NHL Ref Garrett Rank Keeps Pace With Rory McIlroy In The First Round Of The US Open
At one point, the two legends were deadlocked on the leaderboard.
Eventually Rory would start to pull away a little but by the time that Rank finished his round, he was only 4 strokes behind Rory.
Now, to be clear, I’m not necessarily saying that this is a great thing considering he’s double digit strokes over par after day 1. But the fact of the matter remains that through the first round of the 2018 US Open, amateur Garrett Rank kept pace with Rory McIlroy. One of the best golfers in the world. A man who was ranked #1 in the world for some time. A man who won this very tournament in 2011. Garrett Rank’s full time job is being a referee in the National Hockey League. He only gets a few months out of the year where he really gets to focus on golf. And here he is at the 118th US Open, keeping up with 4x Major Champion. To quote the late, great Ryan Whitney… “Notttahhhbigggggdeeaaaalll”.
Things got off to a bit of a rocky start for Ranksy as he doubled on 10 to start his round. But for anybody who knows anything about anything, you’ll know that was a savvy veteran move by Ranks. It’s all about getting those mistakes out of the way nice and early so you can be a finely tuned machine heading into Sunday. Unfortunately he’d end up with another double on 13 and a few more bogeys sprinkled in there on the back 9. But that’s Shinnecock for ya. The course plays tough and unless you have an unlimited supply of mulligans at your disposal, you’re gonna have a tough time getting up and down the course. The fact that it only took Garrett Rank a handful more shots to get through his first round than Rory McIlroy? Well it may not have been the score he was looking to end his day with but you can sure as shit hang on to that story for the rest of your life. From now until the day he dies, Garrett Rank gets to tell everybody that he was only a few shots behind one of the best golfers of a generation. He never has to mention the actual score of that round, just who he was within smelling distance of on the leaderboard.