The night before the biggest moment of his professional career, Mike Van Sickle had no trouble falling asleep.
It wasn’t entirely due to a lack of nerves; rather, his 5-month-old son, Harvey, stayed at Van Sickle’s father-in-law’s house to give the 29-year-old golfer a little extra sleep in advance of his 6:56 a.m. tee time in the first round at the U.S. Open.
“I was just disappointed when my alarm went off at 4:30,” he said, with a laugh.
Though it took longer than he would have liked for his game to wake up, this Pine-Richland graduate and Kennedy resident was one of the few players to finish a full round on a weather-shortened first round Thursday at Oakmont Country Club. Van Sickle, who made the tournament earlier this week as an alternate from a sectional qualifier, shot a 6-over 76 on the first day of play, putting him in a tie for 56th among the 78 players who began their round Thursday.
“When we sat down and looked back at the round, 72 or 70 could have really easily have been done with the way I played today,” Van Sickle said. “We just needed to score a little bit better, and that was mostly with the putter. We’re sitting here saying, ‘76, that’s not the worst score in the world,’ but it could have been a lot better. We’re not saying ‘76 and, boy, you grinded your butt off to get 76 and this is going to be a rough week.’ There’s still hope for us to put something together.”
Gerry Dulac looks back on a rain-soaked first day at Oakmont. (Video by Matt Freed)
Van Sickle began slowly, bogeying two of the first four holes before recording a double bogey on the fifth hole, where he hit his tee shot into the bunker, followed with an approach shot into a greenside bunker and three-putted.
By the time he finished the 11th hole and play was temporarily suspended by a weather delay, he was 7 over and in last place.
But as the sky cleared and he returned to a wet course that mitigated some of Oakmont’s most challenging features, many of the early blunders disappeared as his shots improved and his mindset became more aggressive.
Van Sickle birdied back-to-back holes on Nos. 13 and 14, the second of which — a 331-yard par 4 — he used a driver to get to the green on his first shot. In sharp contrast to his erratic first nine holes, he settled in and shot even par on the back nine to salvage his round.
“Mostly, the rain delay kind of gave me a breather and gave me a chance to slow down a bit,” he said. “It was a bit of a whirlwind, that first round of my first U.S. Open and it being here in Pittsburgh. I did a good job of getting dialed in and getting focused, but you still feel being in that spotlight.”
Though far from a headliner such as Jordan Spieth or Jason Day, Van Sickle attracted his own kind of attention on the course because of his designation as the lone local representative in the field.
There were the friends and family who followed him on every hole, of course, but he drew more than that. “That’s him, Van Sickle” many people would say as he walked up the fairway, “He’s the guy from here.” Marshals and other workers on the course could be heard muttering phrases like “C’mon, Mike” after he hit or approached a shot.
While it’s a title that belongs to Neil Walker, his former high school basketball teammate, Van Sickle was, on this first day of the tournament, the Pittsburgh Kid.
It’s a designation that, to him, meant everything.
“I just feel a lot of pride, both for my city and myself,” Van Sickle said. “For me, it’s a validation of a lot of hard work to look at the field and see you’re the only Pittsburgh guy. It says a lot about the work you put in and where you got your game to. And just to be out there wearing black and yellow and hearing all the love and support from the fans, you just feel so much pride for the city of Pittsburgh and all the great people that are here.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
Comments
Login Register Logout