Rickie Fowler fired 10 birdies in a US Open record low round of 62 and Xander Schauffele matched it to share the lead at Los Angeles Country Club midway through the first round.
Fowler, fighting out of a slump that saw him miss the past two US Opens, had 10 birdies and two bogeys and surpassed the previous record low round of 63.
That had been achieved six times in the US Open, most recently Tommy Fleetwood’s seven-under effort at Shinnecock in 2018.
Schauffele, the 2021 Olympic champion playing two groups behind Fowler, had eight birdies without a bogey.
Fowler, a former world number four, is currently ranked 45th in the world. He’d fallen to as low as 185th after missing 18 cuts in 28 events in 2021 and 2022.
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After saying Thursday he felt “back where we should be,” Fowler was making the most of his opportunity in search of a first win since the 2019 Phoenix Open.
Schauffele, the Tokyo Olympic champion ranked sixth in the world, threatened to take the record off Fowler having tied for the lead with one hole to go.
But Schauffele ended up underhitting his putt and instead had to settle for par at the 18 and sharing the record — if there is even such a thing as settling for eight-under.
Commentator Luke Elvy described it as “extraordinary” and “remarkable scenes”.
“It was close to a dream start, in a way,” Fowler told Sky Sports.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what the number [record] was. I really didn’t see a scoreboard on my back nine – until I got to the ninth green and I saw that Xander [Schauffele] was at seven [under at the time]. It was cool to see us tagging along.
“I was just trying to keep moving forward, keep making good swings and keep making good putts and get into the house with a solid round.
“I know it’s kind of a cliche and it’s said all of the time but, you can’t win it on Thursday but you can definitely lose it.
“We’re off to a good start. There’s a significant amount of golf left to play.”
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The news wasn’t as good for Jason Day and Adam Scott, two of three Australians in action early during the first round at Los Angeles Country Club on Friday.
Day was three-over and tied for 83rd alongside Scott while fellow Australian Lucas Herbert finished with an even-par 70 to sit tied for 24th.
Kiwi Ryan Fox, meanwhile, made a great start to go two-under and tied for seventh.
As overcast skies and intermittent mist greeted the earliest starters, Mexican amateur Omar Morales stole the early spotlight as he moved to the top of the leaderboard at three-under through the first nine holes.
Morales, a student at the University of California at Los Angeles, became just the fifth amateur in the past 30 years to shoot three strokes under par over the first nine holes of his first US Open — but he faded just as quickly with three straight bogeys from the 11th through the 13th.
It showed just how much danger lurked on a course where world number one Scottie Scheffler got off to a rocky start and second-ranked Jon Rahm struggled to build momentum.
Rahm, who won his second major title at the Masters in April, opened with a 15-foot birdie at the par-four 10th, but gave a shot back with a bogey at 12.
A birdie at the short par-three 15th was followed by another bogey at 17 as Rahm made the turn at even par.
Scheffler was in trouble right off the bat, finding a fairway bunker off the tee at the par-five first and a greenside bunker on the way to a bogey at a hole he had assessed before the tournament as “gettable.”
The 2022 Masters champion found birdies at the ninth, 10th and 12th to put himself in the mix heading into what he reckoned to be the toughest stretch on a back nine packed with “a lot of long, hard, difficult holes.”
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Scheffler, who played LA Country Club in the 2018 Walker Cup amateur matches, is among the few in the field who have played competitively at the venue, which club members have largely preferred to keep to themselves.
The championship is the first major golf tournament since last week’s surprising news that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour would unite with the Saudi financiers of the upstart LIV Golf League.
That will make for a spicy afternoon group with Brooks Koepka, last month’s PGA Championship winner and the first LIV Golf member to capture a major, joined by Rory McIlroy, the PGA Tour’s most vocal defender, and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion.
Koepka, a five-time major winner, won the 2017 and 2018 US Opens and was second at the Masters in April before taking his third PGA crown. He has been in fiery form this year, showing no sign of woes from playing 54-hole LIV events.
“I’m pretty sure I know what it takes to compete in majors,” Koepka said.
Defending champion Matt Fitzpatrick of England also teed off in the afternoon, alongside Cameron Smith, the reigning British Open champion, and American Sam Bennett, who turned pro after earning low amateur honors at the Masters.
US OPEN 2023 TEE TIMES — ROUNDS ONE AND TWO (all times AEST)
— Aussies in bold, * denotes 10th hole tee off
11:45pm/5:15am.* – Omar Morales (a), Deon Germishuys, Jacob Solomon
11:45pm*/5:15am. – Berry Henson, Ryutaro Nagano, Hank Lebioda
11:56pm/5:26am.* – Ryan Gerard, Yuto Katsuragawa, Michael Brennan (a)
11:56pm*/5:26am. – Michael Kim, Jordan Smith, Wenyi Ding (a)
12:07am/5:37am.* – Hayden Buckley, Adam Svensson, Pablo Larrazabal
12:07am*/5:37am. – Scott Stallings, Preston Summerhays (a), Lucas Herbert
12:18am/5:48am.* – Carson Young, Dylan Wu, Roger Sloan
12:18am*/5:48am. – Jens Dantorp, Patrick Rodgers, Ryan Armour
12:29am/5:59am.* – Ryo Ishikawa, Kevin Streelman, Matthieu Pavon
12:29am*/5:59am – Thomas Pieters, Aaron Wise, Gordon Sargent (a)
12:40am/6:10am.* – Shane Lowry, Justin Thomas, Tommy Fleetwood
12:40am*/6:10am. – Bryson DeChambeau, Francesco Molinari, Tyrrell Hatton
12:51am/6:21am.* – Sungjae Im, K.H. Lee, J.T. Poston
12:51am*/6:21am. – Tom Hoge, Sergio Garcia, Sepp Straka
1:02am/6:32am* – Gary Woodland, Adam Scott, Corey Conners
1:02am*/6:32am – Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day
1:13am/6:43am* – Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Scottie Scheffler
1:13am*/6:43am – Patrick Reed, Matt Kuchar, Si Woo Kim
1:24am/6:54* a.m. – Denny McCarthy, Joel Dahmen, Adam Hadwin
1:24am*/6:54am – Xander Schauffele, Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm
1:35am/7:05am.* – Matthew McClean (a), Seamus Power, Ryan Fox
1:35am*/7:05am. – Martin Kaymer, Stewart Cink, Michael Thorbjornsen (a)
1:46am/7:16am.* – Mac Meissner, Barclay Brown (a), Gunn Charoenkul
1:46am*/7:16am. – David Horsey, Brendan Valdez (a), Paul Barjon
1:57am/7:27am.* – Alexander Yang (a), Jesse Schutte, Andy Svoboda
1:57am*/7:27am. – Jordan Gumberg, Kyle Mueller, Bastien Amat (a)
5:15am/11:45pm.* – Brent Grant, Vincent Norrman, Charley Hoffman
5:15am*/11:45pm. – Ross Fisher, Nico Echavarria, Paul Haley II
5:26am/11:56pm.* – Simon Forsström, Carlos Ortiz, Maxwell Moldovan (a)
5:26am*/11:56pm. – Nick Dunlap (a), Nick Hardy, Sam Stevens
5:37am/12:07am.* – Eric Cole, Thriston Lawrence, Adam Schenk
5:37am*/12:07am. – Taylor Pendrith, Aldrich Potgieter (a), Romain Langasque
5:48am/12:18am.* – Luke List, Wilco Nienaber, Alejandro Del Rey
5:48am*/12:18am. – Andrew Putnam, Victor Perez, Abraham Ancer
5:59am/12:29am.* -. Adrian Meronk, Harris English, Joaquin Niemann
5:59am*/12:29am. – Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Keegan Bradley
6:10am/12:40am.* – Alex Noren, Wyndham Clark, Austin Eckroat
6:10am*/12:40am. – Mito Pereira, Emiliano Grillo, Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira (a)
6:21am/12:51am.* – Kurt Kitayama, Cam Davis, Russell Henley
9:21am*/12:51am. – Tom Kim, Sahith Theegala, Cameron Young
6:32am/1:02am.* – Cameron Smith, Sam Bennett, Matt Fitzpatrick
6:32am*/1:02am. – Sam Burns, Dustin Johnson, Keith Mitchell
6:43am/1:13am.* – Billy Horschel, Chris Kirk, Brian Harman
6:43am*/1:13am. – Tony Finau, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay
6:54am/1:24am.* – Brooks Koepka, Hideki Matsuyama, Rory McIlroy
6:54am*/1:24am. – Davis Thompson, Min Woo Lee, Justin Suh
7:05am/1:35am* – Sebastián Muñoz, Nick Taylor, Taylor Montgomery
7:05am*/1:35am. – Taylor Moore, Mackenzie Hughes, Ben Carr (a)
7:16am/1:46am. – Olin Browne Jr., David Puig, Karl Vilips (a)
7:16am*/1:46am. – Patrick Cover, David Nyfjall (a), Frankie Capan III
7:27am/1:57am.* – Corey Pereira, Isaac Simmons (a), J.J. Grey
7:27am*/1:57am. – Austen Truslow, Christian Cavaliere (a), Alex Schaake
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