The young, the journeymen, the amateurs and the dreamers match up against millionaire golfers for four days.
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Two worlds of competitive golf collide this week at the U.S. Open. One world seeks to blow up the status quo, posing the largest threat to the PGA Tour in its 54-year history. It is spearheaded by six-time major winner and fan favorite Phil Mickelson, who along with former No. 1 Dustin Johnson took $150 million or more to leave the sport’s pre-eminent tour and play in the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf series. The other world is inhabited by the likes of Ben Silverman and Davis Shore. They are among the young, the journeymen, the amateurs and the dreamers who made it through qualifying to earn spots in the 156-player field at The Country Club outside of Boston. Starting Thursday, they will play alongside the millionaire disrupters in America’s open golf tournament – an event that, in theory at least, any pro or amateur with a handicap of 1.4 or less is eligible to win.
“For anyone at our level, it’s another opportunity,” said Shore, a 23-year-old from Tennessee who plays on minor league tours in Canada and Latin America and has career earnings of around $15,000. “It’s a chance to play against the best in the world. And that’s what you want. It’s also a good opportunity to hopefully cash a big check. We don’t get that opportunity very much playing at this level.”
Theirs is a level of puddle-jumper flights to far-flung outposts, cheap rent-a-cars, fast-food drive-throughs and bunking with roommates. Players make cuts, then use that money to pay to travel to the next week’s tournament. Shore, who went through 54 holes of qualifying this spring to make his second straight U.S. Open, spoke to The Associated Press earlier this month after the first round of the Royal Beach Victoria Open on the PGA Tour Canada. He would finish tied for 13th. He earned $3,325. By qualifying for the U.S. Open, he received a $10,000 travel stipend for the trip to Brookline. Without those funds, he said, “I don’t know how I would make it work.”
The 1887 three-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath was the boyhood home of Francis Ouimet, the self-taught former caddie who popped across Clyde Street to win the 1913 event. The playoff victory over British pros Harry Vardon and Ted Ray was trumpeted in a book and movie as “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and it is credited with spreading golf throughout the United States. The property at 246 Clyde had long since passed from Ouimet’s family when it was purchased in 2019 and restored to the style it would have had when he lived in a second-floor bedroom that overlooked The Country Club’s 17th hole. Period furniture has been brought in to decorate the house, with artwork celebrating Ouimet and his role as the founding father of American golf.
“We want to keep it in golf,” said Tom Hynes, a neighbor who orchestrated the deal and is raising money to pay for it.
