The United States Golf Association has announced a variety of changes to exemption categories for its national championships that will be implemented over the next two years.
The changes, which were voted and agreed upon by the Association’s Championship Committee, will affect exemptions for both local and sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open and sectional qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open. The Committee also approved changes in exemptions for players in amateur championships.
“Our mission is to always provide the most competitive fields for our national championships,” said Thomas J. O’Toole, Jr., USGA vice president and chairman of the Championship Committee. “We regularly review our exemption categories and believe the changes we will implement in 2011 and 2012 will lead to stronger fields and more exciting championships.”
One full exemption category has been added for the 2011 U.S. Open.
The top 50 point leaders from the current Official World Golf Ranking as of June 13, 2011, will be fully exempt. This is in addition to the top 50 point leaders as of May 23, 2011, effectively giving players a second chance to earn a spot in the field.
“This change was in direct response to the unfortunate situation that has occurred in the past where a few of the top 50 players missed playing in the Open due to the timing cutoff required for sectional qualifying,” said O’Toole. “For instance, last year both Justin Rose and Rickie Fowler were victims of this scenario.”
One exemption category for the 2011 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open has been revised.
Previously, the lowest 15 scorers and ties from the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open received a full exemption into the following year’s championship. Starting with the 2011 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open, that number has been reduced to 10 and ties at both championships. “Players at both the 2010 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open were notified in their memo to contestants that the change would be made to top 10 and ties for 2011 and beyond, so they were aware of that when they played in the championships,” said O’Toole.
Among the changes that will go into effect for the 2012 U.S. Open is the elimination of full exemptions based on money lists from the PGA Tour, PGA European Tour and various other professional tours around the world. “Trying to evaluate the strength of one tour against another has become increasingly difficult for the USGA as the game has grown globally,” said Mike Davis, senior director of Rules and Competitions for the USGA. “Utilizing the Official World Golf Ranking will eliminate this subjective task that the USGA annually faced.”
While the USGA will move toward using the Official World Golf Ranking for exemptions into the U.S. Open field, it will continue to use money lists to determine exemptions into the U.S. Women’s Open. However, in 2011 the number of players from the LPGA Tour money list who are fully exempt has been increased from 50 to 70.
“Like we will be doing for the men, it is our intent in the future to move away from exemptions based on various money lists and use the world rankings for the Women’s Open,” said Davis. “We are not quite ready to do so at this time and believe that the ranking system, which is currently going through some evaluation and improvement, will be a very solid indicator of the best women players in the world in the next year or two. The men’s world rankings existed for some 10 years before the USGA adopted them for the U.S. Open, so a delay for us to get totally comfortable with the system is not unprecedented.”
While the addition of 20 more exempt players will mean fewer spots for sectional qualifiers in the Women’s Open field, Davis believes the strength of the field will be improved by this change.
“We still reserve an ample number of spots for qualifiers,” said Davis. “Generally we have about 80 spots for sectional qualifiers available at the U.S. Open, and that is from a pool of more than 9,000 entries. For the Women’s Open, we expect to have around 60 spots for sectional qualifiers. Given that we receive about 1,000 entries for that championship, that number of qualifiers seems appropriate. We are absolutely committed to preserving our long-standing approach to open qualifying for all USGA championships. The USGA desires the best players from around the world in its championships, but that desire must allow for a fair system to players who wish to go through sectional qualifying.”
Changes have also been made regarding exemptions into the USGA’s 10 amateur championships, including the addition of several international amateur champions in the fields. Also, the top 50 from the World Amateur Golf Ranking will be exempt into all men’s amateur championships.
The USGA recently announced its partnership with The R&A to produce and manage jointly the World Amateur Golf Ranking, as well as the newly created Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking. “It is our intention to eventually provide the same exemptions for women into USGA championships based on the newly created women’s rankings,” said Davis. “We just want to give them the necessary time to develop and to allow for peer review.”
