U.S. Open 2014: Leaderboard, live updates, scores from Thursday’s round at Pinehurst

Martin Kaymer is the new favorite after 18 holes at the U.S. Open, coming in at 4/1, well clear of anyone else in the field. Those are the kind of odds you get after shooting the lowest round ever in a U.S. Open at Pinehurst, a 65 that put the German three shots ahead.

Rory McIlroy, who started the week as the favorite at 10/1, has dropped to 16/1 with five guys ahead of him. McIlroy finished an uneven opening round at 1-over, and while he’s six shots back, a course that was pounded with rain late Thursday night should set up well for the high-ball hitting Ulsterman. This setup and conditions are nothing like that soggy Congressional course where Rory ran away by eight shots, but anything that makes it softer is better for McIlroy and he’s well within striking distance.

For most of the day, Pinehurst No. 2 was the star of the first round of the U.S. Open. That was before Martin Kaymer made the turn and proceeded to blister the back nine on his way to a 5-under round of 65. Not only was that good enough to give him the first round lead, but it was the best round ever carded in a U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

The 29-year-old Kaymer has been in much better form this year after going through a low swell while making swing changes. He won the Players Championship last month, a victory he said was much-needed for his confidence. He carried that form to Pinehurst where he was solid tee-to-green on a very challenging course. Par is often a good score in a U.S. Open and Kaymer did very well to eliminate dropped shots with just one bogey. He did it by being accurate off the tee, hitting 13 of 14 fairways which allowed him to avoid many of the troublesome waste areas. He wasn’t great with his irons, hitting just 11 of 18 greens in regulation, making his 65 even more impressive. When he did hit greens, he took advantage, rolling in six birdies. That was especially true on the back nine where he carded four birdies, including three on his final five holes. The late run allowed him to move into sole possession of the lead and distance himself some from the field. At 5-under, he leads by three strokes.

The top of the U.S. Open leaderboard was a crowded place for much of Thursday, but Martin Kaymer changed that with a late-afternoon run into the lead. Kaymer turned in the round of the day and leads by three strokes after carding a 5-under, 65.

Kaymer, the Players Championship winner, made the turn at 1-under before going on a very strong run on his second nine. He birdied No. 10 to move into a share of the lead. He took sole possession of the lead with a birdie on No. 14 and extended his lead with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 16 and 17. The late run was impressive when you consider he was doing it while playing on some of the hardest holes on the course. No. 16 is playing as the sixth-hardest hole, with Kaymer’s birdie just one of 17 made all day. Kaymer dropped just a single shot all day, a bogey on No. 7. He capped the round by rolling in a lengthy putt to save par on No. 18. The 65 was the lowest round ever carded during a U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

Keegan Bradley may have been the most well-known New England native beamed into U.S. Open homes during Thursday’s opening round at Pinehurst, what with the first sub-par nine-hole score (2-under 33) of his U.S. Open career.

That the Vermont-born leader of his national championship at 3-under through 10 holes shared TV air time with Fran Quinn, of the Holden, Mass., Quinns, may have surprised viewers tuning into NBC to check on the progress of the best players in the world. That was the plan all along, though, if the 49-year-old journeyman played well in his fourth Open start.

More than 50 players are currently within three strokes of the lead at the U.S. Open, but Bubba Watson and Adam Scott are not among them. Scott, the No. 1 player in the world, and Watson, the Masters champion, are both having some early issues at Pinehurst No. 2.

Scott got off to a solid start, opening the round with four pars before recording a birdie at No. 5. That, however, is his only red number of the day thus far. Following bogeys at Nos. 7 and 9, Scott made the turn at 1-over. He dropped another stroke at No. 13 and is currently 2-over, tied for 56th place.

If you’re busy watching the World Cup over on ESPN, well, you’re missing some important and exciting golf action over on ESPN2.

That’s Andy North and Scott Van Pelt demonstrating ... something. The overturned salad bowl is, I guess, supposed to represent the “turtleback” Donald Ross greens at Pinehurst No. 2. So let’s have a little fun and just start slamming golf balls everywhere while everyone else is watching soccer. Don’t worry about the golf being played out there. This is more entertaining, and we found a musical accompaniment to make it even better.

While a few players have dipped below it at times, the lead at the U.S. Open remains at 2-under. Graeme McDowell and Kevin Na are in the clubhouse with the lead and have been joined by several players currently on the course. That includes Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner and Dustin Johnson.

Bradley, playing with his new non-anchored putter, found some early success with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 4 and 5. He was joined at 2-under by his Dufner, his playing partner when the reigning PGA champion rolled in a birdie at No. 9 to make the turn at 2-under. Johnson and Paul Casey have also found some red numbers and are tied for the lead playing their second nine.

The top of the U.S. Open leaderboard is littered with major champions and top-ranked players, but the entire field is currently chasing Brooks Koepka. Koepka got off to a strong start in his first round Thursday at Pinehurst No. 2 and is currently in the lead at 3-under.

