2015 U.S. Open tee times and pairings: Tiger Woods draws Rickie Fowler in Round 1

The USGA is never shy about creating controversial or even humorous pairings for their most important championship, the U.S. Open. There are no rules or restrictions when it comes to putting players together so they do whatever the hell they want. Sometimes, players are grouped based on nationality, their surname, past conflicts or frostiness, and even body type, as we saw last year when the paunchier Brendon de Jonge, Shane Lowry and Kevin Stadler played the first two rounds together at Pinehurst. They are always looking for some odd commonality or past history to make a group more interesting.

Tiger Woods, who comes to Chambers Bay off a last-place finish at Memorial, will play with Rickie Fowler and Louis Oosthuizen in the first two rounds. Based on his form, which included a career-worst round of 85 last week in Columbus, those may be the only two rounds he gets at the U.S. Open. His Sunday 74 was an improvement, and earlier this week he said he was “finally able to hit the shots he was looking for” in that final round. So maybe then he’s actually rolling into the season’s second major with some momentum?

This is the first time the U.S. Open will be held in the Pacific Northwest in the 115-year history of the national championship. The last major in the area was the 1998 PGA Championship at Sahalee. It’s extremely rare to get a regular PGA Tour stop in this part of the country, let alone a major. If they’re on the West Coast, the majors usually drop into venues along the California coast, such as Pebble Beach, Olympic and Torrey Pines (and perhaps L.A. CC again in the future). But never Seattle.

Chambers Bay, a former a sand quarry along Puget Sound, is just eight years old and a public course that the USGA wanted to include in its championship rota. It hosted the 2010 U.S. Amateur as a warm-up for this year’s U.S. Open. The course is a dramatic departure from the typical U.S. Open style venue. There is just one tree on the property and it doesn’t come into play. The greens are enormous and there’s tall fescue and other junk grasses surrounding the holes as opposed to the usual American parklands course at most in U.S. Opens. It may play more like a British Open than anything else these players see in the States.

The venue will take a beating over the next week. The terrain is extreme and there’s not a ton of room to cram in spectators and all the corporate structures that overtake a course during a championship of this size.

And there’s also one of the biggest fields in golf chopping it up on a course with which most are completely unfamiliar. The U.S. Open is 156 players deep and a logistical challenge from start to finish. Players are split into 52 groups of three and sent off split tees from sun-up to sun-down for the first two days. Any slight weather delay can disrupt the schedule significantly, and a few hours of interruption can push it off for a couple days. The Masters’ field, by comparison, almost never exceeds 100 players and everyone goes off the first tee for all four rounds.

In addition to Tiger, all eyes will be on Phil Mickelson, who continues to chase the white whale of his career to complete the grand slam. He’ll play with Bubba Watson and Angel Cabrera through the first two rounds. Here are the marquee groupings for Thursday:

And here’s a full tee sheet for the first two rounds at Chambers Bay (ALL TIMES ET):

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