After two rounds of the US Open at Pinehurst, hazards having their way with the field

If defense wins championships, you better pretend you’re the ’85 Bears when you play Pinehurst No. 2.

All great golf courses have cardinal sins, those things you simply must not do. It’s a vicious rumor that Donald Ross’ masterpiece has 18 of them — there are way more than that. It’s like the dead parrot sketch in the classic British comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Left of the fifth green? Stone dead. Over the par three ninth? Bereft of life. Long on the eighth? Ceased to be. Through the 14th green? Joined the crowd invisible.

The players at the top of the leaderboard in the 124th U.S. Open have one thought in common: avoid the big number. Boring? Not if you like to watch the best players in the world fighting for survival.

Ludvig Åberg, the 24-year-old Swede who finished second in his first ever major championship in the Masters in April, will take a one-shot lead into the final 36 holes of the season’s last major championship on U.S. soil. He’s a stroke clear of three players: Americans Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay, and the Belgian Thomas Detry. Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau and Matthieu Pavon are another shot behind at 3 under par.

“I think obviously this being my first one, I think a U.S. Open is supposed to be hard,” said Åberg after his 1-under 69. “It’s supposed to be tricky, and it’s supposed to challenge every aspect of your game. And I feel like it’s really doing that.”

It was Finau who had the best seat in the house, however, playing alongside the Swede everyone seems to believe is destined for stardom. “It’s the first time I’ve ever played with him,” he said. “The guy is like a machine, from what I saw. He sure makes it look pretty easy.”

DeChambeau, sporting the LIV logo that looks a lot like Calico Jack’s pirate flag, has a good luck charm on his bag, a flat cap honoring the late Payne Stewart, winner of the ’99 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. They’re both Southern Methodist University alums.

“I’ll never forget walking into the SMU athletic department. I saw a mural of him, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, he went to SMU?’ That was probably the moment I decided to go to SMU. So he’s meant a lot to me,” says the notoriously analytical nutty professor and crowd favorite. “We have the cap on my bag this week as a remembrance of him. The cap is hanging on the side of the bag and it’s with me and makes me think of him every time I’m walking on these grounds.”

Detry is coming off a tie for fourth in the PGA Championship last month at Valhalla Golf Club. With apologies to Hercule Poirot and the little grey cells, the Belgian, who is already one of the best putters on the PGA Tour, took a somewhat different approach to his preparation for playing No. 2.

“Instead of teeing off early with everyone, we kind of teed off at 4 p.m. when there’s literally no one on the course. It was actually amazing,” he said. “I was spending 20 minutes on each green, kind of having a feel for the slopes, having a feel for the grass, for the greens.”

The halfway cut to low 60 and ties fell at 5 over par, keeping world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler around for the weekend. Scheffler, whose footwork could win honorable mention in a Myrtle Beach shagging contest, came into Pinehurst fresh from an energy-sapping victory in the Memorial Tournament.

Noticeably frustrated by either his putting stroke or No. 2’s greens — a state of affairs made all the worse by his too frequent visits to the course’s wild native areas — he very nearly missed his first cut of the year.

“I’m proud of how I fought today,” he said. “I just couldn’t get the putts to fall. This golf course can be unpredictable at times, and maybe it got the better of me the last couple days.”

Phil Mickelson, whose face was cradled in Payne Stewart’s hands 25 years ago on the 18th green, and fellow old guy Tiger Woods, who finished a shot behind Mickelson in ’99 and was solo second in the U.S. Open here in ’05, both missed the cut.

The marquee pairing of McIlroy, Scheffler and Xander Schauffele could have played better defense when they went through the fifth, a magnificent par four that has been turned into a gettable — architectural purists would say regrettable— par five when the USGA built a new tee box so far back it’s almost its own exit from the Traffic Circle.

But all that length didn’t change the ultimate truth: nothing good happens left of No. 5. In a confederacy of snafus, all three hit it down there. The sibilant brothers both made double bogey 7s. One of those very nearly sent Scheffler home. Only McIlroy managed to save a par and he had to hole a 9-footer to do it.

Of course, not all the hazards are humpback or native. Tony Finau was hindered by the ice cream stand on the 12th. That wasn’t Donald Ross’ doing. Ben and Jerry, maybe.