The early success came despite the fact Koepka opened his round with a bogey. He rebounded quickly with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 2 and 3. He took advantage of No. 5, the easiest hole on the course, rolling in an eagle putt to take sole possession of the lead. The 24-year-old is in his first full season on the PGA Tour. He’s found some success with one top-10 and played well last week, finishing 19th at the St. Jude Classic.

Dustin Johnson is one of the longest hitters in golf and on this shot at the par-3 6th, he put a little too much on it and ended up crushing some ESPN or NBC broadcasting hardware. DJ sailed his tee shot over the green, and landed a direct hit on top of a greenside microphone (via Kyle Porter of CBS):

Microphone destruction isn’t a new thing at the U.S. Open, but usually it’s done intentionally by an angry and frustrated player, like, say, Sergio Garcia, who took a swipe at one on the tee at Olympic two years ago.

Rickie Fowler got a lot of airtime today because of his attire. But his play has was solid throughout as well, including on his final hole of the day. Fowler was looking to finish on a high note, but he found the bunker on the 9th hole at Pinehurst No. 2, and caught a plugged lie on the slope of the trap. Yikes, take a look at this thing.

But being the professional that he is, Rickie Fowler would chop down on it and managed to get the ball on the green and two-putt for a bogey. It could have been a lot worse from that lie. It’s these kind of saves that you can look back on when the week is over as a turning point. Will this be the start to a weekend triumph? It’s, of course, too early to tell, but he is one of the few players in the clubhouse at even par or better as the afternoon wave begins to hit the course.

If Phil Mickelson were bothered by suggestions that he had anything to do with insider-trading allegations related to Clorox and involving sports gambler Billy Walters and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, he did not show it when he made birdie on his first hole of this week’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst.

No wonder, since the New York Times on Wednesday essentially refuted earlier reports that placed Mickelson under suspicion for trading Clorox shares based on data gleaned from Icahn. The story blamed sources for providing the Times with incorrect information and conceded that Mickelson’s links to the federal probe were “weaker than previously reported.”

The greens at Pinehurst No. 2 are incredibly difficult, but first you have to get there. Justin Rose had some issues with the latter task, chunking a chip shot on No. 8.

This would have been a poor shot for a weekend hacker, yet alone the defending U.S. Open champion. Rose was so disgusted with the effort, he decided he’d had enough of the club, letting it go shortly after making chunky contact.

We’re about to start an incredibly fun month-long sporting event in which fans celebrate nationalism by dressing (and grooming) in some of the more extreme ways. But this Aussie fan got out in front of the World Cup on Thursday at Pinehurst.

The waste areas at Pinehurst No. 2 add a lot of unpredictability to the U.S. Open with players unsure how a ball will come out of any particular lie. Matt Kuchar found the waste area on No. 18 and his second shot came out a little hot.

Not only was Kuchar unable to hold the green, but his ball kept rolling and rolling, all the way into the clubhouse.

Alabama has a very good college football team. The Crimson Tide also have a very successful college golf program. The men’s golf team just won back-to-back national championships, a feat that came up during the first-round coverage of the U.S. Open.

Scott Van Pelt took the opportunity to perfectly work in a joke about claimed football national championships.

It’s been an eventful 15 months for Adam Scott. Long established as one of the best players on The PGA Tour, Scott’s career has taken the next step toward superstardom in the last year and a half. Now, heading into the U.S Open, he has a prime opportunity to join some elite company.

If Scott kept a checklist of goals he wanted to accomplish in his career, he’s been busy checking boxes recently. He captured the first major championship at the 2013 Masters, climbed to the top of the Official World Golf Rankings in May and even recently got married.

Early this morning (maybe too early for some), the U.S. Open got underway in the Sandhills of North Carlolina. Here’s a look at some of the morning story lines as the first half of the field makes their way around a restored Pinehurst No. 2.

Phil Mickelson - The eyes of the golf nation are upon him and, so far, Phil is delivering in his attempt to win his first U.S. Open. Mickelson got off to a great start on No. 10 (his first hole). Playing the par-5 as a three-shot hole, Lefty stuffed a wedge for a kick-in birdie to begin his week. On the 14th, Phil again took aim on approach and knocked one close for another birdie.

The biggest star at the U.S. Open is often the golf course. With Tiger Woods absent and this year’s venue an overhauled and restored Pinehurst, it’s especially true at the 114th edition of the USGA’s most prestigious event. In a sport desperate to attract younger audiences and promote its non-Tiger stars, that doesn’t seem like a good thing.

The course, its conditions and its history are often interesting to the small subset of sports fans who are the committed golf audience already tuning in no matter what. But for the larger group of casual fans with an outside curiosity about the national championship or the sport in general, the constant hammering over the head with terms like “native sandy areas” (and attendant rules parsing, delay, and debate) will sound like the stuff of a niche sport, and is a turnoff.

Rory McIlroy has picked the brain of a certain 14-time major champion over the few years that the two Nike golfers have been friends. With Tiger Woods sitting out yet another grand slam event after back surgery, however, the owner of two major titles sought the advice of the granddaddy of all major winners, Jack Nicklaus, ahead of this week’s U.S. Open tilt in Pinehurst.

