SOUTHAMPTON, New York — Rory McIlroy spent about an hour on Thursday in the place he hopes to be come Sunday: alone atop the U.S. Open leaderboard.
McIlroy is in early contention after a 1-under 69 in the first round at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club while navigating consistent 20-mile-per-hour winds and even stronger gusts.
He had the solo lead before bogeys on his last two holes.
“Overall a really good day,” he said. “Obviously, it stings a little to finish the way I did.”
With the afternoon wave getting started, McIlroy sat one shot behind Sam Stevens, a 29-year-old yet to win a PGA Tour event.
The morning groups were delayed from 7:05-9:05 a.m. ET due to fog. Stevens hit one shot before the horn blew (then double bogeyed that hole once play resumed), while McIlroy’s tee time was pushed back two hours.
McIlroy, starting on the back nine, birdied two of his first three holes.
His biggest highlight was the par-5 fifth hole. He drove it 396 yards (longest of the day by 20 yards to that point), then drained an 11-foot putt for his first eagle at a U.S. Open since 2017.
“It was obviously a really tricky day and just a day to stay patient and hang in there,” he said. “I hit enough good shots to give myself some chances. I think anything in red figures today was a good effort.”
McIlroy agrees with Shinnecock course setup
Shinnecock’s greens — criticized the last two times it hosted in 2004 and 2018 for balls rolling off on the weekend — were set up to be the slowest for a U.S. Open since 1995 to combat the forecasted winds.
“The greens are pretty slow and quite receptive,” McIlroy said. “I think they need to be at this point. It’s a challenging golf course already, and you put 30-mile-an-hour winds on top of it, it tests the best players in the world pretty well. I think they were prudent with the course setup.”
McIlroy completed the Grand Slam by winning the 2025 Masters, then repeated at Augusta National this past April.
McIlroy said in November 2024 that he would like to “go down as the most successful European of all time.”
He arguably already is, but a seventh major win this week would match Harry Vardon, an Englishman from the turn of the 20th century, for the most by a European.
McIlroy eyes U.S. Open win at storied venue
McIlroy, the 2011 U.S. Open champ at Congressional, also yearns to win a U.S. Open at a traditional venue like Shinnecock, which is hosting for a sixth time.
“If everything is going the way everyone wants it in terms of weather, setup, I think it’s the best championship test in the country,” he said before the tournament.
He missed a chance at a celebrated venue at the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. In the final round, he squandered a two-shot lead on the back nine, including missing par putts inside four feet on 16 and 18.
“That was why Pinehurst got me so badly because that was such an opportunity to win a true U.S. Open test, firm greens, baked out,” he recently told Fried Egg Golf. "(If I won) no one could say that I hadn’t done it that way.”
McIlroy, who shot a first-round 80 the last time Shinnecock hosted in 2018, can break the U.S. Open record by going 15 years between victories.
The current record is an 11-year gap shared by Hale Irwin (1979, ’90) and Julius Boros (1952, ’63).
McIlroy can also become the seventh man to win the Masters and the U.S. Open in the same year after Craig Wood (1941), Ben Hogan (1951, ’53), Arnold Palmer (1960), Jack Nicklaus (1972), Tiger Woods (2002) and Jordan Spieth (2015).
