money buys silence too.

Which favorite is going to show up?

Dollinger: On a course that so few are familiar with, it’s hard to go against the names that have experience. Homa (drink) shot an unfathomable 9-under 61 in 2013, a performance so low that even Phil Mickelson wouldn’t stoop to it. (You know what I mean.) Morikawa and Scheffler both played at the 2017 Walker Cup at the LACC, giving a little extra credence to their stocks this week. And Jon Rahm fared well on the course as an amateur too. If there’s such a thing as local knowledge this week, it’s going to go a long way.

Scheffler, in particular, just feels inevitable. I haven’t been the same since I realized he hasn’t finished worse than T12 in a golf tournament in EIGHT months. That’s a full NBA season plus the playoffs! He’s finished in the top five in his last four tournaments, including a T2 at the PGA Championship, and he’s posting a near-record season efficiency-wise:

The only problem? As dominant as Scheffler has been tee to green, he’s been dismal at putting the ball. He leads the tour in scoring and greens in regulation, but the short stick is absolutely giving him fits. He finished dead last in putting at the Memorial two weeks ago, and he ranks 148th in strokes gained putting on the season. If he was putting anywhere close to where he was last season (when he ranked 58th), he’d likely have half a dozen wins already (instead of two). But LACC will put a premium on accessing tight pins, and there might not be anyone on tour better at that than Scheffler. He’ll have as good of a look as anyone this week. The only question is whether he can drain it.

Who could falter?

Dollinger: It feels like two golfers are going to face an inordinate amount of scrutiny this week. McIlroy continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons—he’s taken the brunt of the LIV battle on the chin and has been in a major drought since 2014. Maybe the fact that he’s never played the golf course before will lead to a more carefree attitude from him this week. But it’s hard to imagine anyone relaxing on this course.

The other golfer with a Hollywood-sized spotlight is Homa. Talk about a sportswriter’s dream (and an editor’s nightmare!). Can the hometown kid, who also happens to hold the course record, somehow secure his first major victory on Father’s Day, shortly after becoming a first-time dad himself and gaining #perspective? That’s a lot of narratives and probably unwanted pressure for one of the world’s best golfers who’s still looking for his first top-10 finish in a major.

Which dark horses have the best chance?

Schuster: LACC is a tough course to predict because so few guys in the field have played it before. A few have seen it in college (Homa and Rahm played in the 2013 Pac-12 Championship), and others saw it at the 2017 Walker Cup. But it’ll be a fresh test for most, which makes it exciting. As far as longer shots go, Cam Smith (+3000) has a solid major record, and Action Network’s Jason Sobel believes the course’s setup could play to Smith’s strengths. “Smith is in the conversation for best putter in the world right now, and there might not be a conversation for best in the clutch. If the magic wand is working to its usual capabilities this week, his 30/1 number sounds like a bargain.”

Wyndham Clark (+8500) is another long shot who many people think could make noise, given that he ranks in the top 10 in both strokes gained approach and bogey avoidance, and he won just a few weeks ago at the Wells Fargo Championship. And though Tommy Fleetwood (+4100) hasn’t done well at the U.S. Open since he finished fourth in 2017 and second in 2018, he’s never one to sleep on in these tournaments, especially considering the form he showed last weekend at the RBC Canadian Open.

Who’s going to win?

Schuster: Brooks Koepka. I was already pretty convinced of this given his form as of late (a win at the PGA Championship in May and a T2 finish at the Masters in April) and his record in U.S. Opens (back-to-back wins in 2017 and 2018 and five top-five finishes in nine starts). But then Tuesday, he said he’d given little thought to the PIF-PGA deal because he was “preparing for this week.” That’s a little thing we like to call “killer instinct.”

Nelson: Tony Finau. Every time I pick Finau, he freaks out and immediately plays himself out of the tournament—such is the power of the Ringer major previews. But I’m once again going with one of the sport’s true good guys. He had a blistering start to the season, but Finau’s game has been a bit ragged the last few outings, including a missed cut at the Schwab Challenge three weeks ago. But the world’s 12th-ranked player is an elite ball striker who has gotten better and better at closing the deal when in contention on Sundays. I will confess that this is in part a pick made out of the desire to have someone truly decent to root for, but Finau has the skills to make my pick a smart one.

Dollinger: Scottie Scheffler. With apologies to Cam Young, I’m going with Scheffler. Don’t underestimate the power of a new putter. It’s his tournament to lose.