#rory-mcilroy

#rory-mcilroy

Start with a club rarely used from the tee box, a 60-degree lob wedge.Set the ball on a tee to maximize spin.And for gosh sake, don't take a full swing.Target?A green long and thin, like an anteater's tongue, flanked on each side by tufts of thick rough that quickly give way to deep bunkers.The pin placement at the 15th hole Saturday at the Los Angeles Country Club was near the front of the green, 81 yards from the tee box, shorter even than any hole on the nearby charming Rancho Park 3-Par Golf Course.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Sunshine and celebrities accompany L.A sports spectacles.Attending the Rose Bowl under blue skies, watching the Dodgers in shirt sleeves on a summer evening, rooting for the Lakers along with actors and entertainers.Those images endure and recur.The first day of the U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club offered neither.

Few golfers relish a U.S. Open quite like Brooks Koepka.One at the Olympic Club was his first major tournament appearance.An iteration at Pinehurst saw his debut top-five finish in a major.He first lifted a major trophy at Erin Hills in 2017, and then he did it again the next year at Shinnecock Hills.

PITTSFORD, N.Y.For a while during the third round of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Rose, Adam Scott and three or four other golfers were roaming the august grounds of the Oak Hill Country Club with their caps on backward.It makes me feel cool, Rose said.

PITTSFORD, N.Y.Scottie Scheffler had, at least in the moment, a share of the P.G.A. Championship lead when he offered a foreboding prediction Thursday afternoon: Oak Hill Country Club, already playing to the point of menace in the first round, would only become more terrorizing.The winds are expected to bluster.