Before even a ball is struck in competition, this has been a US Open week unlike any other with the atmosphere around the player environments of the Los Angeles Country Club over the practice days somewhat muted and low key.
The frustration expressed by players on being left out of the conversation about the deal to merge the major tours in professional mens' golf is palpable and ever-present as the dust kicked up by last week’s announcement shows little sign of settling.
The words on Tuesday of World No. 2 Jon Rahm, the 2021 US Open winner, sum up the core sentiment of a widely held view that a form of disloyalty and deception has been perpetrated by the management structure of the PGA Tour.
In summing up the consensus of the players, Rahm said at his pre-championship press conference:
"I think the general feeling is that a lot of people feel a bit of betrayal."
While many are struggling to concentrate fully on the particularly arduous task at hand at the LA Country Club, in the midst of the distraction at least one player seems to be welcoming the chaos.
Brooks Koepka does a glazed-eyed 'whatever’ approach to disturbance in the world around him probably as well as anyone in sport.
In the same way as he has coolly executed the task of winning major championships on five occasions over the last seven seasons while finishing runner-up in four others, he’s been in dead-eyed focused mode again this week and very little about the tumultuous events appears to be remotely concerning him.
"There’s four weeks in the year I really care about and this is one of them and I want to play well," said the man whose midas touch was rekindled in the majors, after a lapse of four years, at the PGA Championship in Oak Hill last month.
That victory sets the 33-year-old up for a potential piece of history-making this week along with the possibility of being closely bracketed with some of the greats of the game.
A victory around the ravines and undulations of the LA Country Club would take Koepka’s career total of majors to six, level with Trevino, Faldo, Mickelson and just one behind Palmer and Snead.
A win in the heart of Beverly Hills would also make him only the third man in history to win three USPGA’s and three US Opens. The other two are Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
"Double digits is what I’m trying to get to," he said without dropping his now customary deadpan expression.
His main rivals look to be the two men who have been disputing the World No. 1 spot for most of the current season.
Jon Rahm won this title just over a hundred miles south of here at Torrey Pines in 2021 and is something of a West Coast specialist. He’s also won four times in 2023 including the Masters.
World No 1 Scottie Scheffler is the Players Champion and Phoenix Open winner who has not been outside the top 12 in any of his 13 appearances on tour this year.
There’s clear separation between them and the rest of the world with World No 3 Rory McIlroy somewhat stalled in his current campaign in which a poor final round performance last Sunday at the Canadian Open has become a recurrent theme of his inability to finish off the job since his victory at the Dubai Desert Classic in January.
Of the other four Irish involved this week, which include Seamus Power along with 2022 US Seniors Open champion Padraig Harrington and the reigning US Mid Amateur Champion Matthew McClean from Belfast, Shane Lowry looks best placed to challenge for a title that he came tantalisingly close to winning in 2016.
While his form on the regular circuit of the PGA Tour has been average by his 2022 standards, the 36-year-old Offaly man has been solid in his two major championship performances this year finishing 16th at the Masters and 12th at the USPGA Championship at Oak Hill last month.
"It’s there. I just need to let it come out. It will happen at some stage and I hope it happens in a week like this," he told RTÉ Sport earlier this week.
In what has been an oddly subdued atmosphere this week, one star has nonetheless emerged already to a broad welcome and that’s the venue.
The LA Country Club is staging the US Open for the first time in a history stretching back 126 years.
It’s something of a semi-rural oasis of ravines, undulations, sharp elevation changes and is regarded as the second most valuable piece of non-developed land in the USA.
As presented this week, it’s a typically challenging US Open course, albeit with generously proportioned fairways which have been counter-balanced by punishing non-indigenous Bermuda rough.
The course lies hard beside an intense urban environment overlooked by tall buildings and skyscrapers not to mention the Playboy mansion which lies on the other side of a tall hedge just yards from the 14th tee.
Incongruous as the location may seem, it’s a golf course of real substance and no little beauty and it has the makings of being a dramatic stage for the first US Open set in the lee of the Hollywood Hills, in 75 years.
