The 2025 U.S. Open returns to one of its most iconic venues: Oakmont Country Club. It is a course that was quite literally built to be as difficult as possible, which makes it the perfect fit for the major championship that prides itself on providing the toughest test to one of the largest fields in golf.
You will hear a lot about the rough (planned to be 5 inches, sticking straight up), green speeds (running over 14 on the stimpmeter) and bunkers (well over 100 on the property) this week, all of which make Oakmont the challenge it has positioned itself to be. The players are well aware of what awaits them, and they also know that after a run of low scores winning U.S. Opens since 2019, fans want to watch them “suffer” this week.
The player who ultimately emerges as the winner will have undoubtedly earned their title as a major champion, and as we get set to enjoy the carnage, I wanted to highlight some names near the top of the field worth cheering throughout the week.
From major champions looking to make some history to players that have been knocking on the door, here are nine players deserving of your rooting interest at Oakmont. Odds via Caesars Sportsbook
1. Bryson DeChambeau (15/2): Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have combined for six wins and the first two major championships of the season. A Dechambeau victory at Oakmont would make this one of the all-time great years of major golf. We constantly talk about DeChambeau’s length off the tee , and it will be a weapon once again this week, but the reason he won his second U.S. Open last year at Pinehurst No. 2 was his short game improvement. He’s elite on and around the greens now, and on Oakmont’s lightning fast greens, that touch will be just as important as his abilities off the tee. A third U.S. Open win would put DeChambeau in rarified air alongside Tiger Woods, Hale Irwin, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones and Willie Anderson as the only three-time victors at this event.
2. Scottie Scheffler (11/4): Golf fans have always been drawn to dominant players, and Scheffler appears poised to become the next one. He’s won three of his last four starts (T4 in the lone loss) and enters Oakmont as the strongest favorite in a major since Tiger in 2009. If he can live up to that status and win his fourth career major, he’ll move even closer to that all-time top 10 (seven) while still being just 28 years old. He’d also move an Open Championship away from the career grand slam, setting up quite the storyline going into Royal Portrush this July. There isn’t a golf course that’s not a good fit for Scheffler, but Oakmont’s demands of accuracy and precision seem to play right into his strengths.
3. Ludvig Åberg (25-1): It’s been an odd year for Åberg as he looked dominant early before struggling from The Players through the PGA Championship, but now, he seems to be rounding back into form. He looks poised to be the next young star in the game, and it’s hard to think of a better place to make a statement with your first major win than Oakmont. When Åberg is at his best, he’s one of the most accurate ball-strikers on the planet. If that version of the 24-year-old Swede can show up at Oakmont (as he did last year at the Masters and U.S. Open), he will be a real threat.
4. Sepp Straka (40-1): Few players have had a better 2025 season than Straka, who has two wins (including a signature event at the Truist), three other top 10s and six other top 20 finishes this season. He’s also coming off a third-place finish at the Memorial, which is the closest thing players will get to a U.S. Open test on the PGA Tour schedule. He’s second to Scheffler in strokes gained total on the PGA Tour this season, incredibly accurate off the tee and phenomenal with his irons on approach. We’ll see if he’s got the gear needed to win a U.S. Open, but don’t be surprised if he’s on the first page of the leaderboard all weekend.
5. Jon Rahm (12-1): For 69 holes, Rahm had a phenomenal PGA Championship. The final three holes saw him implode and somehow not finish in the top 5 (a horrific bad beat for T5 betters), but after the final round, he said it was the most fun he’s had on the golf course in a long time. Rahm will be chasing that high again at Oakmont, which will be a different test than the Torrey Pines course he won his U.S. Open on in 2021, but he knows how to navigate a USGA setup ,and I think he had the fire lit under him again by getting in the mix at Quail Hollow.
6. Ben Griffin (66-1): The hottest golfer on the PGA Tour this side of Scheffler, Griffin is looking to ride this wave into Oakmont and contend once again. He’s got two wins since the Masters (one being a team event with Andrew Novak), a top 10 finish at the PGA for his best career major result and hung with Scheffler for most of 72 holes at the Memorial last week. I’d love to see Griffin and his massive aviators rolling through Western Pennsylvania this week with a chance to win late Sunday.
7. Tyrrell Hatton (50-1): Watching Hatton this week will be exciting as golf’s most mercurial player will be contesting the world’s hardest golf course. That’s going to be absolute cinema. Nothing about the Hatton experience this week would shock me. He could legitimately win this golf tournament or he shoot a score in the 80s and break three clubs on his way into the clubhouse. It’s all on the table, and for that reason, you should be paying attention to him this week, even if you’re partially rooting for a meltdown.
8. Collin Morikawa (25-1): All week we are going to be talking about accuracy because the rough at Oakmont is arguably the most penal rough of any course in the world. Morikawa is second on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy, hitting nearly 73% of fairways, which should give him a leg up on most of the field. The constant question for Morikawa is if he can make putts, but it seems he does better on tougher, faster greens — perhaps in part because it’s hard for anyone to make long putts. Some of his best putting rounds in recent years have come at Augusta National, and Oakmont’s greens are even faster.
9. Shane Lowry (33-1): The last time the U.S. Open was played at Oakmont, Lowry held a four-shot lead thru 54 holes before shooting a 6-over 76 in the final round to lose to Dustin Johnson by three. It was the first of many gutting losses for the Irishman, who did get his breakthrough at the 2019 Open that will make him a major champion forever. Still, his trophy shelf should be fuller, and he’s been playing some really good golf again this year without any hardware to show for it. He’s accurate off the tee and has the ball-striking and putting to get it done; it’s just a matter of putting four complete rounds together.