U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP 2025

June 14, 2025

Devin Gee

Oakmont Country Club

Quick Quotes

DEVIN GEE: It was hard. I say that, like last night when it was raining and I knew there was a chance there was going to be an odd number, it is amazing how different this golf course plays when it's firm versus soft, but it was fun. Incredible to have our membership out there and the support that you feel from them is really, really awesome.

Q. You must have known for a while that this was a possibility, right? How do you prepare, I guess, in the lead-up to this tournament?

DEVIN GEE: Yeah, so I knew -- I did it in '16, and I found out like the night before in '16, which was probably a blessing because I was so nervous that if I had known any more in advance of that, it probably would have been torture. So I knew probably a couple months ago, Scott Langley called me and said, if we have an odd number, we'd be honored if you'd play, love to have you play, which obviously is an honor for me and a thrill for me.

I've known since then. But you don't really think about it. I will say I had dinner with John Sawin, who's the director of golf at Pebble Beach, and he played in 2019, and we were talking about it. He said, you should try to hit some balls. I don't know if I should say this, but I did sneak to the back of the range yesterday and the day before and I hit about 30 balls each day, which just kind of makes the club not feel totally foreign.

But that's the amount of preparation. It's so busy this week, you're certainly not thinking about being sharp to go play and just trying to find the center of the face to get it somewhere out there and play.

Q. What do you make of the way the golf course has played the last couple days?

DEVIN GEE: I think we're all thrilled with it. Look, the U.S. Open in general, but at Oakmont, we know that firmness is critical if we're really going to protect scoring. So we've had so much rain on the weekend and in the month of May in general, to go into the weekend with 3-under leading, I think everyone is pretty thrilled with that.

I'm sure the scores will go lower today just given how soft it is. But we'll see. I was surprised by -- the greens certainly weren't firm, but they were firmer than I thought they would be after that rain last night, and they were fast this morning.

It'll be interesting to see the scores.

Q. From walking around yesterday there was plenty of misery out there, beautiful misery. There's been a lot of people wondering what would a 15-handicap shoot from these tees in tournament conditions. You have more experience than most with watching 15-handicaps around here. Do you have a good answer to that question?

DEVIN GEE: A lot. A lot. To give you an idea, someone asked me yesterday if you played, what would you be -- I said, hey, if I shoot in the low 80s, I'd be happy, which is probably close to what I shot. I don't even know. You're not really thinking about it out there. It's just hard.

By the way, the element of -- in terms of playing around people, for someone that hasn't done that, that's as much of it as anything until you get comfortable with that. I'm not going to put a number on it, but it's probably like most things in golf. The score is a little bit higher than what we think it would be for all of us, right?

Q. Your wife Katie has been a marker, too, at a USGA championship. Did she give you any advice last night or this morning?

DEVIN GEE: No, no, she didn't. Just a quick story on that. This was, like, way less stressful than that. Was that two years ago -- it was last year. So our daughter was two and a half at the time, and my wife was going out to mark in the Senior Women's Open, and I brought my daughter over.

We got to the putting green, she's getting ready to go out, and Clara, our daughter, saying hi to Katie, I pick her up to take her away, and Clara is like, "mama." I take another step, like total tantrum -- I've got her over my shoulder walking away while Katie is teeing off. So that was easy compared to that. It did look like I was kidnaping a two and a half year old.

Q. How cool was it to play with Phillip after his inspiring made cut there?

DEVIN GEE: Awesome. I said to him on the first tee, first of all, he could not be a more gracious and nicer and just pleasant guy to be with. We really had a great time out there, which I really appreciate. Sometimes when you're marking -- look, everyone is different on the golf course, and he was incredible.

I did tell him on the first tee, I'd better not see you tomorrow, so I don't think I will. I think he played well enough that he'll move up the leaderboard a little bit. But he couldn't have been better.

Q. Shot of the day for you?

DEVIN GEE: Ooh, there weren't a lot out there. Probably the one into 10. My approach shot into 10 was pretty good.

Q. You got a nice little applause coming up 18 there. That must have felt pretty good.

DEVIN GEE: Yeah, it was awesome. Really cool.