Tiger Woods will play his first U.S. Open in four years after he accepted a special exemption from the USGA to compete in next month’s national championship at Pinehurst (North Carolina) Resort.
Woods, 48, is a three-time Open champion whose five-year exemption for having won the 2019 Masters has expired. He otherwise could not have entered without qualifying, but the U.S. Golf Association would have none of it.
“The story of the U.S. Open could not be written without Tiger Woods,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief championships officer, who added: “This championship is simply better when Tiger is in the field.”
Woods missed the past three Opens because of injuries sustained in a single-vehicle rollover crash in early 2021 and resulting surgeries and complications in recent years. He shares the record with the legendary Bobby Jones for most USGA titles, with nine: three U.S. Junior Amateurs, three U.S. Amateurs and the three U.S. Open titles (2000, 2002, 2008).
In previous Opens at Pinehurst No. 2, Woods finished T3 in 1999 when the late Payne Stewart won and was runner-up to Michael Campbell in 2005. Woods did not compete in the 2014 Open at Pinehurst because of back surgery.
Woods called the U.S. Open “a truly special event for our game and one that has helped define my career.”
The USGA has extended special exemptions to the game’s biggest stars over the years. Jack Nicklaus, a four-time Open champion, received eight special exemptions, and the late Arnold Palmer accepted four such invites.
The 124th U.S. Open will be played June 13-16 at Pinehurst’s No. 2 course. READ MORE
Mike Ehrmann, Getty Images
Scottie Scheffler, the world No. 1 who has been on a Tiger Woods-like heater this spring, will miss this week’s Wells Fargo Championship as he and wife, Meredith, await the birth of their first child. Scheffler, 27, has won four of his past five starts, including the Players and the Masters, and will enter next week’s PGA Championship as a heavy favorite to win the season’s second major event. READ MORE and MORE
Will Zalatoris withdrew before last week’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson in McKinney, Texas, as a precautionary move to protect his surgically repaired back. Zalatoris, 27, a longtime Dallas resident, underwent a microdiscectomy in April 2023 and had made three consecutive starts on the PGA Tour. He was listed among the entrants for this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, a $20 million signature event. READ MORE
Blades Brown, a 16-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee, will make his PGA Tour debut this week at the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic on a sponsor exemption. READ MORE
Jordan Spieth, a player director on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board, described a mixed reaction among his peers to the details of the Player Equity Program in an interview with Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard. READ MORE
Hongtaek Kim, a star on South Korea’s GTour circuit of simulated golf, broke through in three-dimensional reality over the weekend.
Kim outlasted Thailand’s Chonlatit Chuenboonngam with a par on the first playoff hole to win the Asian Tour’s GS Caltex Maekyung Open. They had tied at 10-under-par 274 through 72 holes at Namseoul Country Club outside of the Korean capital.
Kim, 30, is known as the “King of the Screen” as winner of 12 titles on the GTour simulation circuit.
“There was a misunderstanding that I was only good at simulator golf,” Kim said Sunday. “I solved the misunderstanding today. I think simulator golf has actually been very helpful. Competing in championships in simulator golf has helped relieve tension.” READ MORE
Ron Cerrudo, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour during a decade-long career in the 1960s and ’70s, died April 24. He was 79.
Cerrudo, the 1964 California Amateur champion, was a two-time all-American at San Jose State who was one of the nation’s top amateurs in the 1960s. He finished third in the 1966 and 1967 U.S. Amateurs and was runner-up in the 1967 British Amateur.
For the past 45 years, Cerrudo worked as a golf instructor in South Carolina’s Lowcountry: at Shipyard Golf Club and Port Royal Golf Club on Hilton Head Island and, for the past 22 years, at Daniel Island Club in Charleston.
A funeral service is scheduled for May 10 at Daniel Island Club, according to his obituary. READ MORE
TAP-INS
The R&A expects near-record crowds for the 2025 Open Championship at Royal Troon, and one of those anticipated 250,000 ticket buyers could be two-time Open champion Greg Norman, The Scotsman’s Martin Dempster reported. READ MORE
LIV Golf Chicago will be played September 13-15 at Bolingbrook Golf Club near Chicago, the tour announced. The tournament, the 13th of the season, will determine the tour’s 2024 individual champion and complete final seedings for the 2024 team championship, the details of which have yet to be announced. READ MORE
The Korn Ferry Tour’s Simmons Bank Open will be moving to its third site since having debuted on the developmental tour as the Nashville Golf Open in 2016. The $1.5 million tournament will be played September 12-15 at Vanderbilt Legends Club in Franklin, Tennessee. The past three editions were at The Grove in College Grove, Tennessee, after the first four years at Nashville Golf and Athletic Club. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon