2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont storylines: Stern test for Scottie Scheffler’s greatness, Jon Rahm’s resurgence

OAKMONT, Pa. — There may not be a town and a golf course that suit each other more seamlessly. Oakmont Country Club sits on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, the city of steel where the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet to form the Ohio River, a city filled with blue collar people who know a thing or two about hard work. 

Downtown Pittsburgh is littered with bars and churches, while just up the Allegheny, a cathedral of a different kind stands. Oakmont is where those who want to go through the ringer are welcomed with open arms. Black and gold may be the colors their favorite athletes don, but at Oakmont, gold will be substituted for blue as players prepare for a four-round title bout.

The course is difficult beyond belief, and locals would not have it any other way. They often laud that the property “could host a U.S. Open tomorrow” if given only 24 hours notice.

They’ve been given more runway than that as the 2025 U.S. Open has been circled on the calendar ever since the United States Golf Association announced its 10th trip to the Western Pennsylvania site. Returning for the first time in nearly a decade, new players have emerged and a new golf course has been restored.

Gone are the oaks that littered the property when Angel Cabrera squeaked past Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk, who had the weight of a commonwealth pushing him along. Gone are some features which saw Dustin Johnson capture his first major victory, one year removed from a major heartbreak.

What remains is the core of the property — treacherous greens, a turnpike separating most of the front and back nines, and a running slope that falls away from the clubhouse at the top of the hill. What remains is a golf course waiting to punch players in the face.

What remains is a place built as a true U.S. Open test.

Only one player will stand tall after 72 holes, and it is world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler who enters the championship as the clear man to beat. A winner three times in his last four tournaments, the reigning PGA champion aims to capture his fourth career major victory and the third leg of his career grand slam. 

In order to do so, he will need to go through Oakmont and a litany of other beasts, including a resurgent Jon Rahm, the ever-present reigning U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, the most recent career grand slam winner and Masters champion.

Let’s take a look at what’s ahead in the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club.

New season of Scheffler

Scheffler is the best he has ever been. No matter the venue or competition, when Scheffler sticks a peg into the ground Thursday, he will stand as the heavy favorite to be the last man standing come Sunday. While his presence stretches across the entire calendar year, it wasn’t like that at first.

Scheffler’s first 10 wins on the PGA Tour came in or before the month of April. His last six have occur in May or later. There is context to this, of course. Scheffler did not enter this season 100% healthy following a bizarre offseason hand injury, and he is now being more thoughtful about which events he chooses to play.

The Texan entered last year’s U.S. Open as the prohibitive favorite but struggled fresh off a grueling week at Muirfield Village. Now with one week’s of rest in his corner, Scheffler can prepare how he wants at a golf course that has far more similarities to Jack’s Place than Pinehurst No. 2 did.

“This golf course, like Oakmont, I think this is a place where if there’s a weakness in your game, this golf course is going expose it pretty quick,” Scheffler said after winning the Memorial. “It’s a challenging week, and this is always a good barometer of where you’re at playing because, each day on the course — I think the first two days you had guys shoot 65. I think the best round on Saturday was 66 and the best round today was 65.

“So, there’s always opportunity to shoot great scores and hit great shots. It’s just a matter of stepping up there and hitting the shots. That’s what I think is great about this golf course is there’s opportunity and there’s good difficulty. As far as prep work for the U.S. Open, the rough’s going to be pretty similar, and I think it’s great prep.”

Speaking of Jack, he is one of six players to reign supreme at both Oakmont and Augusta National. While far way from one another in terms of geography, the two golf courses possess multiple similarities, which is good news for the man who has slipped on the green jacket twice already.

Players to win at Oakmont and Augusta National

Mr. Consistency?

It’s not Scheffler or McIlroy or Xander Schauffele who has been the most consistent in U.S. major championships the last few years. It is rather DeChambeau who has rattled off seven straight top 20s in majors (excluding The Open) and seems to be getting better by the year.

The big-booming righty and reigning U.S. Open champion was inside the top six after each round of the Masters and held the lead at one point Sunday. He did the same at the PGA Championship only to find himself out in front late on Saturday before faltering around The Green Mile and upending his chances.

DeChambeau’s main bugaboo in the first two majors has been his iron play as he chose not play a new set at the PGA Championship. Those clubs were ready for his latest start on LIV Golf, however, and with the introduction of potentially a different golf ball as well, he is showing that he is willing to leave no stone unturned in his quest for his third U.S. Open victory.

Most U.S. Open titles

Rory’s best major

McIlroy was close across all four of the big ones before his breakthrough at Augusta National, but it is clear the U.S. Open has turned into his best major across the last half decade. He has lost to only two players the last two years — Wyndham Clark in 2023 and DeChambeau in 2024 — as his eagerness to perform well on stern tests has shined through as he noted a shift in his major mindset ahead of the Masters.

“I think it was after the 2019 season. I remember I’d had a great year. I’d won four times around the world. I’d won the FedExCup. I had my best statistical season ever, but I didn’t have a great season in the major championships,” McIlroy said at the Masters. “I sort of made a commitment to myself from 2020 onwards that these four weeks a year I was going to [treat them differently]. …

“I made a commitment to myself to sort of earmark these a little bit more and to give a little bit more of myself in these weeks. And I think if you see my major record since 2020 — COVID was a bit of a weird year, but 2020 up until now compared to, say, the five years previous when I won the PGA in ’14 – I think you’ll see a big difference in that, and that was just sitting down and reflecting at the end of 2019 thinking that I need to approach these a little bit differently again.”

Before his run of six straight top-10 finishes, McIlroy missed the cut in three straight U.S. Opens, including the last time it was held at Oakmont. He fired rounds of 77-71 to miss the weekend by a pair, but he comes into this one much more seasoned and prepared for what will be thrown at him despite the early exit last week in Canada.

Rahm’s return

The signs were there leading into the PGA Championship. Rahm had rattled off 19 straight top-10 finishes on LIV Golf and back-to-back top-15 results in majors stretching back to the season prior. When Rahm is in the mix, it is better for the game at large. It is as simple as that, sure, but can he do it again?

All signs point to the affirmative. The Spaniard has been brilliant in this championship with five straight top-25 finishes, including his win at Torrey Pines in 2021. His driving skill was tailor made for the U.S. Open test, and his ability to embrace the suck and grind through rounds is often overshadowed by the occasional outburst. This was unfortunately not put on display last season as he was forced to withdraw from the tournament due to a lesion in between his toes.

However, for as much has been made of Rahm’s form since transitioning to LIV Golf, here are the facts: He’s a world-class player and a two-time major champion. His form never really dipped, according to strokes-gained metrics, and since returning from that toe injury, Rahm has played in 21 events worldwide, finishing outside the top 15 only once.

Schauffele’s streak

The two-time major champion could add a third leg to his career grand slam aspirations as Schauffele has done everything but win the U.S. Open. In eight appearances, he has connected on eight top-15 finishes, including a stretch that included five straight top 10s out of the gate.

His T28 at the PGA Championship put an end to another streak that saw Schauffele finish inside the top 20 in 12 straight major championships and inside the top 10 in his last five. 

Schauffele’s search for his form from the year prior continues, but he is close to piecing it all together. He has largely driven the ball better since returning from a rib injury in Florida and his iron play has been red hot. The short game has been hit-or-miss but has primarily made contact. With how grueling the examination will be, Schauffele’s well-rounded nature should allow him to find the first two pages of the leaderboard like he has done for nearly a decade straight.

The death of the underdog

It is officially time to have this conversation. The last six major championship winners have been hitters only as Scheffler, McIlroy, DeChambeau and Schauffele have combined to win all of them the past two seasons. The gap between these top four players (in addition to a two-time major champion like Rahm) and the rest of this field seems like a country mile, which may actually be underselling it.

(That list is not even inclusive of other top-end players like former major winners like Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama and potential future major winners such as Joaquin Niemann, Ludvig Åberg and Viktor Hovland.

Is there a Brian Harman in this tournament? Is there a Clark? Both of these players won their first majors out of relative nowhere not all too long ago. It was just two years ago, in fact. But in those two years, the game has shifted and now — perhaps more than ever, at least in recent memory — golf seems so top heavy that it almost entirely belongs to those currently at the peak of the mountain top.

A U.S. Open your father will enjoy

The U.S. Open has gotten a little artsy the last few years. Traveling to old-time golf courses like The Country Club, heading out West for a new venue like Los Angeles Country Club and making Pinehurst No. 2 a home base more or less, the U.S. Open is getting back to its roots at Oakmont. No course has hosted the national championship more frequently.

Tight fairways, long penal rough, lightning fast putting surfaces — it’s everything that your old man is going to love come Sunday (i.e. Father’s Day, don’t forget). There will be no “back in my day” or “the U.S. Open used to be …” nonsense this week. These players are going to have their hands full, much to our viewing pleasure.

At the 2016 U.S. Open, only four players finished the tournament in red figures — Johnson won by three strokes at 4 under with 11 birdies all week — and that was largely because of substantial rain softening the golf course early. At the 2007 U.S. Open, Cabrera won at 5 over, one stroke clear of Furyk and Woods. (Only six players finished the tournament in single digits over par!)

Even when Ernie Els won in a 1994 playoff at 5 under, there were only eight players under par, and they were all heavy hitters (Colin Montgomerie, Curtis Strange, Greg Norman, Tom Watson among them). 

Par is not only a player’s friend this week; it’s a damn good score as Oakmont has yielded a scoring average of 2 over or higher in every single round it has hosted.

Lefty’s swan song

The show goes on … at least for one more year. The soon-to-be 55-year-old may face his final opportunity to complete the career grand slam this week when he steps foot onto Oakmont. In the final year of his exemption from winning the 2021 PGA Championship, Mickelson’s last U.S. Open could come at the same site which Arnold Palmer’s did in 1994.

“I haven’t thought about it too much,” Mickelson said ahead of LIV Golf Virginia. “There’s a high likelihood that it will be [my last], but I haven’t really thought about it too much.”

The six-time runner up in the U.S. Open hasn’t had much going for him since his electric second-place result in the 2023 Masters, but he has turned it on occasionally in 2025. Finishing inside the top six three different times on LIV Golf, including just last week, Mickelson will need to muster together some similar magic to give himself (and fans) one last memorable run at joining golf’s most elite group.