2016 U.S. Open: Live scores, leaderboard updates and more from Friday’s rounds

Welcome to the 116th edition of the U.S. Open, which started Thursday morning at Oakmont Country Club just outside Pittsburgh. It’s one of the hardest golf courses in the world, and Oakmont’s predictably proving to be a stiff test.

This is Oakmont’s record ninth time hosting American golf’s national championship. The USGA, the national governing golf body, last brought it there in 2007, when Angel Cabrera won his first major by a stroke, at plus-5. Ernie Els won there in 1994, and he’s one of three players in the field to be making his third U.S. Open start at Oakmont. (The others are Phil Mickelson and Pittsburgh-area native Jim Furyk.) Jeff Maggert played there in 1994 but not 2007.

OAKMONT, Pa. – As is always the case with Dustin Johnson, Friday’s march around Oakmont left you in awe at the power and ability to navigate the “toughest test in golf ”... and also wanting so much more for the weekend.

Because weather postponed his planned first round on Thursday, Johnson played the first 36 holes of his U.S. Open on Saturday. On the 16th of those holes, a 231-yard par-3 at Oakmont, Johnson stuck a decent tee shot on the left edge of the green. He had not made a bogey all day when he left his 67-foot birdie putt well short, still 10 feet away from his par at the bottom of a slope that ran hard away from him.

OAKMONT, Pa. – After rain forced three weather delays and postponed first-round play at the U.S. Open on Thursday, the USGA and its 156-player field of golfers got in a long day of play under clear skies on Friday. Dustin Johnson is the leader in the clubhouse after he posted a 1-under 69 in the second round to improve to 4-under overall.

The second round is now well underway, and the USGA plans to work through the third round of play on Saturday to set up a regularly scheduled Sunday final. Half the field began the second round but roughly just a quarter of the overall field made it through a full 36 holes before the horn blew.

Spencer Levin did not hit a very good shot prior to this moment, but it wasn’t terrible. Just don’t try to tell him that.

His approach to the green on No. 7 came up short and right and found a green side bunker. But his shot was out of the rough and the bunker was not a bad place to miss. For most golfers, that just fine. For Levin, well, he was not pleased. First there was the club slam, then some angry yelling. He even mixed in a couple taps on the head to remind him that he was angry about that bad shot.

The field at the 2016 U.S. Open is still in catch-up mode as they attempt to make up ground after three weather delays on Thursday. While there is a lot of golf still to be played, a host of big names could be in danger of early exits. As things currently stand, the cut line is 4-over and three of the top five players in the world are on the wrong side of it.

Jason Day, the No. 1 player in the world, is currently 5-over on the tournament and just one shot off the cut line. He is currently on the course playing his second round. Day struggled in the first round, finishing with a 6-over round of 76. He’s 1-under on his second round, but may still need to make up more ground.

The golf gods owe us something over the next two and a half days at the national championship. Almost 33 hours after it started on Thursday morning, the first round of the 116th U.S. Open has finally come to a close at Oakmont.

We were set up for a monster edition of the season’s second major. The best players in the world, in particular the Big Three, had won in the previous month coming into the event. Oakmont looked absolutely perfect -- brutal and punishing -- but so pretty. But Thursday ground those plans and hype to a halt with non-stop rain that left many players sitting around doing nothing and much of the Oakmont property a muddy mess. There’s still hope, of course, but we are sputtering out of the gate.

It took nearly 35 hours to complete the first round of the 2016 U.S. Open, but when the final scorecard was signed, the result was a lot of red numbers. A whopping 11 players finished their first round under par. That is a staggering number considering how hard most expected the course to play heading into the week.

In fact, the 11 rounds in the red are three more than the 2007 U.S. Open field at Oakmont managed in four rounds.

OAKMONT, Pa. – The first round of the U.S. Open is finally in the books. After beginning at 6:45 a.m. ET on Thursday, three weather delays later, the round finished shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon.

Upstart PGA Tour rookie Andrew Landry is still the tournament’s leader at 4-under, but the twosome immediately trailing him is a talented one: world No. 6 Dustin Johnson and No. 30 Lee Westwood.

The U.S. Open got off to just about the messiest start you could imagine. Only a handful of players actually got through 18 holes on a Thursday that was disrupted three times by lengthy delays and severe storms. Rains hammered Oakmont and the opening round never really got any rhythm. The 116th edition of the U.S. Open is now also going to have sprint through the final three days to get a Sunday night finish.

The USGA and its network partner, FOX, insisted on Thursday evening that this thing would finish on time. It’s certainly doable but given the minimal play on Thursday, almost a fully wasted day, it’s going to be a challenge. The USGA doesn’t just think they can be on schedule by Sunday night, but actually thinks they’ll be back on track by Saturday evening and have everyone play in twosomes come Sunday morning. That seems ambitious and they will need the pace of play to cooperate over the next 48 hours in order to get there. The good news is that the weather is supposed to oblige an aggressive make-up schedule, with clear sunny skies.

OAKMONT, Pa. -- At times, it felt like Mother Nature colluded with Oakmont’s course designers and groundskeepers to make Jordan Spieth angry during his two-day first-round at the U.S. Open.

Spieth’s Thursday wasn’t an easy one, virtually from the start. He went into a bout of sneezing just as he was strolling to open his round on the 10th tee, and he couldn’t sink a birdie putt on that first hole. Then it started to rain, and Spieth’s round was interrupted with three delays, including one overnight. He didn’t finish until Friday morning, by which time he was 2-over and six shots back of leader Andrew Landry, the No. 624 player in the world.

Here’s hoping Friday at the U.S. Open is a lot drier than Thursday.

Rainfall blasted Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh, the site of this 116th national championship, all day Thursday. The first players teed off at 6:45 a.m., and play came to its first rain-induced halt shortly after 10 a.m. Then there was a short-resumption after a 90-minute break, then another weather delay. Then players hopped back on the course shortly after 2:30, and then again play stopped shortly thereafter — this time, for the day at 4:25 p.m.

They’re going to play a lot of golf at the U.S. Open on Friday, and you’ll be able to watch virtually all of it free online. The 116th version of American golf’s national championship resumes for a second day of competition after rain cut off opening-round competition not even halfway to its planned conclusion on Thursday, and now the USGA is in catch-up mode.

By pure necessity, it’s clear that golf will be played just about as long as the sun is in the sky above Oakmont Country Club, just outside Pittsburgh. Rain delayed Thursday’s rounds twice before a third bout with weather ultimately got everything pushed to Friday, so there’ll be little time for players, groundskeepers and executives to waste.

Jordan Spieth appeared to stick a terrific wedge shot in tight to the pin on the par-4 17th but this is Oakmont on the first day of the US Open and, well, the defending champion was not amused with the outcome.

“Are you kidding me!” the two-time major winner fumed after watching his golf ball hit above the cup and spin all the way off the green. “How is that in the bunker?! That’s such crap!”

Hours after flying back and forth from Pittsburgh to San Diego in a one-day jaunt on his private jet, Phil Mickelson sat up on the dais of his U.S. Open press conference in four-figure trousers and alligator shoes fielding questions about his “everyman” image. This was a press conference that pivoted from a daughter’s eighth-grade graduation to an insider trading scandal in a matter of seconds.

Phil turns 46 years old today and now carries around 25 years of baggage with him, full of complexities, contradictions, successes, failures, and a record six U.S. Open runners-up. All of that somehow washes out in near universal love or admiration.

A weekly gallery pass to this week’s U.S. Open costs $450. But cruising right through the center of American golf’s national championship only costs a handful of coins to pay a toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The 116th U.S. Open starts Thursday at Oakmont, a country club just outside Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania that is hosting the national championship for a record ninth time. The course is unanimously regarded as one of the hardest in the country. It is brutal when it’s not hosting a U.S. Open, a tournament also known as “the toughest test in golf.” Phil Mickelson has said it will be the hardest course the pros ever play. It’s also one of its most uniquely configured, with seven of its 18 holes separated from its clubhouse by the Pennsylvania Turnpike — Interstate 76.