By Joel Beall
Brooks Koepka announced Wednesday that he is withdrawing from the 2020 U.S. Open.

Koepka, who pulled out of the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust in August due to nagging hip and knee issues, posted a statement on social media that he will not play in next week’s proceedings at Winged Foot.

“I’m looking forward to getting healthy and competing at 100 percent again very soon,” Koepka said in a statement.

Koepka is a two-time U.S. Open champ, winning the event in 2017 and 2018, and came in second at last year’s championship at Pebble Beach. He was expected to be a contender at Winged Foot, with only Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy owning lower odds than Koepka’s 14/1 mark.

However, the 30-year-old has dealt with health problems going back to last fall, when he underwent a knee procedure the day after the 2019 Tour Championship. He continued to be plagued with pain, withdrawing from multiple Asian Swing events and passing on the Presidents Cup.

Koepka’s game was clearly impacted by his ailments. He posted just two top 10s in 13 starts this season with five missed cuts. That included a quick out at the PGA Tour’s regular-season finale Wyndham Championship, where Koepka shot 72-70. He entered the playoffs No. 97 in the FedEx Cup standings, but his WD at the Northern Trust knocked him out of the postseason.

It will be Koepka’s first missed major since the 2018 Masters, with a wrist injury sidelining Koepka from Augusta National. Replacing Koepka in the field is Englishman Paul Waring, who is No. 91 in the World Ranking.

The 2020 U.S. Open begins Sept. 17. Gary Woodland is the defending champ.

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By Alex Myers
The BMW Championship feeling more like a U.S. Open was the overarching theme of the week, but Olympia Fields played particularly tough for Tiger Woods.

Needing a top-five finish to extend his PGA Tour season in the penultimate FedEx Cup Playoffs event, Woods wound up T-51 and never got on track at the Chicago-area course. Actually, he never even broke par in four rounds, a rarity during his legendary career.

How rare was it? The PGA Tour noted it’s just the fifth time that Woods has shot four-over-par rounds in the same event, and only the second time in a non-major tournament. That only other non-major? Just over a decade ago at the 2010 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Of course, the circumstances in 2010 were much different. Woods was still finding his way back following his 2009 scandal and he finished tied for 78th with someone named Michael Jonzon in the 80-man field.

“I need to hit the ball better, I need to chip better, I need to putt better and I need to score better,” Woods said following that performance at Firestone. The three other times he recorded four over-par scores came at the 2003 PGA Championship (Oak Hill), the 1999 Open Championship (Carnoustie), and the 1998 U.S. Open (Olympic Club).

Woods beat 14 players at Olympia Fields this week, including Marc Leishman by 19 shots, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding a ryhthm during a season interrupted by a global pandemic. And the 15-time major champ didn’t seem too upset about getting two weeks off before taking on another difficult course in Winged Foot for the 2020 U.S. Open.

“I didn’t play as well as I wanted to the first couple days,” Woods told reporters following the final round. “Today was nice. I hit the ball really well and made only a couple putts, but today was more indicative of how I want to play in a couple weeks.”

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By Joel Beall
The USGA announced Monday 16 players have been added to the 2020 U.S. Open field.

The USGA’s flagship event, which will be comprised solely of exempt players due to the cancellation of local and sectional qualifying in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, bestowed exemptions to the top five point earners from the three-event Korn Ferry Tour Series. Those players are Brandon Wu, Stephan Jaeger, Curtis Luck, Greyson Sigg and Dan McCarthy.

Additionally, 11 invites went to players who were not otherwise exempt based on the Official World Golf Ranking. In this group are Kevin Streelman, Harris English, J.T. Poston, Joaquin Niemann, Thomas Pieters, Max Homa, Lanto Griffin, Mike Lorenzo-Vera, Matthias Schwab, Alex Noren and Matt Jones.

The USGA also announced two WDs from the field. Francesco Molinari has pulled out from the proceedings; the 2018 Open champ also withdrew from the PGA Championship and has not played since February’s WGC-Mexico Championship. Jung-Gon Hwang of South Korea will be unable to play due to a military service commitment, leaving the current field list at 139 players.

The remaining spots will be filled by the FedExCup final standings (top five players, not otherwise exempt) following this week’s Tour Championship.

