Kokrak stands very tall against Oakmont monster

June 18, 2016 at 12:08a.m.

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Oakmont Country Club is a golf course, so its features are not all that unusual. There are 18 holes, tiring hills, challenging bunkers, demanding greens and the requisite trees.

But the similarities between Oakmont and most other golf courses pretty much end there. This place can be a monster.

Come to Oakmont, Pa., unprepared and inexperienced — especially for a U.S. Open — and golfers learn quickly that Oakmont will humble the uninitiated.

Zach Edmonson found out the hard way Friday, when he shot a first-round 89. The 2013 East Carolina University graduate recovered from that nightmare somewhat with a second-round 77, but still finished 26-over par.

Oakmont ate his lunch. Even with its greens softened by Friday’s torrential rains in that first round, the course ate Edmonson’s breakfast and dinner, too. Then it picked him up by the shoes and shook out any loose change he might have had.

Well, not really. But you get the idea. Oakmont can bully even the guys who make the game look so easy everywhere else.

But Warren native Jason Kokrak was among those who all but tamed Oakmont on Friday with rounds of 71 and 70 for a two-day score of 1-over par 141. When play was suspended at 8:42 p.m., Kokrak was tied for 21st place.

The difference, he says, is having a history here.

“I just kind of know what to expect after playing the [U.S.] Amateur and [U.S.] Open [previously] here,” Kokrak said. “I know how fast the greens can get, I know some of the tricky pin placements and I know where not to hit it.

“My coach was a member here, so I was up here a couple times before the ‘Am.’”

His second round would have been even better but for its start (a double-bogey on No. 1) and its finish (bogeys on Nos. 16 and 18).

But in between, Kokrak refused to surrender his lunch money to the bully.

“I hit the ball well all day,” he said. “I ran out of gas a little bit at the end, but I’m happy with the way I played and I’m happy with the way I putted.”

Even as the day progressed and the speed of the greens changed under a blazing sun and blue skies — a stark contrast to Thursday’s darkness, rain and mud — Kokrak remained steady.

“The greens sped up two, three, four feet in the second round,” he said. “So there were some challenging pin placements out there.”

That didn’t seem to bother Kokrak, who birdied Nos. 2, 4, 12 and 14 during the second round. He also did what those who contend at Oakmont and in the U.S. Open must do — he made par a lot.

“You’ve got to hit fairways,” said Kokrak, a 2007 Xavier University graduate. “The course sets up well for me to hit 2-irons off the tee. I hit a lot of 2-irons and probably wasn’t as aggressive off the tee as I normally would be.”

Kokrak now calls Charlotte, N.C., home. But his PGA Tour bio still lists Oakmont as his favorite course and the reason was clear Friday.

The course has teeth, but Kokrak knows the layout well enough to avoid most of them.

“It’s a course where you have to expect some bogeys,” he said. “You just try to give yourself as many birdie opportunities as you can.

“I had a lot of fun today, kept it below the hole and gave myself some birdie chances.”

Kokrak said he expects Oakmont’s greens to firm up even more in time for today’s third round.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m playing well and hopefully I can continue to do that and have some fun with my friends and family.”

It helped that Kokrak had familiar faces in his galleries Friday, even if not everyone made it through all 36 holes.

“It was a long day, but they were there for most of it,” he said.

Kokrak played 36 holes in a qualifier after the Memorial just to get to Oakmont, but said those 36 and the 36 he played Friday were vastly different.

“You won’t play 36 holes anywhere like these,” Kokrak said. “You can’t take a moment off on this course.”

Oakmont and the U.S. Open can almost make golf seem like work instead of play.

“It’s a little both, I think,” Kokrak said. “You see some things in the U.S. Open that you don’t normally see on the PGA Tour.”

But Kokrak has seen them before, and that’s why he enters today in contention at Oakmont.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.