How Bay Area-adjacent golfers fared over first two days of the 2025 U.S. Open

A number of golfers with ties to the Bay Area teed it up at Oakmont Golf Club for the 2025 U.S. Open. Here’s a look at how they fared over the first two days of competition:

Collin Morikawa – A SoCal native who played for Berkeley Men’s Golf from 2015 to 2019, Morikawa tops the list of golfers with Bay Area connections after the first two days of the 2025 U.S. Open. Rounds of 70 and 74 have him sitting at 4-under, T23, seven strokes back of 36-hole leader Sam Burns.

Morikawa has the strongest major tournament cred of any NorCal player in this year’s Open, with wins at the 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco, and the 2021 Open Championship (aka the British Open) at Royal St George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England to his credit.

Maverick McNealy – The young man who was named after a 1970s Ford compact car sits one spot back of Collin Morikawa on the U.S. Open leaderboard after 36 holes. A 2017 graduate of Stanford University, McNealy turned in one of only six below-par rounds on the second day of the tournament, a one-under 69. Added to his opening-round 76, that leaves him in a nine-way tie for 36th at +5.

McNealy, who is the son of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, grew up at Pebble Beach and in Portola Valley, on the San Francisco Peninsula. He has one PGA Tour win to his credit, the 2024 RSM Classic, and narrowly missed out on a win at the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he finished second to Daniel Berger. His highest finish in a major tournament is T23 at the 2024 PGA Championship.

Sadly, Morikawa and McNealy are the only Bay Area-adjacent golfers who will be playing on the weekend in Oakmont. Others with Bay Area connections who won’t be playing the final rounds include amateur Jackson Koivun, who was born in San Jose but grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is a rising junior at Auburn University; Mark Hubbard, a native of Denver, Colorado who played his college golf at San Jose State from 2007 to 2011; Kevin Velo, a native of Danville and former San Jose State Spartan who turned pro in 2020; and James Hahn, of Alameda, a 2013 Berkely graduate who notched his first PGA Tour win in 2015 at the then-Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club.

2024 AT&T Pro-Am, Day 2: Almost boring…

There is a distinct lack of drama during the Friday round of a no-cut golf tournament. With the exception of the original-format Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which featured a Saturday cut because of the three-course rota, Friday is traditionally go-big-or-go-home day, when players at or near the top of the leaderboard are trying to continue their good play and hang on to their spots, and back-markers are looking to find another gear, up their games and get, or stay, above the cut line in order to make a paycheck.

Five of eight of the PGA Tour’s new limited-field Signature events, of which the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is now one, have no cut (the exceptions are the three player-hosted invitationals: the Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, and the Memorial Tournament), so that Friday drama (or desperation, in some cases) that made it my favorite tournament day, after Sunday, is gone.

Of course, even in a guaranteed-payday tournament like this there is an incentive to play well. After all, with a total purse of $20 million, 1st-place money is a life-changing (at least for mere mortals) $3.6 million, and 10th-place still nets the player something north of half a million dollars. Even DFL* money is a mere $32,000, but that will at least cover your expenses for the week with a nice chunk of change left over – and you got to play Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill.

When you add to that picture a near-total lack of wind, and rain-softened greens that held every shot that hit them, the drama factor on the second day of the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was, well – low.

That being said, in some ways the new-look Pro-Am stayed true to its roots, because from early in the day Friday, despite the Signature Events’ promise of “more big names” and therefore “more excitement”, two less-than-familiar names – Thomas Detry and Ludvig Åberg, a Belgian and a Swede, respectively, held sway at the top of the leaderboard throughout the day.

Playing at Pebble, Detry laid a 2-under 70 (which included bogeys at holes 4 and 5) on top of the 9-under he carded Thursday at Spyglass Hill to hang on to a share of first place, while Åberg took serious advantage of the benign conditions at the tournament’s namesake course to rack up an impressive 7-under 65, second-lowest score on the day to join Detry at the top of the leaderboard.

Also crowding onto the top step, at this point, was Scottie Scheffler, who has come a long way since his 2013 USGA Jr. Amateur Championship victory at Martis Camp in Truckee. Scheffler took low-round-of-the-day honors, helped to a tidy 8-under 64 by a 35-foot birdie putt on 17. He rose thirteen spots up the leaderboard today to muscle in on a share of first place.

Where were the rest of the big names?

