U.S. Open Recap

The 111st U.S. Open Tournament had it's thrills of excitement, leading up to Rory McIlroy's dominating performances in Rounds 1 and 2 which got him to 11 under par going into the weekend, and the golfer from Northern Ireland never looked back. By the time the fourth round started, only Lee Westwood, Y.E. Yang and Jason Day really had an outside chance to contend for the win if McIlroy faltered, but he didn't. During the Masters back in April, McIlroy went into the final round with a 4 shot lead, but a triple-bogey on the 10th and a 4-putt double bogey on the 12th costed him a green-jacket, which went to his friend Charl Schwartzel. This time around, he wanted to avoid the mistakes he made at Augusta and earn himself a title, which he succeeded. McIlroy has also been on the front page of the leaderboard, with tying 3rd places in both the 2010 British Open & 2010 PGA Championship, so he has been successful over the last year. McIlroy's lowest total hole score (268) and finishing 16-under par both shattered records for the U.S. Open. The latter record beat Tiger Woods's record in 2000 when he scored 12 under par.

With Tiger's absence from the U.S. Open as he recovers from injuries, the field was wide-open, with Phil Mickelson as the front runner, to guys like McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Matt Kuchar, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen and others who will have a chance to win a major. As McIlroy, 2009 PGA Championship winner Y.E. Yang and Westwood & Garcia all had positive weekends, players like Phil and Ernie Els struggled. Els, who won at Congressional Golf Club last time the Open was played there in 1997, failed to make the cut, while Mickelson shot a 77 3rd round which took him further out of contention, finishing up 7 over par. Bubba Watson and Jeff Overton, who are two Ryder Cup-participating golfers to consider winning a future major, both finished up the weekend 9 over par. Other popular golfers like Hunter Mahan & Rickie Fowler both missed the cut as well.

Rory McIlroy is definitely a golfer to watch. He's only 22 right now and he's got a long career ahead of him. I can definitely see him winning 15-20 majors in his career with the way he has been playing so far. He's also gonna have a lot of competition so with all of these young golfers like Mahan, Fowler & Kucher as well to contend, the state of golf is continuing to change.