With the hot start that our Home Team golfers have gotten off to in 2015 — including a win by Tour rookie and UW alum Nick Taylor (subject of a Steve Kelley-penned feature in the upcoming April 2015 CG) and top-50 Fed Ex Cup rankings for Puyallup’s Ryan Moore, Lakewood’s Andres Gonzales and Jordan Spieth (whose caddy, Michael Greller, lives in University Place) — we let our minds wander to the third week of June. Just how many of our local favorites might wind up standing on the first tee box at Chambers Bay this summer?
The more we talked about it, though, the more we realized: other than some general assumptions, we really had no idea how U.S. Open qualification actually works. So we looked it up — and it turns out it’s not entirely simple. Here’s the Cliffs Notes version to figuring out which of your favorite players will be in town for the 2015 U.S. Open.
The field of 156 players at Chambers Bay will consist of:
• Winners of the U.S. Open over the last 10 years
Good news Martin Kaymer, Justin Rose, Webb Simpson, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Lucas Glover, Tiger Woods, Angel Cabrera, Geoff Ogilvy and Michael Campbell. (Really? Michael Campbell? The Internet says so, and the ‘Net never lies, so it must be true.)
• Winners and runners-up from the previous year’s U.S. and British Amateurs
South Korea’s Gunn Yang, Canada’s Corey Conners, Scotland’s Bradley Neil and South Africa’s Zander Lombard are in. If you’re scoring at home, that’s three Americans and 11 foreigners (and that’s if Tiger plays). And you wonder why the U.S. Open trophy so rarely stays on home soil.
• The previous year’s Mark H. McCormack Medal winner (top-ranked world amateur)
Let’s welcome Oliver Schneiderjans of … Georgia! I’ll bet I had you fooled on that one. Impress your friends with your depth of golf knowledge by taking Schneiderjans in your U.S. Open pool. They’ll wonder all week what you know that they don’t, then won’t even notice when he fails to make the cut.
• The last five Masters, British Open and PGA Championship winners
Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Darren Clarke, Louis Oosthuizen, Jason Dufner and Keegan Bradley are all in … with potentially one more spot for this year’s Masters champ, provided he’s not already in one of the categories above. Wondering why that list of potentially 15 major winners only includes nine names? Just assume all the others would have been Rory.
• Winners of the last three Players Championships
Kaymer (2014) and Woods (2013 — I know, I had already forgotten, too) are already in, so this step only adds Matt Kuchar.
• Winner of the 2015 BMW PGA Championship
This won’t be held until May, but let’s just assume it will be Rory. Only because Schneiderjans isn’t eligible, of course.
• Winner of the 2014 U.S. Senior Open
Sigh. Rory wins again. Wait, Rory can’t play in the Senior Open? Oh, well then that explains how Colin Montgomerie won a major.
• Top-10 finishers and ties from the 2014 U.S. Open
Erik Compton, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Jimmy Walker and Brandt Snedeker join the field.
• Players who qualified for the 2014 Tour Championship
OK, here’s where our Home Teamers start to show up, with Jordan Spieth cracking the field — and you have to believe he’ll have quite the home-field advantage with UP native and former Chambers Bay caddy Michael Greller on his bag. Also crossing the velvet rope are Billy Horschel, Jim Furyk, Chris Kirk, Ryan Palmer, Sergio Garcia, Gary Woodland, Russell Henley, Bill Haas, Brendon Todd, Kevin Na, Patrick Reed, Zach Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama, Hunter Mahan, John Senden, Cameron Tringale and whatever the heck a Morgan Hoffman is. If you’re counting, we’re up to a solid 52 players, and potentially 54, pending the results of the 2015 Masters and BMW Championship. Now’s where things start to get less predictable…
• Top-60 in the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR)
If you were in the top-60 on June 4 (two weeks before the tournament) or are in as of June 18, you’re in. Most previous steps have focused on performance at majors and on the PGA TOUR. This is where we start to dump in all the top foreign players that only turn up in the U.S. for the big events — players like Victor Dubuisson, Jamie Donaldson, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Luke Donald, Thomas Bjorn, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Marc Leishman, Stephen Gallacher, Joost Luiten, Thongchai Jaidee, Branden Grace, Shane Lowry, Paul Casey, Tim Clark and a handful of others, along with the top Americans who haven’t met any of the previous qualifications — a list which currently includes J.B. Holmes and our very own Ryan Moore. While the top-60 is obviously an ever-changing list, Moore currently sits 36th, and hasn’t finished outside the top-60 in the OWGR since 2009. Barring disaster, he’s in, and will no doubt have a large contingent rolling over from The Classic to cheer him on (a contingent, I’d add, that might be some of the only people happy with the USGA’s decision to stage parking out of the Puyallup Fairgrounds).
• Special exemptions selected by the USGA
This is a bit of a mysterious category, as the USGA can grant special exemptions to whomever it pleases. It hasn’t been used since 2010 at Pebble Beach, when exemptions were given to both Vijay Singh, whose season had been curtailed to that point by injury, and Tom Watson, whose victory in the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach was one of the greatest moments in golf history. With Tiger the only currently-injured star, and already qualified by other means, and no history at Chambers Bay to repeat, it seems unlikely this category will be used.
• Local and sectional qualifiers
In total, we’ve filled only about half the field through exemptions — and of our Home Teamers, only Jordan Spieth and Ryan Moore can firmly book their flights. That leaves the other half of the field to be filled through the dream of every scratch golfer and club pro in America, and the bane of every PGA TOUR player not already on this list — U.S. Open qualifying.
That process begins in May with 111 local qualifiers being held in 43 states — including a few right here in the Northwest (click here for a full list of qualifiers around the country):
Monday, May 11 — The Home Course (DuPont, Wash.)
Tues., May 12 — Wine Valley (Walla Walla, Wash.)
Monday, May 18 — Eugene C.C. (Eugene, Ore.)
Local qualifiers are limited to club pros and amateurs with a handicap no higher than 1.4, so it’s not for just any hack. It does, however, give anyone in America who is good enough the chance to tee it up alongside the greatest players in the game at our national championship — who says democracy is dead?
Players who advance from local qualifying move on to sectional qualifying, held at 10 different sites around the country on June 8, 10 days before the big event (including one locally, at Suncadia’s Tumble Creek Golf Club). This is where the non-exempt PGA TOUR players typically join the field — you could be paired alongside John Daly, Steve Stricker or Padraig Harrington at a sectional qualifier, each of you competing for one of those 80 or so remaining spots in the U.S. Open field. If Home Teamers like Michael Putnam, Andrew Putnam, Andres Gonzales, Nick Taylor, Kyle Stanley, Alex Prugh or Richard Lee are going to make the field, we likely won’t know until those 36 holes are finished on June 8.
Last year, 24 local qualifiers advanced past the sectional stage and into the field of 156 at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, each of them dreaming of being the next Ken Venturi (1964) or Orville Moody (1969), local qualifiers who ultimately hoisted the U.S. Open trophy.
So that’s it — 156 players comprised roughly half of the names above (only 70 of which were Rory McIlroy) and half local and sectional qualifiers. Just reading this list has us excited already — now, we just need to figure out how to fit Schneiderjans on the back of our “12” jersey, and we’ll be all ready to go.