Rory McIlroy, current world #2 who was touted as the event’s biggest draw, couldn’t buy a putt all day (SG-Putting: 2.6), and seems to have lost the ability to hit any kind of a draw; he doubled down on his previous day’s troublesome 1-under round at Spyglass with a weak-sauce 2-over 74 at Pebble, dropping to T65 at 1-over. Of some consolation, perhaps, is the fact that McIlroy and his amateur partner, Jeff Rhodes, a managing partner at TPG Capital, won the pro-am competition with a 17-under total.

Patrick Cantlay, who sat one stroke behind Detry at the end of the first round, clung on with a 2-under 70 today, also at Pebble Beach; he is currently alone in 4th place.

Justin Thomas, who hasn’t stepped foot on this course in a decade, added a 3-under round on Pebble today to yesterday’s 6-under at Spyglass for a comfortable 9-under T5, two strokes back of the leading trio. Thomas shares the T5 spot with Argentinian Emiliano Grillo, and Frenchman Matthieu Pavon, who was last week’s winner on Tour in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am 2023 champion Justin Rose managed just one more birdie than bogeys today, netting a 1-under 71 that dropped him fifteen spots down the leaderboard to T23, while AT&T spokesperson Jordan Spieth managed a 3-under 69, climbing six spots to T44.

The NorCal-associated golfers in the field finished the day as follows:

• Collin Morikawa and Mark Hubbard – 7-under, T10
• Maverick McNealy – 3-under, T44
• Kurt Kitayama, Chico native and UNV grad – 1-under, T55
• Max Homa, 2013 Cal grad – 2-under, T53
• Patrick Rodgers – 6-over, T78

*  (Dead f--king last)

Mixed results for NorCal golfers on opening day of 2020 U.S. Open

There are half a dozen NorCal-associated golfers in the field at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club, and at the end of the first round the results they posted range from a respectable 1-under to a worrisome 8-over.

Collin Morikawa plays a shot from the greenside rough on the third hole during the first round at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club (West Course) in Mamaroneck, N.Y. on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. (Darren Carroll/USGA)

Happily for we natives of NCGA territory, the two top scorers among the group are Northern California-born—Clovis’ Bryson DeChambeau, and Sacramento native Cameron Champ.  This pair of long-ball hitters from the Central Valley carded rounds of 1-over (DeChambeau) and 3-over (Champ) on the venerable Winged Foot GC layout.

The group of four remaining players of special interest to NorCal golfers comprises two SoCal golfers and two out-of-staters, all with college golf connections to the Bay Area.

Cal Men’s Golf is represented by Southern California natives Collin Morikawa and Max Homa; former Stanford golfer Brando Wu, of Scarsdale, NY, and Colorado-born 2011 San Jose State grad Mark Hubbard are also in the field.

Wu, a 2019 Stanford grad, is playing in his second U.S. Open—his first as a professional—after topping the points list of the developmental-level Korn Ferry Tour series in 2019. He claimed the “best of the rest” title among NorCal affiliated players with a 4-over 74. Opening with a 2-under 33 on the front nine, Wu fell prey to the Winged Foot rough on the homeward nine after hitting only four of eight fairways.

Wu may be remembered for receiving his Stanford diploma on the 18th green of Pebble Beach Golf Links at last year’s U.S. Open—nice compensation for having to miss his graduation ceremony at the Palo Alto campus.

Cal Men’s golf standout and 2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa found the venerable Westchester County golf course heavier sledding than TPC Harding Park, where he hoisted the PGA’s Wanamaker Trophy six weeks ago after taking the 2020 PGA Chmpionship. The SoCal native seemed never to entirely get his feet underneath him on Winged Foot’s turf, going 36-40–76 largely due to a fall-off in his usual masterful iron work (-1.08 SG:Approach), around the greens (-2.37 SG) and weak putting (-0.83 SG:Putting). 

Mark Hubbard, a former San Jose State golfer, found himself in a similar position to Morikawa at the conclusion of his first round, with a 6-over 76 on one birdie and seven bogeys. Hubbard had his own 18th-green moment at Pebble Beach Golf Links in 2015, when he proposed to his girlfriend, Meghan, after completing the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Of course someone has to be last, and in this accounting of NorCal-affiliated golfers, that dubious honor falls to former Cal Men’s Golf stalwart Max Homa. A decently strong performance off the tee (+1.12 SG – 9 of 14 fairways) wasn’t enough to carry his round in the face of numbers like -2.17 SG:Approach, -2.38 SG:Around the Green, and -2.03 SG:Putting. 

Homa can take heart (I suppose) from the fact that he closed out his first round one stroke better than fellow SoCal native Phil Mickelson, and saw a lot more of Winged Foot’s fairways than the veteran southpaw, who only found two of 14 in the first round.

