They’re qualified, all right. It’s the American way into the U.S. Open.
Most are household names in their kitchens only, but Kevin Stadler, son of Craig, stood among several qualifiers quite prominently posted on the U.S. Open leader board yesterday.
There are 35 qualifiers who earned their admission to Shinnecock the hardest way, survivors among some 7,000 qualifying (USGA handicap index 1.4 or lower) entrants through local and sectional tournaments and playoffs. Some 35 more joined the field after being exempt from the local rounds and surviving the sectionals.
Either way, they had to scramble, change schedules, and find their way to the qualifiers in hopes of overcoming the 200-1 odds against teeing up at Shinnecock.
Then they had to get here.
“I came up on Thursday and lost my clubs on the airlines. Got them back Saturday,” said the 24-year-old Stadler. An Arizonan, he went through the contortions of qualifying at Canoe Brook in New Jersey, his father’s status cutting him no slack.
“You definitely feel like you’ve earned it,” Kristopher Cox said yesterday of the getting in through the qualifying grind.
“Is it a pain in the neck [to qualify]? Yeah.”
It was all worthwhile yesterday for Stadler and Cox, each 2-under among the first-round leaders.
A qualifier is overdue to win the U.S. Open. Woodstock was still being sort-of planned in 1969 when Orville Moody became the last local-sectional qualifier to triumph, joining only Ken Venturi (1964) among the 103 winners. Steve Jones won the 1996 Open as the last sectional-only qualifier.
To David Roesch, qualifying and shooting 2-under yesterday changes his life plan.
“This was actually going to be my last year playing if I didn’t move up,” the Milwaukee native said. “I worked for TaylorMade this winter. I was actually running launch monitors and building drivers for club pros for the month of January. I was actually thinking about going to work for the company.”
Roesch’s route to Shinnecock illustrates the joy of qualifying.
“In Chicago [Nationwide Tour], got done at 6 o’clock, drove to St. Louis, got there at like 11:30, got up at 5:00 and did the 36-hole qualifier and made it,” Roesch said. “You could say I was a little tired at the end of the day.
“When I left St. Louis and realized I had qualified, I was pretty much breaking down into tears for about an hour. This is something different. I don’t know if I want to wake up or not.”
After the pressures of qualifying against such odds, the Open itself may have been less daunting.
Stadler said he was surprised at his composure while his father watched.
“I thought I was going to be a wreck out here, but it’s not bad,” Stadler said. “It doesn’t really feel like the pressure I was expecting from a U.S. Open.”
Enough qualifiers started strongly to bear watching. Orville Moody could have a successor.