Less than 24 hours after Justin Thomas won his second major at the PGA Championship, we cast our gaze eastward towards The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, site of the 122nd U.S. Open.
On Monday, the U.S. Golf Association announced 30 golfers who are newly qualified for event, including PGA runner-up Will Zalatoris as well as Adam Scott and Keegan Bradley. There are now 79 exempt players for the third men’s major of 2022 with 27 of them earning their spot for placing in the top 60 in the latest Official World Golf Ranking as of May 23.
Zalatoris, who lost a playoff to Thomas on Sunday at the PGA, is now ranked 14th in the world. He is the highest-ranked player in the OWGR who was not previously exempt into the U.S. Open.
Zalatoris has two runner-up finishes and five top 10s in eight starts in the majors. This will be his fourth U.S. Open. He missed the cut in 2021, posted a T-6 finish in 2020, didn’t play it in 2019 and missed the cut in 2018.
Mito Pereira, who held the 54-hole lead by three shots at Southern Hills before faltering late and falling into a tie for third, is also now in the field. This will be his second U.S. Open after he made his Open debut in 2019 at Pebble Beach.
Among the others who are now in the U.S. Open field: Cameron Young, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Si Woo Kim, K.H. Lee and Harold Varner III.
The USGA says that the “number of fully exempt golfers may increase with the addition of the top 60 players from the OWGR as of Monday, June 6.”
The 2022 U.S. Open will be held June 16-19. The last time it was at the Country Club was in 1988. It was also staged there in 1913 and 1963.
The Country Club is one of the five founding member clubs of the USGA.