Cal Golf alum Collin Morikawa outlasts crowded leaderboard to take 2020 PGA Championship

A 95-year-old muni golf course on a chilly, windswept, often fogbound peninsula in Northern California just provided the golf world with one of the most thrilling final rounds in major-tournament golf in decades—and a Cal Men’s Golf alumnus was the star of the show.

2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa poses with the Wanamaker Trophy during the trophy presentation ceremony. (Image copyright: 2020 Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Course (now TPC Harding Park) was shown to great effect this past week, in wind, fog—and even sunshine—and while some of the biggest hitters in the game were factors in the outcome right to the end, it was a mid-range hitter whose game excels in accuracy who outlasted the bomb-and-gouge brigade to step into the winner’s circle at the end of the day. Collin Morikawa, a 2019 Cal graduate, reigning PAC-12 Men’s Golf champion, and second-year PGA Tour pro who already has two professional wins to his credit, plotted his way around Harding Park with GPS-worthy precision, all the way to the grand prize—the Wanamaker Trophy.

The weather on San Francisco’s west side was overcast but generally calm, with mild temperatures for most of the day, trending chilly as the final pairings closed out their rounds. The firm greens were troublesome for long approach shots, requiring a steep landing angle to hold the putting surface, and the Harding Park greens, derided by some as flattish and uninteresting over the course of the week, befuddled many of the contenders down the stretch with their subtleties.

As many as seven players were tied for the lead over the second half of the round, but their numbers dwindled as bad breaks and bad luck took their toll. Northern California’s Cameron Champ, a Sacramento native and the winner of the season-opening Safeway Open last October at Napa’s Silverado Golf & Country Club, dropped back when an errant drive at the long par-four ninth hole resulted in a double-bogey six, and bogeys on 13 and 15 put paid to his chances for the win. Champ’s 8-under finish netted him his first Top Ten finish in a major tournament, and it is unlikely to be his last.

Bryson DeChambeau, another NorCal native and a big hitter who has achieved notoriety for his recent emphasis on physical bulk as a means to increase his length off the tee, started the day at 6-under and was among a half-dozen or so players who dipped into double-digits under par. Back-to-back bogeys at holes 8 and 9, the one-two punch of hardest-playing holes that closed out the front side, dropped him off the pace. Birdies at 14 and 15 pulled the 2015 U.S. Amateur and NCAA champion back to 10-under, but it would prove sufficient only for a spot in a five-way tie for fourth place.

Dustin Johnson, an early favorite to contend for the title today, has been fighting a seeming majors jinx for much of his career, alleviated only by his 2016 victory in the U.S. Open at Oakmont, and was plagued by near-miss putts in his pursuit of a second major title. Four birdies and two bogeys, at the par-3 third hole and par-4 fifteenth, netted the Carolina native a 2-under round and 11-under for the tournament, good enough for his fifth T2 or solo-second finish in a major.

At the end of the day, and over the closing holes of the final round, it was all about Collin Morikawa. The recent Cal grad posted the lowest round, a 64, and only bogey-free round, among the top 20 finishers. Beyond the raw numbers of the score, his stats tell the tale: 1st in driving accuracy, 1st in approach accuracy, 1st in Strokes Gained-Putting; but those numbers, while impressive, aren’t the thing that people will remember from the final round in his impressive victory— it’s the gunslinger eagle-two that he put up at the par-four 16th hole that will be talked about for years.

Morikawa came to #16 after having chipped in for birdie at #14 to take the lead at 11-under. The course had been set up with a couple of teasingly drivable par-fours, most notably the 16th hole, a scenic two-shotter along the Lake Merced shore that was playing an enticing 300 yards to a center-right pin today, and he had resolved, before the round, not to succumb to the temptation they presented. But on the tee-box at #16, sitting on 11-under, with Paul Casey already in with the same score, and Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau in the pairing behind him sitting on -10 and -9, respectively, and both representing threats to pick up another shot or two in the final holes, he made a decision.

“Wednesday night, I had no plans on going for 16 at all. […] Colt Knost, he saw me Wednesday afternoon practicing on there, and he asked me if I was ever going to go for it. I told him a quick no, it’s too much into the wind, why go for it. ”

When his caddie, J.J. Jankovac, asked him what he wanted to do on the tee at #16, Morikawa thought back to the 14th hole at Muirfield Village, in the final round of last month’s Workday Challenge tournament, when he hit a similar shot into the drivable par-four 14th hole, and then went on to win the event in a playoff.

