The 36-hole cut this year was set at eight-over, the highest on the PGA Tour since the 2008 US PGA Championship at Oakland Hills. Incidentally, the highest cut since the Second World War (15-over) also came at the Olympic Club, during Jack Fleck’s 1955 Open.
The defending champion was certainly put in his place after pulling the USGA’s pants down last year, saving his best work of the week for the opening pitch he threw at a San Francisco Giants’ baseball game before the championship. Rounds of 77 and 73 saw McIlroy's defence cut short and a fourth missed cut since May. Pity for McIlroy that the Giants were on the road at Seattle over the weekend, though he might have slipped over to Oakland to catch the A’s taking on the Padres.
He would have a few pals with time on their hands to join him in the bleachers too. World No 1 Luke Donald, who played with McIlroy and fellow Englishman Lee Westwood over the opening rounds, shot a disastrous birdie-free 79 to open his campaign. A second round 72 was not good enough to give him a chance of teeing it up at the weekend and he will head to Royal Lytham and St Annes, his eye still on that maiden major, with perhaps less belief in his game than before he arrived in California.
But McIroy and Donald were not alone as Olympic maintained her track record of chewing up and spitting out high profile players, with Masters champion Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Bill Haas and Geoff Ogilvy also relegated to watching the weekend action from the sidelines.
Olympic was certainly unyielding but Davis and the Championship Committee got the delicate balance of thick rough and closely mown approaches and collection areas just about right, with slightly mishit or shots of incorrect distance control being prone to punishment. Tiger Woods’ approach to the par-five 17th in round two was a fine example: his long-iron shot looked to have stopped at the back of the green, only to slip off the edge and spill down a slope to a position where he was faced with an uphill pitch of some 30 yards between trees from a tight lie. Woods made par after failing to hole his putt after an exquisite pitch, but was clearly rattled at what he'd just witnessed. Four bogeys in the first eight holes on Saturday dropped the joint second-round leader out of contention, but you can't help but feel the 14-time major champion's grip on this tournament had been lost after what should have been a cast-iron birdie the day before. Ernie Els’ quest for a third US Open also came to grief in one of these collection areas over the back of the 16th in the final round.
