By taming Oakmont, Sam Burns made himself a 2025 U.S. Open contender

OAKMONT, Pa. – The beauty of Oakmont’s ninth green is how it’s connected to the large practice putting green slightly above it. The club’s wraparound, ivy-walled clubhouse porch looks down on a few dozen U.S. Open contestants trying to get a feel for this course’s evil, speedy surfaces while competitive play exists on the same plane.

So there Xander Schauffele stood practicing as Sam Burns made his way up from the ninth green. There, the two-time major winner looked at his buddy Burns with a sarcastic, snarling wink of playfully begrudging approval as the latter walked toward the clubhouse.

Because Burns was not supposed to be able to hit that uphill 22-foot putt to save par.

Because he was not supposed to launch it 330 yards off the tee all day with accuracy while flushing his irons and leading the field in putting.

Because you are not supposed to shoot 65 at Oakmont Country Club. Plain and simple.

And hey, let’s call it what it is. As far as we’ve known for the past seven years, Sam Burns is not supposed to be leading the U.S. Open.

But Friday at Oakmont, Burns, 28, was the baddest man on the planet. And he was with every part of his game. He put approaches to 6 and 7 feet on Nos. 13 and 18. He hit a 107-foot lag putt on No. 4 that stopped a perfect 19 inches from the pin for birdie. On the historically long 299-yard par-3 eighth, he launched it to 13 feet. And sure, a back-nine 31 is great, but shooting 34 on the brutally difficult front is even more impressive.

So by the time his day concluded Friday, Burns had gone from 2 over par to the clubhouse leader at 3 under. And that turnaround happened at the toughest test in major golf.

It was nine shots better than the average round in his wave. It was two shots better than the next-best score. Per DataGolf, his 9.41 strokes gained were the best major championship round since Justin Rose at the 2021 Masters and the third best since 2017. This was historically good golf at the home of Johnny Miller’s iconic 63.

But first, we need to explain Burns, who exists in a tier between the dudes and just guys. Good-golfer purgatory, if you will. He’s played on Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams, but he’s never been among the stars. He came up with Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland, but he boasts one-sixth of their Instagram followings. He won five PGA Tour events by age 26 and is perhaps the best putter in the world, yet it took six years and 16 tries before his first major top 10.

At times, Burns has been a punch line. He’s Scheffler’s best friend on the PGA Tour, a storyline so heavily repeated people claimed it as the lone reason for his 2023 Ryder Cup selection. The podcasters call him “Bermuda Burns,” because he thrives on Florida putting surfaces and has never won outside specific Southeastern courses. At the root of it all was the fact that he was a top-25 golfer by most metrics but simply never showed up at majors.

And, recently, it got worse. He missed three straight cuts in March and April. He went two months without a top 40. At one point, he went 10 starts in a row with negative strokes gained in approach. He didn’t deserve so much as Ryder Cup consideration.

Until it flipped. A Sunday 67 at Quail Hollow for a backdoor top 20 at the PGA Championship. Five top-20 finishes in six starts. Last week at the Canadian Open, his final-round 62 put him in a playoff where he had a 7-foot putt to win.

Instead, he missed the putt and lost the playoff three holes later.

But here he is at Oakmont with the highest 36-hole major position of his career. And he is dialed in. Outside of four disastrous holes, it may not even be close. Thursday, he was 3 under through 14 holes before a horrible bogey-double bogey-bogey-bogey finish to lose five shots. Then he came out Friday with six birdies and just one bogey. From an overall skill perspective, he’s been the best player in the field.

Burns, not exactly known as a dynamic quote, was asked about those major woes with just one top-10 in his career.

“I think at times, trying to be a little too perfect around major championship golf courses,” Burns said, “and I think especially around here, honestly, it kind of forces you to take your medicine because a lot of times that’s the only option you have.”

But somehow, in his opinion, Burns thinks it took playing the toughest test to be less afraid.

“I think for this golf course, you really just have to free it up,” he said. “It’s too hard to try to guide it around here. You’re going to hit some in the rough, you’re going to hit some in some bad spots, you might as well do it with authority.”

Burns is often asked to talk about Scheffler after the latter’s many triumphs. Friday was a reversal of that dynamic.

“He’s like me in the sense that he’s a hypercompetitive person,” Scheffler said. “I think you always dream of having a chance to win these tournaments, and he’s put himself in position a few times at majors, and he’s in position again. I’m sure going into the weekend, he’s right where I would want to be on the leaderboard.”

The tricky thing about Burns is that he’s proven he can be a closer when he’s in it. The problem has been being in it.

He won the 2022 Valspar in a playoff with a putt from off the green. His win at Colonial came in a playoff over Scheffler. His last win was in the old WGC match play event, and it was a 6 and 5 domination of Cameron Young in the final.

This week, at Oakmont, Burns is in the damn thing. He’s doing things at Oakmont that we were led to believe were not possible this year.

So yeah, maybe people are skeptical Burns can win the U.S. Open. Understood. But he’s already in the business of changing perceptions.