A day after Scottie Scheffler secured his third major at the PGA Championship, the 156-player field for the U.S. Open began to take shape on Monday with the addition of 27 players through the world ranking and qualifying that took place on three continents.
This edition will not feature Sergio García for the first time since 1999.
Garcia made bogey on his final hole in the 36-hole qualifier in Dallas, costing him a spot in a 7-for-1 playoff for seventh place. Rasmus Neergaard-Peterson led the seven qualifiers, which included Carlos Ortiz, who birdied his final hole to get in.
Thirty-six other players were exempt from qualifying. Among them, Davis Riley and Joe Highsmith, both with a good performance in the final round of the PGA Championship to enter the top 60 of the world ranking.
The U.S. Open will be held from June 12-15 at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, where Dustin Johnson won his first major. Johnson played a practice round that week with Scheffler, who was 19 and making his U.S. Open debut. Scheffler opened with 69, then shot 78 and missed the cut.
LIV Golf added five more players to the competition when Jinichiro Kozuma was one of the three players who passed the Japan qualifier and Ortiz qualified at Bent Tree, Dallas. Joaquín Niemann was added as the leading player in LIV points, while the world’s top 60 added Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Reed.
The bulk of the final ranking is scheduled for June 2 in the United States and Canada.
The exempt player field – not including qualifying sites – was 85 players, a bit more than usual for a US Open that strives to have half the field (78 players) qualified.
Riley, Highsmith, Jhonattan Vegas, and Si Woo Kim entered the top 60 in the world in the last week. Riley was in contention when he made a triple bogey on the seventh hole. He was 4 over par at that point, but played bogey-free the rest of the way to tie for second place.
That was enough to move up from 100th to the top 60, at 53rd in the world. The same happened with Highsmith, who played bogey-free with three birdies in the last 12 holes to move up nine places to number 60.
That bumped Laurie Canter, although he became exempt for being the highest-ranked player on the European circuit points list who was not yet eligible.
The only other available exempt spot is for the NCAA men’s individual champion, which will be decided on May 26 at the La Costa Resort in California.
