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"I was almost shaking and dropping the club," the NHL referee and amateur golfer said of hitting his first shot in a major championship.
Playing with fellow Ontario native Mackenzie Hughes and Aaron Baddeley of Australia, Rank got off to a shaky start with a double bogey on the 10th hole at Shinnecock Hills, but he settled in after talking to his brother and caddie, Kyle.
"Just look around," he said Kyle told him. "We're on a beautiful golf course. Let's enjoy this."
Rank finished the first round at 13-over-par 83, in a five-way tie for 148th, but said he enjoyed the experience.
"This isn't my job," he said. "So it's just cool being out here. I obviously wanted to play better than I did today, but at the end of the day, I'm at the U.S. Open, a major championship."
The 30-year-old from Elmira, Ontario, reached the tournament by shooting 71-71 and tying for first place at a sectional qualifier in Atlanta on June 4.
Rank, an NHL referee for three seasons, plays golf about once a month during the season, renting or borrowing clubs on the road. He said Shinnecock Hills is much more challenging than the courses he is used to playing.
"If you miss the fairway here, you have to drop it in knee-high rough and slash it down the fairway and then make a perfect putt on fast greens," he said.
But for Rank, Thursday was less about his performance and more about the atmosphere.
The spectators watching Rank's group swelled from a handful early in the round to about two dozen by the time it ended, with at least one of them apparently curious about the referee's golf game. A gallery member shouted, "Let's go Rangers!" after Rank hit a drive on No. 8.
"There were so many clever lines from the crowd," Rank said. "It was almost like at the ice rink."
Rank was asked to compare how he felt playing in the U.S. Open to working his first NHL game: the Minnesota Wild at the Buffalo Sabres on Jan. 15, 2015.
"I was really nervous reffing my first game," he said. "I made a wrong call in the first five minutes of the game, but things turned out all right in my NHL career.
"But I guess I shot 83 in my first U.S. Open experience, so hopefully it can turn [out] all right in my golf career."
