You might not like golf, but maybe for one day a year you can’t help but love it. That’d be today, when any qualified and dream-plagued amateur and club professional gets a shot to play in our national championship. The US Open is our most democratic of sports events. If you’re an am with a handicap of 1.4 or less, you could have played in a local qualifier last month. If you made it through that, you’re somewhere today, grinding out 36 holes for a chance to be among the chosen 156 at the Country Club in Brookline, MA, 10 days from now.
Think about it. Rickie Fowler has to qualify today. He has played in 12 Opens and has five Tour wins. Ditto Zach Johnson, 18 Opens, two major titles, US Ryder Cup team captain in 2024. Lucas Glover (former Open champ) Aaron Wise (nearly won the Memorial Sunday), Jason Dufner, Brandt Snedeker, West Sider Jim Herman, East Sider Mike Auterson. . . and you.
This sort of opportunity simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in sports.
On Saturday morning, my next boss, Mike Auterson, was helping set up an outing at Hickory Woods Golf Course near Loveland. Make sure each cart has two snack packs, Doc!
This morning at Springfield CC, he was teeing it up to try to qualify for the US Open. Thirty-six holes. They call it The Longest Day in Golf. Thirty-six is cool if you’re in Myrtle Beach with a 12-pack on ice in the cart cooler. Otherwise, it’s grinding business.
Auterson’s the pro at Hickory Woods. I’m the newest cart barn boy there. More on that momentarily.
Of course, making the Open doesn’t confer a great shot at winning the Open. The only players ever to make it through local and final qualifying to win were Ken Venturi (1964) and Orville Noody (’69). The list expands when it includes players who didn’t have to go through the 18-hole local qualifier:
Gene Littler (1961), Julius Boros (1963), Jerry Pate (1976), Steve Jones (1996), Michael Campbell (2005) and Lucas Glover (2009) won after advancing through final qualifying.
More than 9,000 golfers registered, for about 70 of the 156 Open slots. Making it through qualifying is like kayaking through the eye of a needle. Also, so very American. If you’re good enough, you can live a dream.
I watched Johnny Bench try to qualify a few times. Chris Sabo, too. Sam Arnold, the pro at The Vineyard, made it a few years back. Others from here have as well, and I apologize for missing their names. Feel free to fill me in.
Best of luck to Jim Herman, a winner on the PGA Tour who started his career as a kid playing Miami Whitewater and working under head pro Harry Alexander, who’s now at Clovernook.
And of course to Mike Auterson, who has taught me everything I know about hosing down golf carts. Here’s hoping that 10 days hence, Mike, you are not at Hickory, demonstrating the finer points of filling Club Man with gas.
Now, then. . .
THANK YOU. Heartfelt appreciation for the avalanche of kind words following my retirement announcement last week. If I’d have known it was gonna be this great, I’d have retired a few times already. Truly wonderful.
If you didn’t know, TML closes up shop at the end of this month. I have no idea who will be the next Enquirer sports columnist (they didn’t ask me for help finding him/her) or if that person will have any interest in keeping This Space alive. Part of me hopes yes. An equal chunk hopes no.
We had something good here. Since the first post in February 2006 – a few hundred words about climbing Diamond Head while “working’’ at the Pro Bowl in Honolulu – TML has stood for respectful, smart sports discourse. It strayed from sports, of course, because it was my blog and the paper let me do with it what I pleased.
Music, beer, bourbon, travel, family, food, vacations, trip reports, cars, movies, TV, books, pets and so forth. I was proud we had civil conversations and never strayed into social media hell. It was your Space as much as it was mine. Thank you for what we’ve done.
The 16 years I’ve hosted TML have been sublime, to the extent that I even met one of my all-time best friends here. Props, Pogo/Greg B. I love ya, ya big goof.
Thanks, too, to Jay and Bluegrass Kat and Pat W and the late, great Glenn Washington, aka Avondale’s Finest/Mason Mauler/Swiggle Wiggle. Thanks to everyone who has helped take care of The Morning Line.
If you’re ever at Hickory Woods. I’ll be the guy behind the wall, plucking dead empties from the carts.
OK. Enough of that.
THE CLUB TOOK A STEP BACK THIS WEEKEND. Or something. Do we really know how to measure the progress of this team? It’s such a mayhem of moving parts. Between injuries and the mass annihilation of the ’20 and ’21 clubs, what are we looking for, exactly?
We’re definitely cheering for laundry, because the people wearing it are transients.
This year’s team won’t be next year’s team. Not after they get done dealing away as many of the monied/deal-able players as they can. Luis Castillo, we hardly knew ye.
How many on the current 26-man (or whatever the number is now, I can’t keep track) can you say with any certainty will be here this time next year?
India, Stephenson, Greene, Lodolo, Votto. A couple relievers. Probably Senzel. Maybe Mahle. Given the flux, what does it matter that these Reds lost three of four to Washington? Of the Nationals, Senzel said, “We’ve got to beat teams like that if we want to be where we know we can be.”
It’s kind of an odd quote. Beating a team with the 2nd-worst record in the league is informative? But it makes sort-of sense. To not be the worst, you have to beat the next-worst.
And BTW, it would help if guys didn’t get picked off 1st with two outs in the 9th inning, with the tying runner just ahead on 2nd base.
THE WEEKEND WAS FABULOUS. . . If you’ve never driven Rte 52 downriver, past New Richmond and all the tiny towns, you’ve missed out. We do it a couple times a year. We always stop to take the ferry across to Augusta, Ky., especially the first Saturday in June, for Art in the Garden. It’s a modest little streetfest in one of the most charming small towns in the region. Home to the Clooney Clan. TML sez ckitout. The ferry is free if you leave your car on the Ohio side.
. . . went to the Aronoff Thursday night, to see To Kill A Mockingbird. Indelible story, impeccably acted. Richard Thomas (John Boy Walton) excelled as Atticus Finch, but it was the rest of the cast that made the show memorable.
. . . made my final trek up to Dublin, for the last round of the Memorial. I’ve been to Jack’s tournament 20 times at least. Always good, even when it rains, which it has, often. Seen Tiger win there five times. Also: Tom Watson, Greg Norman (twice) Fred Couples and Ernie Els.
I try never to miss a chance to listen to Nicklaus speak. My first few years, he was still playing. Such a treat.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Lots of different live versions of this tune. I’ve heard several. This one’s the standard, IMO.
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