With a baby just days from being delivered, a house undergoing renovation, a sliced-up finger and a full-time job teaching golf, there was enough going on in Jason Preeo’s life to make trying to qualify for this year’s U.S. Open a dicey proposition. That was true even when the sectional tournament was held just 30 minutes from his Highlands Ranch home.
Next year will be a whole different story.
During last month’s national championship, one in which Preeo made the 36-hole cut after winning the qualifier at Columbine Country Club, the United States Golf Association, which conducts the Open, voted to eliminate two regional qualifying sites. One was in St. Louis; the other was Columbine, which had hosted sectionals for more than three decades.
“It’s our understanding that they’ve been looking at this for at least a couple of years, evaluating their sectional sites,” said Pete Lis, director of rules and competition for the Colorado Golf Association, which ran the sectional for the USGA. Lis was told of the decision in a conversation with Betsy Swain, a member of the USGA’s rules and competition committee.
“We didn’t get a lot of say in the matter,” Lis said. “As much as I pleaded, telling them it was great for the area and how the membership at Columbine really embraced it, it didn’t really matter.”
Jeff Hall, the executive director of rules and competition for the USGA, said it was a case of “the numbers just not making sense.”
“We thought it would be in the best interest of the championship to reallocate the sites,” Hall said. “There were years where you had 24 or 25 players competing for one spot, and some found that pretty demoralizing.”
This year, 29 players competed for two spots in the Open at Columbine. That was one of the smallest fields among the 13 courses that held qualifiers across the U.S. In comparison, the site in Columbus, Ohio, had 120 players, including numerous PGA Tour players who had just finished playing in Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament also in the area, vying for more than 50 spots.
Similarly, another PGA Tour player-heavy location in Memphis, Tenn., had an equal number of players trying for 14 berths. That field included local product Derek Tolan, the defending champion of the HealthOne Colorado Open, which begins today. He said he hadn’t tried to qualify at Columbine for years, preferring to try to make the Open at a course that offered multiple berths.
“It’s hard when there’s only one or two spots,” said Tolan, who played with PGA Tour winners Chad Campbell and Ryan Palmer in Tennessee and missed a spot at Pebble Beach by four shots. “There’s not a whole lot of difference between the guys who are playing well in Memphis and those at Columbine, but the odds are so much better that if you shoot that low score in Memphis, you know you’re going to get in.”
Those odds certainly worked against World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Kite. The day after playing here in the Senior PGA Championship, Kite played a practice round at Columbine, then returned a week later for the qualifier. Despite going bogey-free and finishing at 7-under-par 137 for the 36 holes, Kite could only finish in a tie for third, missing out on one of the two spots.
Lis said the USGA is thinking that if the players from Columbine and St. Louis go to other sites, the talent at those fields will be raised and more berths in the Open will be awarded. It just won’t be easy to get there. The nearest locations to Colorado for next year’s sectionals are in Illinois, California and Texas, each more than 1,000 miles away.
And while life would have to be easier for Preeo than it was this year, trying for a second straight Open appearance will be difficult for other reasons.
“I haven’t played any of the other places. I’ve played this one three or four times and I’m comfortable with it,” Preeo said. “Now, you’re talking about airfares and paying for somewhere to stay and hiring a caddie and all that stuff — it will add up. . . . You’ll go somewhere else and you’ll find a way to make it work, but it stinks for the local guys here.”
