Players react to more U.S. Open carnage: 'I'm too annoyed and too mad right now to think'

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OAKMONT, Pa. — Oakmont is up to it’s old trick of breaking golfer’s minds, and a few of the world’s best seem ready to snap at this incredibly difficult U.S. Open course.

“Honestly, I’m too annoyed and too mad right now to think about any perspective. Very frustrated. Very few rounds of golf I played in my life where I think I hit good putts and they didn’t sniff the hole, so it’s frustrating,” said Jon Rahm after following Thursday’s 69 with a 75 on Friday.

“I didn’t see anything go in beside a 7-footer on seven,” the Spaniard said of his bad day on the greens. “That’s it. That’s a very hard thing to deal with to try to shoot a score out here.”

Rory McIlroy didn’t speak after a round until Saturday, but he didn’t sound very happy to be at Oakmont. When the world No. 2 was asked about the stress of making the cut on Friday, he basically said a weekend on the couch home in Florida might have been his preference.

“It’s much easier being on the cut line when you don’t really care if you’re here for the weekend or not,” he said. “I was sort of thinking, do I really want two more days here or not.”

Jason Day took matters into his own hands — actually into his foot — after a poor putting day on Thursday. The Aussie bounced back from an opening round 76 with a second round 67 and made it to the weekend.

“I bent my putter. Yeah, I just manually bent it myself. Stood on it,” he said when asked what changes he made after Round 1. “That’s kind of how I used to do it back in the day. It just hadn’t been looking very good to me personally, kind of looks a little bit hooded, the grip’s on a little bit closed too, so that’s not a positive for me. But I bent it enough to make it look more open, which is good.”

The result?

“Putted a lot better today.”

The world’s best player Scottie Scheffler was asked why rounds were taking five-and-a-half hours.

“Why do you think?” he answered, after finishing 36 holes at 4-over.

He later lightened up and joked, “It just takes time to hit that many golf shots.”

It’s tough to top Si Woo Kim’s Thursday statements after shooting a 68.

“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing on the course,” he said. “Kind of hitting good but feel like this course is too hard for me.”

Sam Burns, shot an almost unbelievable 65 on Friday and the 54-hole leader said sometimes trying to be perfect can be the enemy of golfers, especially on Oakmont’s notorious greens.

“I try to keep it very simple. I think if you look at putting, the ball is rolling on the ground. There’s a lot of imperfections on grass,” he said. “There’s a lot of different lines the ball can go in, depending on the speed, so if you try to be too perfect with putting it can drive you crazy, so I just try to really read it, put a good roll on it, focus on the speed and hope for the best.”

But we all know what Red told Andy in Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”