The 120th U.S. Open begins on Sept. 17 at Winged Foot Golf Club West Course in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Gary Woodland is the defending champ.

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By Joel Beall
The USGA announced Monday that 10 players have earned exemptions into the 2020 U.S. Open through their performance in the European Tour’s U.K Swing.

The USGA’s flagship event, which will be comprised solely of exempt players due to the cancellation of local and sectional qualifying in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, invited the top 10 aggregate point earners from the Euro Tour’s five restart events who weren’t already in the Winged Foot field. The 10 are Sam Horsfield, Thomas Detry, Andy Sullivan, Rasmus Hojgaard, Renato Paratore, Romain Langasque (who won the Wales Open on Sunday), Sami Valimaki, Dubai-based Adrian Otaegui, Connor Syme and Justin Harding.

Horsfield, 24, has won twice in August, capturing a breakthrough victory at the Hero Open and returning to the winner’s circle two weeks later at the Celtic Classic. Detry, 27, finished runner-up to Horsfield at both events. This marks Horsfield’s fourth appearance in the U.S. Open with Detry—a former Big Ten Player of the Year at Illinois—making his major championship debut.

Sullivan, 33, a former member of the European Ryder Cup team, is making his first U.S. Open start since 2016 at Oakmont. Harding, 34, was in the mix through 36 holes at the 2019 Masters and will be making his second consecutive U.S. Open start.

Other U.S. Open exemptions still to be handed out will be the top-five point earners from the three-event 2020 Korn Ferry Tour Series as well as the top five in the final FedEx Cup standings who are otherwise not exempt.

The 120th U.S. Open begins on Sept. 17 at Winged Foot Golf Club West Course in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Gary Woodland is the defending champ.

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By Joel Beall
Seven amateurs have been added to the 2020 U.S. Open field.

The USGA’s flagship event, which will be comprised solely of exempt players due to the cancellation of local and sectional qualifying in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, bestowed exemptions to the top seven in the World Amateur Golf Ranking on Wednesday. The seven are Takumi Kanaya, Ricky Castillo, Chun An Yu, Davis Thompson, Eduard Rousaud, Sandy Scott, John Pak.

Kanaya, 22, is the World No. 1 amateur, who won the Asia-Pacific Amateur in 2018 and finished runner-up in the event last year. He also tied for third in December’s Australian Open. Castillo was a first-team All-American at Florida in his freshman campaign, with Thompson also earning first-team honours at Georgia. Scott and Pak both competed in the Walker Cup in 2019. Yu will be playing in his third straight U.S. Open, while Rousaud won two events in Spain this year.

The addition of these seven brings the U.S. Open amateur pool to 13, joining Andy Ogletree and John Augenstein (the 2019 U.S. Amateur champion and runner-up, respectively), Preston Summerhays (U.S. Junior Amateur), Lukas Michel (U.S. Mid-Amateur), Cole Hammer (Mark H. McCormack Medal as the world’s top-ranked amateur in 2019) and James Sugrue (2019 Amateur Championship).

The 120th U.S. Open begins on Sept. 17 at Winged Foot Golf Club West Course in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Gary Woodland is the defending champ.

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By Dave Shedloski
The field for this year’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot might not look appreciably different than it has in previous years. At least that’s what the USGA is hoping to achieve.

With all local and sectional qualifying cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s championship, postponed to September, will be populated entirely by players selected via various exemption categories—many that already exist and have for some time, and others created for what the USGA hopes is a one-time occasion.

Similar plans are being instituted for three additional championships the USGA still plans to conduct this year: the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

It’s a process that has started from scratch. But at least there is a template of sorts.

“We’re trying to create exemption categories that when we produce a field and when we start playing on that Thursday of the championship proper, people will look at the fields and say, ‘You know, they didn’t have qualifying but wait, that looks pretty close to what a U.S. Open field might look like,’” John Bodenhamer, senior managing director of championships for the USGA, told Golf Digest as part of a wide-ranging telephone interview, a portion of which was reported on Monday. “We are looking at data, we are looking at those who play year in and year out in the championship and qualifiers. We want to kind of turn over every stone to build a field.”

