JOURNAL SPORTS
Shreveport native Sam Burns, one of the PGA Tour’s brightest young stars, tees off today at 3:32 CST paired with Dustin Johnson and Keith Mitchell in the U.S. Open Golf Championship at Los Angeles Country Club.
The trio will go off Friday morning at 11:02 CST. Today, they head out from the No. 10 tee, while they start on No. 1 Friday.
Johnson won the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh, and was the 2020 Masters Champion. He was runner-up at the U.S. Open in 2015 and now is a member of the LIV Golf tour.
USA Network and Peacock streaming will carry live afternoon coverage of the opening two rounds with NBC providing live prime time programming. Burns’ threesome should capture some of NBC’s coverage this evening.
Burns, a Calvary Baptist graduate who was an All-American and collegiate player of the year at LSU, stands 14th in the PGA Tour’s FedExCup standings and is 15th in the Official World Golf Rankings. He has five top 10 finishes this season, highlighted by his win at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play event this spring in Austin, bringing home a $3.5 million purse.
Notably, two weeks ago Burns had a very solid performance with a 16th place finish at The Memorial, hosted by Jack Nicklaus outside Columbus, Ohio. That course was set up much like a typical U.S. Open course, with thick rough, narrow fairways and challenging pins on undulating greens.
Burns is one of the PGA Tour’s best putters, ranked ninth in strokes gained putting. He is also strong off the tee, ranking 22nd in total driving, which blends distance and accuracy, vital to avoid the harsh rough this week. However, his iron play, particularly his shorter irons, has been subpar this season, with a 158 ranking in “approach to green” stats.
He was sixth defending his 2022 championship at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth earlier in May. Burns did miss the cut, but just by one shot, last week at the RBC Canadian Open, and has three missed cuts in his last five starts, including at the PGA Championship in May.
Burns was 29th at The Masters in early April. Last year, he had his best career U.S. Open finish, 27th, highlighted by a second-round 67.
Burns, 26, now lives in Choudrant with his wife Caroline and plays out of Squire Creek Country Club where his coach Brad Pullen is the head pro.
Burns has $6.4 million in 2022-23 earnings, 11th on the PGA Tour money list for this season. He has $21 million in total PGA Tour money since 2019.