“He’s been really generous with his time with me, offered any sort of advice that I wanted or needed. He’s been great,” McIlroy told reporters Wednesday about his two-hour sit-down with Nicklaus a week earlier in the Golden Bear’s Palm Beach office. “To have that at my disposal, it has to be an advantage in some way.”

Rickie Fowler gets a lot of attention for his outfits on the golf course, but today he’s getting it for a different reason. Fowler was spotted early on the putting green at Pinehurst with his pants legs hiked up in the knickers style of Payne Stewart.

That’s obviously the signature look for Stewart, who’s been a fixture of all the coverage this week commemorating his win at this venue 15 years ago. For many golf press members, the 1999 U.S. Open is the best ever in the now 113-year history of the event. And obviously Stewart’s final putt and instantly identifiable fist pump are memorialized on the grounds with a statue that’s now become one of Pinehurst’s most famous landmarks.

While Masters officials take a “less is more” approach when it comes to broadcasting from Augusta, USGA officials do not share the same strategy for live coverage of the U.S. Open. The result is 10 hours of live television coverage and multiple online streams that allow viewers to watch nearly as much live golf as they could if they were outside the ropes at Pinehurst.

Change is coming to the U.S. Open television coverage next year with Fox taking over the broadcast, but for 2014, ESPN and NBC will once again combine to provide the coverage. That means one final year -- at least until 2027 -- of Johnny Miller calling a U.S. Open. Miller will be joined by a host of others when live first-round coverage begins at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday. The expanded coverage will run all day with NBC and ESPN2 also carrying the coverage for periods. ESPN will handle coverage from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. before the broadcast shifts to NBC for two hours from 3 to 5 p.m. ESPN2 will then pick up an hour of coverage from 5 to 6 p.m. before the day concludes on ESPN from 6 to 7 p.m. In addition to the 10 hours of scheduled live coverage, ESPN has been known to show live look-ins during the morning edition of SportsCenter before live coverage begins. That could be the case on Thursday, especially with the pairing of Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Matthew Fitzpatrick set for an early-morning tee time.

With the U.S. Open set to begin at Pinehurst No. 2 on Thursday, ESPN and NBC have ramped up their coverage of the second major of the year. The networks will combine to provide 10 hours of live first-round television coverage, but the increased coverage extends beyond the television broadcast. There will also be multiple options to follow the first round online with several live streams.

Viewers who’d like to watch the television broadcast on their computer or mobile device are in luck, as both ESPN and NBC will provide live online simulcast streams of the television coverage. ESPN’s live coverage will begin at 9 a.m. ET with a stream available from WatchESPN. In order to access WatchESPN either on a computer or mobile device, viewers will need to authenticate their cable service. NBC will take over coverage from 3 to 5 p.m. A live simulcast of NBC’s coverage will be available from NBC LiveExtra. Television coverage will shift to ESPN2 from 5 to 6 p.m. before finishing the day on ESPN from 6 to 7 p.m. with a live stream again available from WatchESPN.

The 114th edition of the U.S. Open tees off just after sunrise Thursday in the Sandhills of North Carolina. Pinehurst is often referred to as the home of the American golf, an area loaded with courses with years of history and tradition. The Pinehurst No. 2 Donald Ross design is, of course, the most famous layout and it’s been restored to those original conditions set up by Ross for this year’s national championship.

The U.S. Open is always one of the bigger logistical challenges of the year, a huge 156-man field needing to play sun-up to sun-down at an event that’s usually known for traffic jams and slow pace of play. In contrast, the Masters almost never has a field in triple digits and can comfortably send all tee times off the first tee with plenty of cushion. Here, groups of three will go off split tees and promptly crowd up the course. The first tee time goes out before 7 a.m., a rare occurrence on the PGA Tour but the USGA needs to push the limit to get those 156 guys through 18 slogging holes.

The weather forecast for the 2014 PGA U.S. Open at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in North Carolina has a chance of showers and even thunderstorms every day. I don’t anticipate any of these rain events to wash out a day completely but there definitely could be times where play is suspended because of strong storms and lightning.

Several disturbances will be working across North Carolina the next few days. The first one arrives on Thursday with scattered showers and storms likely from mid-day into the afternoon. Another system arrives Friday into Saturday, again increasing the chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms, especially during the afternoon. This system will stall across the region on Sunday, keeping that risk of a scattered shower and storm to form during the final round of the U.S. Open.

The USGA’s return to a restored Pinehurst with its throwback setup is also the final time, in at least 12 years, that NBC and ESPN will carry the U.S. Open. It’s a well-known bit of drama at this point, the USGA opting to sign up with FOX for around $1.2 billion over 12 years and ditch their longtime broadcast partner.

Moaning about the buffoonery of Chris Berman on Thursday and Friday, and the curmudgeonly Johnny Miller all four days has become one of the great pastimes of America’s national championship. But next year we’ll move on to the great unknowns of Joe Buck and Greg Norman calling golf on a network that has never done a broadcast of the sport.