Regardless of what the calendar on the wall happens to say, in the world of major championship golf we find ourselves at the midway point. The Masters was contested in April and Scottie Scheffler was the winner. Last month the PGA Championship was held in Tulsa and Justin Thomas was the last man standing as he lifted the Wanamaker Trophy. The Masters is a truly invitational tournament based on a pre-determined set of entry criteria. The PGA is similar to the Masters except for the fact that 20 spots are set aside for the low 20 qualifiers from the PGA of America Club Professional Championship.
The next tourney on the major golf stage is the United States Open at the Country Club just outside Boston. It has historically been held over Father’s Day weekend in June. One month later the major championship season comes to its conclusion with the playing of the 150th annual British Open Golf Championship. This year it will be contested at golf’s birthplace, the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. While we definitely know the 90 or so contestants who get invited to the Masters each year and we are familiar with 136 of the pros in the PGA field, both the U.S. Open and the British Open offer us a bevy of storylines from open qualifiers who just might be driving range teaching pros or high school seniors or mini-tour stars.
When the British Open was initially held in 1860, the field included local pros and amateurs who signed up. It wasn’t until 1907 that the folks who run the Open Championship, the Royal and Ancient, started to hold qualifiers for those golfers who wanted to enter the Open. In 1960 when Arnold Palmer first played in the British Open, he too had to qualify. Yes Palmer had already won the 1958 Masters, the 1960 Masters and the 1960 U.S. Open, but just like everyone else he had to tee it up in a 36-hole qualifier on the Monday before the tournament so that he could play in the championship itself.
Now it’s 2022 and times have changed. Both the U.S. Open and the British Open give out exemptions to top-flight professionals as well as to recent amateur titlists. In the case of the soon-to-be-held United States Open, exemptions are given to the winners of that championship from the last 10 years. Winners of the other three majors get a five-year pass. The top 60 in the world rankings are also exempt for that year, and the top 30 who played in last year’s Tour Championship are also in. Five amateurs are exempt because of their successes in the U.S. Am, the British Am, the U.S. Junior, the U.S. Mid-Am, and the U.S. Am runner-up.
The rest of the field is filled through the qualifying route. This time around just more than 8,880 golfers who are professionals or are amateurs with a handicap of 1.4 or less put up their entry fee and will try to earn their way in. After all, we’re talking about an “open” championship.
Throughout early May the United States Golf Association held Local Qualifying at 109 sites. Those golfers were whittled down to 530 linksters who will try to get through 36-hole Final Qualifying. There are 11 Final Qualifying sites and nine of them will fill out the tournament this Monday throughout America and Canada. The Japan and Dallas qualifiers have already been held. These multiple Monday’s qualifiers have been termed “Golf’s Longest Day” and will be extensively covered live by the Golf Channel. Play great and make your reservation for the Country Club. Fall short and you can at least say you gave it your best shot.
The West Coast version of U.S. Open Final Qualifying occurs Monday at the Ocean Course at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. Following his third-place 69 at the Tucson qualifier on May 5, former Middletown High School and University of Kansas golfer of note Doug Quinones will be part of the field. The 30-year-old Quinones has been a dominant performer on the Dakotas Tour, but he has come up short in the handful of Korn Ferry Tour and European Challenge Tour events he has participated in. He has been to U.S. Open Final Qualifying several times and this time around could be his magic moment as a professional golfer. Another former MHS golfer, Riley Adams, who is a mini-tour pro in Southern California, will be the caddie on Doug’s bag.
DeLaSalle High School golfer Jaden Dumdumaya is also at Olympic. He shot a 71 at Ruby Hill on May 3, just prior to leading his team to the North Coast Section title and a CIF NorCals win. The day prior, Fountaingrove Country Club in Santa Rosa hosted Local Qualifying. The medalist that day was Spencer Levin, who carded a 69. Levin won the California State Amateur in 2004, collected three wins on the Canadian Tour, lost in a playoff in 2011 at the PGA Tour’s Mayakoba Classic, and has played in eight grand slam tourneys, including four U.S. Opens. Levin is 37 years old. Bob Hayes’ favorite tour pro Maverick McNealy also will be at the Olympic Club.
Other qualifying sites on Monday are located in Columbus, Ohio, Rosewell, Georgia, Rockville, Maryland, Purchase, New York, Jupiter, Florida, Bend, Oregon, Springfield, Ohio, and Milton, Ontario in Canada. The USGA rates the strength of each site when determining qualifying spots, and one can imagine that the strongest site will be the Columbus one following this weekend’s Memorial Tournament.
While it is a crapshoot to assume that a local and final qualifier can make an impact at this year’s United States Open, that hasn’t always been the case. In other words, one can dream. In 1964 with his career on the downslide, San Francisco’s Ken Venturi made it through both levels of qualifying and went on to win the Open at Congressional. Five years later former U.S. Army sergeant Orville Moody matched Venturi’s feat and won the U.S. Open at Champions. Six pros have been exempt from local qualifying but got through final qualifying and ended up winning the U.S. Open as well, including Gene Littler, Julius Boros, Jerry Pate, Steve Jones, Michael Campbell and Lucas Glover.
Perhaps the two most interesting “unknown” qualifiers had their careers converge in the 1966 Open that just so happened to be contested at the Olympic Club. A driving range pro from El Paso got into the field, made the cut, and played his third and fourth round with a college freshman who had originally signed up to caddie at Olympic thinking he wouldn’t make it through qualifying. It was the first time for both golfers to enjoy the national stage and they would go on to parlay their Open successes into long careers as household names. They would go on to win eight major championships between them. Yes I know 1966 was a long time ago, but how could we forget Open qualifiers Lee Trevino and Johnny Miller?
