Ferocious Oak Hill Daunt PGA Championship Field, and more to come

PITTSFORD, NY — Scottie Scheffler, at least for now, had a piece of the PGA Championship lead when he made an ominous prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already playing to the point of threat in the first round, would only be terrorize more.

The wind is expected to blow. Rain is coming. And just for the record, the East Course was recently restored to bring back the diabolical, age-old wizardry of the architect Donald J. Ross.

“It’s just one of those places where you hit one shot, maybe barely offline, and sometimes you can hit a good shot and end up in a spot where it’s pretty punishing,” said Scheffler, the winner of the 2022 Masters Tournament, who nevertheless his first bogey-free round in a major championship Thursday. “There are a lot of difficult holes there.”

The rough proves to be ferociously rewarding, the fairways so firm that the balls only stay in so many times – even after frost that delayed Thursday’s start by nearly two hours softened the turf. Rory McIlroy, the four-time major champion, hit two fairways all day as he dueled with crosswinds off the tees.

But there was no parade of injured players publicly outraged by the lineup just outside Rochester, NY. Instead, as the cramped leaderboard took shape, a brand of reluctance emerged, knowing admiration, even as the odds of a runaway winner seemed to diminish.

“Very tough course,” said Bryson DeChambeau, who later took the lead from Scheffler with a four-under-par 66. “While I watched it all week, I thought, man, I don’t know how underpowered shooting is on this some holes are even possible.

“It plays tough,” said Kurt Kitayama, who was tied. “I don’t think anyone is really comfortable.”

“It matches some of the toughest major championship venues I’ve ever played in,” said Corey Conners, who finished in the top-10 three times at the Masters, after his three-under-par round.

DeChambeau, who has been sputtering routinely at Winged Foot since his 2020 US Open victory in New York, often seen as comparable to the charged Oak Hill, came after an early bogey on the 12th hole. (With a field of 156 men, the tournament organizers opted for a two-tee start. Due to the frost delay, the last group’s start time was pushed back to 4:32 p.m., less than four hours before sunset.)

He came under par for the first time on his seventh hole—No. 16—and finished his first nine one under. Three birdies on his back nine, including one on No. 6, the hole course repairman Andrew Green has rated as Oak Hill’s most threatening, brought him down to four. Afterwards, “getting so used to hitting it all over the place,” he enjoyed a day of straight rides that, he admitted, could be little more than a memory Friday night.

“You always think you have it one day and then it just goes away the next day,” DeChambeau said. “You just have to watch out.”

Scheffler, just a week away from a round near Dallas in which he made a birdie or an eagle on five of his first six holes, found what looked like a groove on the par-5 No. 4 tree. He eventually saved par.

“We got a wind change and had a really good up and down to keep the lap going,” said Scheffler. “You would hate to bogey a par-5, especially when there are only two here. That was a good momentum.”

The day was more baffling to others.

There was Kazuki Higa, a Japanese golfer who missed the cut at the other two majors of his career, opening his day with birdies on four of his first five holes, then finishing with four consecutive bogeys or double bogeys. Jon Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking and the winner of last month’s Masters Tournament, later finished at six over, the worst single-round showing at a PGA Championship by a world No. 1 since 1987. And Brooks Koepka, who dueled Rahm in the final round of the Masters but had a two-over-par 72 on Thursday, said the first round was “the worst I’ve hit in a long time.”

Jordan Spieth, who pulled out of a tournament last week due to a wrist injury, played on Thursday and signed for three over, tying former major champions Shane Lowry and Gary Woodland. McIlroy, who had been struggling lately and missed the Masters cut, ended his day with one left. But his outing included a nearly 11-yard uphill putt to save par at No. 2, giving him the kind of shock he suggested might keep him a contender.

“Depending on what happens in the next three days and what I’m going to do, I can look back on that shot as the kind of turning point of the week,” he said.

The rigors of an event like this week’s helped shape Green’s thoughts as he began working on the course, which has hosted 2003 and 2013 PGA Championships, as well as a Ryder Cup and three US Opens.

“Knowing that the course has a wonderful major championship history, and knowing this was something the club wanted to continue doing, we had to combine Donald Ross design elements with modern championship golf,” said Green in an interview this year.

The greens took on unorthodox shapes again, bunkers took on more brutality, and more so-called chocolate drops—the grass-wrapped hills that were Ross’ signature—appeared.

“You play really well and hit fairways and greens, you can make some putts, you can shoot a few under par,” said Viktor Hovland, who finished two under on Thursday. “But if you’re a little off, it’s just so rough. If you’re short or making some bogeys you want to attack the pin, and you hit it more in a bad spot and it’s just a never-ending cycle.

The cut is expected Friday night, with the top 70 and tires heading into the weekend. Then the rain will begin.