Murrieta’s Rickie Fowler holds a one-stroke lead over Wyndham Clark at the halfway point of the U.S. Open, with third-round action set for Saturday at the Los Angeles Country Club.
Fowler and San Diego’s Xander Schauffele both shot rounds of 8-under par 62 Thursday, the lowest scores in U.S. Open history. Six players had shot 63 at the U.S. Open. Fowler, 34, followed that up with a 68 on Friday.
The 29-year-old Schauffele is tied with Rory McIlroy for third place, two strokes off the lead.
Fowler’s two-day score of 130 tied Martin Kaymer’s performance at Pinehurst in 2014 for the fewest strokes through two days of a U.S. Open.
“Having a lead right now doesn’t really mean much,” Fowler said Friday. “A little different once you get to after 54 holes because that’s when things really heat up.”
Also in the running were Harris English at three strokes back, Dustin Johnson and Min Woo Lee, tied at four strokes back, and Scottie Scheffler and Sam Bennett, both at five strokes off the lead.
The original field of 156 golfers was cut after Friday’s round. The top 60 players in the U.S. Open field (plus ties) after two rounds advance to the third and fourth rounds of the tournament.
Thursday’s scoring average was 71.38, with 37 players under par. It was the lowest first-round scoring average in the 123 U.S. Opens, eclipsing the previous record of 72.29 at Baltusrol Golf Club in 1993, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
It was also the first time no player had shot 80 or higher in the in the first round of a U.S. Open.
In Friday’s second round, the scoring average was 72.22, with 33 players under par.
This is the first U.S. Open to be played in Los Angeles since 1948. The U.S. Golf Association — which conducts the sport’s national championships — had long sought to hold a U.S. Open at the country club just west of Beverly Hills, but was rebuffed by the leadership of the club, long known for its privacy.
However, that began to change with a new group of leaders who wanted to show off the restorations to the North Course, where the tournament is being played. Years of discussion led to an agreement in 2014 to bring the Open to the club, pending approval by its membership, which it overwhelmingly received. The announcement that the tournament would be played at the Los Angeles Country Club was made in 2015.
“We’re in a for a real treat in 2023,” then-USGA Executive Director Mike Davis said in announcing the tournament would played in Los Angeles for the first time since 1948, when it was played at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.
“It will be a wider U.S. Open — the course will have generous fairways, and it will be firm and fast. It’s going to give the players a lot of options. And it will be great to take the U.S. Open to the second-largest city in the country.”