The US Open is one of the four majors conducted every year that are associated with the PGA Tour. It is probably relevant to note that these events are not controlled by the PGA Tour. For example, the Augusta National Golf Club runs the Masters; the PGA Championship is administered by the PGA of America. The British Open (they call it "The Open Championship") is run by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club. And the US Open is a presentation of the United States Golf Association (USGA).

We mention this in the way of explaining that even if there had not been a meeting of the minds this past week between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, there is nothing that the PGA Tour could do to prevent qualified players from participating in major tournaments. And that state of affairs contributed to a situation that enabled a LIV golfer to win a major just a couple of weeks ago.

This week we are playing the US Open at a venue that may not be all that unusual, but is not usual for a tournament like this - the Los Angeles Country Club, located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, not far from Beverly Hills.

And what IS usual is that there are a lot of ways to wager, including head-to-head results between two competitors.

Here are the odds on a head-to-head matchup between two of the world's premier players, as it is posted at BetOnline. It is restricted to the first round of play only:

Rory McIlroy -115
Brooks Koepka -105

One of the most colorful threesomes (strange how that sounds, isn't it?) in these first two rounds of the U.S. Open involves Brooks Koepka, the recently-crowned PGA champion, with Rory McIlroy, four times a major champion (including the US Open in 2011), and Hideki Matsuyama, who won the Masters a couple of years ago.

Koepka and McIlory are both considered among the favorites to win the US Open. They were posted at +1200 and +1400, respectively, at BetOnline. Both of these players hit the ball long; McIlroy, in fact, leads the PGA Tour in driving distance, sending it 327.9 yards on average. But he is only 145th on the list in Greens in Regulation, and that promises to handicap him here.

Somehow, though, he manages to plow ahead in these big tournaments. He has not won a major since the PGA in 2014, but he is seemingly always part of the picture. He has registered a top ten finish in five of his last six major championships, and he's priced at 3-1 to land in the top five when all is said and done.

Koepka, of course, is not part of the official PGA statistics, since he is officially with the LIV Tour. Over his last four PGA years, he's averaged about 309 yards off the tee. Last year was a terrible one for him in the majors, as he finished 55th in both the PGA and US Open and missed the cut in the Masters and British Open.

But he has won two LIV tournaments, including one in Orlando in April. He also lost a final round lead on the way to a runner-up finish in the Masters and won the PGA, much to the chagrin of everyone connected to the establishment.

If you have been following the LIV story for the last year or so, you know that McIlroy is part of that establishment. And there is little dispute that among the players, he has been the most vocal of LIV's opponents. Sure, he is in a position where he has to accept the merger of the interests that took place between the LIV people and the PGA Tour. But he is doing so begrudgingly. He has not been happy with Jay Monahan, the PGA commissioner who is now taking a "medical absence."

And he insists that he still hates LIV Golf.

He doesn't necessarily hate Koepka, though. They are at least on cordial terms, and live pretty close to each other in Jupiter, in south Florida.

And by the way, as has been a subject of discussion, McIlroy is like all the other PGA players in that in some way he has, directly or indirectly, benefited from Saudi involvement with golf.

It should be noted that we can not really apply the "horses for courses" method specifically for the Los Angeles County Club. Usually we can look at a major championship like the US Open, the PGA, and certainly the British Open, which rotates its venues, and do a history of how a player may have performed at that particular course in some PGA Tour sanctioned event. But in this case, the L.A. Country Club has hosted the Los Angeles Open only five times, with the most recent taking place in 1940.

Koepka looks like the better play here, as he's on a roll and on a mission. He's still holding up the "honor" of LIV.

There is no better place to wager on golf than at BetOnline, where you have plenty of props and plenty of matchups to keep your handicapping mind busy. And you should not forget that while the action is in progress, you bet wager on that too, using the "Live Bertting" tab in the sportsbook interface...... You can open an account rather easily; just use your credit card ort choose from all of the crypto options that are available, and blast a hole-in-one!