Open leaderboard is typical

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — It is the Open for a reason, and not only because it throws together professionals and amateurs, veterans and rookies. It is the Open because at some point before stepping to the tee at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Thursday, every one of the 156 players could entertain thoughts of lifting a trophy on Sunday night.

It didn’t matter if it was a graying father of five, a pair of pros from different corners of the globe, or a journeyman who not long ago was contemplating looking for another job.

And so here is your leaderboard partway through the first round of the 104th U.S. Open, the familiar mixture of established players and grinders, perennial contenders and early tournament curiosities. The names might not be the ones you expect to see there. But they’re the type of names that always show up nonetheless.

Even the clubhouse leaders, Jay Haas and Japan’s Shigeki Maruyama, two players at 4-under par with a combined 12 PGA Tour wins between them, could hardly be considered favorites this week. One, Maruyama, has never cracked a top-10 in an American major. Another, the 50-year-old Haas, is at least supposed to have left his best years behind him. Throw in Argentina’s Angel Cabrera, who is winless on the PGA Tour but is at 4 under through 12 holes of his first round, and this was the Open eclecticism we’ve come to expect.

Still, on a day interrupted by afternoon rain, all three took advantage of relatively placid conditions Thursday to seize the Open lead. Nineteen groups, including Cabrera, had yet to complete the first round when play was suspened due to darkness. Those players will resume play at 7 this morning, with the second round set to begin at the same time.

Maruyama and Haas, meanwhile, can return to Shinnecock with at least some momentum on their side, both having handled a taxing golf course with surprising ease en route to a pair of 66s. Maruyama made no bogeys. Haas made just one. Whether either can expect to proceed through 72 stressful holes here without a few bumps is doubtful. But with the wind hardly blowing to start, both were fortunate to see Shinnecock at its most vulnerable.

“It was just the kind of day that you had to feel you could be aggressive at a U.S. Open,” Haas said.

The scores reflected as much. Twenty-one players broke par at the end of Thursday, including British Open champion Ben Curtis at 2-under and 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir at 1-under. Of the players left to complete their rounds, Vijay Singh (through 14 holes) and Phil Mickelson (through 15) are each at 2-under, while Corey Pavin, who won the last time the Open was played at Shinnecock, is 1-under through 13 holes.

Those are the players you’d expect to see near the Open lead. At 2-under, David Roesch is another story. A Wisconsin native currently playing the Hooters Tour, the 30-year-old Roesch had grown so frustrated with golf earlier this year he gave thoughts to quitting.

“(My wife and I) talked about it,” Roesch said. “I didn’t play that well last year, and it was a tough decision for us. Should we play one more year, give it another shot, or just pursue other avenues, other careers? And we came down to it, we sat down and said let’s play another year.”

Roesch’s persistence might be rewarded this week.

When he teed off Thursday morning in his first Open round, his hands were shaking. When he saw his name on the leaderboard after getting to as low as 4-under par, he almost had to hold back tears.

And by the time he holed out for 68, he was convinced he made the right decision to stick it out.

“This was actually going to be my last year playing if I didn’t move up. Granted, this probably changes some things,” he said. “If I can shoot 2-under the first round of the U.S. Open, I don’t think it’s a fluke. … Best field in the world and probably one of the toughest courses in the world and I played well. This definitely changes things.”

Kris Cox is hoping this week serves as a springboard as well. At 2-under after the first round, the PGA Tour rookie made just his fourth cut of the year last week at Westchester.

Prior to this year, he had played just about every tour imaginable — from the Hooters Tour to the Tight Lies Tour to circuits in Canada and South America. Now he’s two shots off the lead in the Open, and admits he never gave much thought to getting to this point.

“I always hoped I could, but do you know? No, never,” he said.

“When you’re playing professional golf, obviously you hope to be up there, but until you do it, you never really know. It gives me a lot of confidence to have a nice round out there today to where now I feel like, yeah, it’s possible.”

Another player who knows it’s possible is Mickelson. Two months removed from his breakthrough at the Masters, he was clearly a crowd favorite at Shinnecock, just as he was when he finished second to Tiger Woods at Bethpage Black.

“I’m just loving playing golf right now and I love playing in the New York area,” said Mickelson, who still had three holes to play. “I had an awesome experience in ‘02 at Bethpage, the people here are incredible and it’s been a lot of fun.”