“…It was like 278 to the front, and just a good drive for me. It was going to land just short of that in this weather; it’s going to bounce on up,” Morikawa said in a post-round interview, “(caddie J.J. Jankovac) looked at me, he counted off and asked me what I wanted to do and I told him, ‘Let’s hit a good drive.’”

And “hit a good drive” he did, one that golf fans will be talking about for years. Landing just short of the green, the drive bounded up onto the putting surface, released, and rolled to within seven feet of the hole. After bringing his caddie in to help read the putt, something he rarely does, Morikawa stepped up and rolled it dead-center into the hole for an eagle-two and immediate separation from the field.

Barring some unfortunate mishap on his part, and/or miracle strokes on the part of Finau, DeChambeau, Casey, or Johnson, it was all over at that point; two strokes with two holes to play, let alone three, is too much to ask of any golfer outside of a Hollywood production. Morikawa closed with a pair of pars, though on both holes he came within inches of birdies that would have turned his victory into a late-running blowout.

Morikawa’s 65-64–129 finish is the lowest weekend total for a man in a major championship, and the young man from La Cañada, California, has now joined Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy in the ranks of players who won their first PGA Championship at the age of 23. Besides the $1.98 million paycheck, the win brings with it a five-year exemption on the PGA tour, and entries to the U.S. Open and the Masters.

Mix of old hands and newbies top Round 3 leaderboard at PGA Championship

A mix of experienced “old hands” and fresh-faced newbies crowded the top of the leaderboard after an exciting Round 3 at the 2020 PGA Championship at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park Golf Course. Among them are NorCal native Cameron Champ, of Sacramento, and former Cal Men’s Golf standout Collin Morikawa, a native of Los Angeles.

Sacramento native Cameron Champ is in contention for his first major-tournament title in the 2020 PGA Championship title at TPC Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.(Photo by Christian Petersen/PGA of America/PGA of America via Getty Images)

Morikawa, who started the day at two under par, shared low-round-of-the-day honors with 54-hole leader Dustin Johnson and runner-up Scottie Scheffler. His seven-under score after three rounds was good for a T4 finish, which he shares with England’s Paul Casey and 2018 and 2019 PGA defending champion Brooks Koepka.

Cameron Champ opened the current PGA season with an emotional victory at the Safeway Open last October, dedicating the win to his grandfather, Mack, who passed away from cancer soon after the tournament. Morikawa and Champ will be play together tomorrow in the second-to-last pairing, behind Dustin Johnson (-9) and Scottie Scheffler (-8).

Scheffler, 24, of Dallas, has a place in Northern California golf history himself, having won the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Martis Camp Resort in Truckee.

The late stages of today’s third round resembled a game of Whack-A-Mole as players rose through the rankings only to be knocked back down by poor play or just plain bad breaks. The changeable Lake Merced-area weather had the players contending with wind, then calm, then increasing misty and chilly conditions that sapped distance from tee shots, demonstrating that the bucolic Arcadian beauty of the lakeside region can conceal an iron fist in its foggy velvet glove.

Second-round leader Haotong Li found tree trouble off the tee at the 13th hole when one of the notorious Monterey Cypress trees that line the Harding Park fairways grabbed his ball and kept it, as they sometimes do. The resulting double-bogey was followed by a bogey on #14, and another at #16, the drivable par-4 on the Lake Merced shoreline. Five dropped shots and two birdies left him with a 3-over 73, and 5-over, T13, going into the final round.

Brooks Koepka, who unlike Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, is going into the final round with a shot at a new line in the history books for a third consecutive PGA Championship, got a big dose of “leaderboard gravity” with a string of bogeys on holes 13, 14, and 15. Only a well-executed birdie on #18, the result of a 170-yard approach shot to six feet above the hole, and the clutch birdie putt that followed, pulled him out of an eventual six-way cluster of players at six-under.

Arguably leading that group of six-under finishers sitting T7 after 54 holes is Clovis, California’s, Bryson DeChambeau. The former SMU golfer won the 2015 USGA Amateur Championship, and was NCAA champion as a junior, but dropped out before his senior year and turned pro when SMU was suspended from NCAA championship competitions for recruiting violations.

DeChambeau posted a 4-under 66 today to finish the third round at six under par. Known for his length off the tee after undertaking a “bulking-up” regimen of weightlifting and protein shakes during the PGA Tour’s hiatus, it was, ironically, a 95-foot putt from the front edge of the 18th green that was the highlight of his round today, for a final birdie that lifted him into the top dozen finishers after 54 holes.

Final-round play gets underway tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. local time, with online coverage on ESPN+ beginning at 10 a.m., switching to ESPN online and on television at noon, with CBS-TV taking over from ESPN at 3 p.m.