SAN FRANCISCO >> Doug Quinones of Hidden Valley Lake came up short in his quest to qualify into the 118th annual United States Open on Monday at Lake Merced Golf Club and the Olympic Club.
Quinones shot an opening-round score of 74 at Lake Merced in the morning and followed it up with a 77 at the Olympic Club’s Ocean Course later that afternoon to finish with an 8-over-par 151 aggregate total. The Middletown High School grad from the class of 2008 shot 39-35 at Lake Merced and then 41-36 at Olympic.
Five golfers advanced from the Lake Merced-Olympic Club qualifying site and four of them were amateur golfers. Amateur Chun An Yu of Tempe, Ariz., was the medalist after carding scores of 65-70 for an 8-under-par total of 135. Yu plays collegiate golf at Arizona State. One stroke behind Yu was Shintaro Ban of San Jose with scores of 69-67 for a 7-under-par 136 total. Ban is also an amateur golfer who completed his college golfing career at UNLV this past May. He was the Northern California Golf Association golfer of the year in 2016, and as an interesting aside his brother Sotaro Ban won the California State Amateur at Lake Merced in the summer of 2016.
A trio of golfers tied for third place, finishing 36 holes at 6-under-par 137. They included professional Sung Joon Park of Irvine and amateurs Franklin Huang of Poway alongside Rhett Rasmussen of Draper, Utah. Park shot 67-70, Huang 69-68 and Rasmussen 66-71. Park is a Korean citizen who is an exempt golfer on the Asian Tour. Huang is on the golf team at Stanford University while Rasmussen tees it up for the University of Utah.
Other local golfers of note who failed to qualify for the Open included amateur Jeff Wilson of Vacaville, the low amateur in the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He finished at 1-under-par; former University of the Pacific and U.S. Public Links champ Byron Meth at 2-over-par; PGA Champions Tour star Kevin Sutherland of Sacramento at 4-over-par; Andy Miller of Napa, the son of 1973 U.S. Open champ Johnny Miller, at 6-over-par; and former St. Vincent de Paul High School golfer and a current member of the U.C. Davis golf team, Evan Knight of Novato. Knight shot 8-over-par 151.
The 118th United States Open Golf Championship begins June 14 and runs through June 17 at Shinnecock Hills Golf Links on Long Island. This marks the fifth time that Shinnecock Hills has hosted the National Open. Five golfers out of the 86 contestants at the Lake Merced and Olympic regional will be part of that field of 156 golfers at Shinnecock. A total of 75 golfers made it through 12 qualifying sites contested on Monday. The remainder of the field is automatically exempt into the U.S. Open field and features the game’s top professionals such as defending champion Brooks Koepka, past champions Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson, Masters winner Patrick Reed, and reigning PGA champion Justin Thomas.