Of course, the field can’t quite measure up to modern U.S. Open standards, given that the number of competitors is being reduced from 156 to 144 because of the late-summer date. The championship begins Sept. 17, when the duration of daylight in Mamaroneck, N.Y., is 12 hours, 21 minutes—not all of it effective, mind you, for playing golf. That compares to the 15 hours, 6 minutes of daylight on Thursday, on which the first round of the 120th U.S. Open on Winged Foot’s West Course originally was scheduled.

RELATED: This would have been U.S. Open week, and everyone is feeling the void

Last year, there were 78 players fully exempt into the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links, exactly half the field. A similar number this year would leave 66 spots to be filled by players selected from new exemption categories, which can come from a number of sources, including the USGA’s recent amateur championships and the World Amateur Golf Rankings. Bodenhamer said that, on average, around 15-16 amateurs compete in the U.S. Open annually. Other considerations for filling the field will be given to international tours, senior golf events including past U.S. Senior Opens and club professionals via input from the PGA of America.

“Our endeavour,” Bodenhamer said, “is that when we release what the exemption categories will be this year, we’re going to at least give people an opportunity to in various categories who normally compete in the U.S. Open the opportunity to participate.

“It won’t be perfect,” he added. “We know that, and we hope people understand that it falls in line with what occurs through qualifying. Sometimes some good players don’t make it through qualifying.”

Bodenhamer said that qualifying was eliminated for its remaining championships strictly due to safety concerns for players, caddies, administrators, rules officials, personnel at the clubs that host them, and anyone else who might have engaged in those nationwide events. The USGA leadership had lengthy deliberations over what was the best course of action. They opted for caution. They know what it means to the thousands of golfers who enter the U.S. Open each year hoping that their long-shot bid to play in the championship is realised. Same goes for players who want to compete in other USGA events.

“We like to think about it [qualifying] as the platform we provide for a U.S. Open, let alone any of our 14 championships, for people to follow their dream to play in a major championship or a national championship, a golf championship of importance, whatever their level or demographic,” Bodenhamer said. “It was really, really agonizing for us to not be able to provide that platform to folks.”

Bodenhamer did not give an indication of when the USGA would release the various exemption categories. It is not in a hurry, trying to get it right—even while knowing there is no completely right way in the process.

“We’re not at the finish line yet. We’ve got some work left to do,” Bodenhamer said. “It’s complicated. We keep asking ourselves, ‘What our are options?’ It’s just all so new for us. But our thought, absolutely, is that this is a one-time thing. It’s a one-off. We go back to our traditional DNA in ’21. Qualifying is an important aspect to all of our championships. It’s what we’re about as a governing body that promotes the game.”

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By Joel Beall
As life in the United States began to warp amid the coronavirus pandemic this week, sporting organisations have suspended operations and cancelled upcoming events. This includes the golf arena, highlighted by Augusta National postponing this year’s Masters and the PGA Tour calling off the Players Championship and its next three weeks of events.

However, one group standing pat—for the moment—is the USGA.

On Friday morning the governing body announced it has not made any decisions on its schedule for the 2020 season.

“The USGA has been carefully monitoring all information available regarding the Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 and remains focused on the health and safety of the USGA community, including our staff, players, officials, volunteers and spectators,” the statement says. “We have established an internal task force and are communicating on a regular basis with our peers in the golf community and the broader sports world as information on this evolving issue continues to be shared. Our leadership continues to follow current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization and will remain vigilant in working with local and state authorities to monitor the virus and its implications for the entire USGA community.

“Our championship season begins in late April and runs through September, with the U.S. Open being played in June, and as of today, we have not made any decisions to alter this schedule. We are committed to being proactive in updating our constituents regarding any changes and will provide more information as it becomes available. We will take action in the event there are direct impacts to our people or our championships, including our qualifiers.

The U.S. Open is set to begin on June 18 at Winged Foot G.C. in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Westchester County has been one of the epicenters of the American coronavirus outbreak, with the National Guard enforcing a containment area on the town of New Rochelle—just five minutes from Winged Foot.

Other crown jewels for the USGA include the U.S. Women’s Open beginning on June 4 at Champions Club in Houston, the U.S. Senior Open starting June 25 at Newport C.C. in Rhode Island, and the U.S. Amateur on Aug. 10 at Bandon Dunes in Bandon, Ore.

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