The night before the biggest moment of his professional career, Mike Van Sickle had no trouble falling asleep.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t entirely due to a lack of nerves; rather, his 5-month-old son, Harvey, stayed at Van Sickle\u2019s father-in-law\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just disappointed when my alarm went off at 4:30,\u201d he said, with a laugh.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d Van Sickle said. \u201cWe just needed to score a little bit better, and that was mostly with the putter. We\u2019re sitting here saying, \u201876, that\u2019s not the worst score in the world,\u2019 but it could have been a lot better. We\u2019re not saying \u201876 and, boy, you grinded your butt off to get 76 and this is going to be a rough week.\u2019 There\u2019s still hope for us to put something together.\u201d<\/p>\n