Tears streamed down Matt Vogt's face, his voice fracturing despite every effort to hold it steady. Can’t blame the guy. How do you measure the moment when an invisible finish line—one you've always believed in, always known existed—finally materializes before you? How do you quantify the countless hours at the range, chasing daylight until darkness swallowed the last shot, the sacrifices made simply for the chance to reach this moment? All those hopes that lifted you, disappointments that crushed you, doubts that whispered in the quiet hours, frustrations that made you question everything, fears that the line might remain forever out of reach no matter how desperately you ran toward it. How do you measure the weight of a bet you placed on yourself when anyone else would have walked away from the table?
“I feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream here in a little while and it’s not going to be real,” Vogt said on Monday’s telecast of Golf’s Longest Day. “But it is real.”
More than 10,200 players signed up for this year's U.S. Open. A little more than half the 156-player field earned full exemptions into Oakmont; everyone else had to fight their way through. Only 16 survived both local and final qualifying—16 out of roughly 10,000. For perspective, you have better odds of becoming a NASA astronaut candidate than making it through U.S. Open qualifying. Which seems fitting, because reaching this moment requires keeping your gaze fixed on the stars.
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That includes Vogt (above photo, right), who grinded out 18-hole local qualifying before shooting low enough to medal at the final qualifier in Walla Walla, Wash. Unless you've sat in his dental chair in Indianapolis, you've never heard of him. The 34-year-old dentist went to school there, playing college golf at Butler, but his roots run deep in Pittsburgh—the city where Oakmont sits, waiting for him like a beautiful cosmic joke.
He spent six years caddieing those fairways before trading loops for root canals. Most people would call that growing up, accepting reality. Vogt called it paying the bills while keeping the dream alive, grinding through amateur tournaments long after his college teammates hung up their clubs. He's no weekend warrior either—this year's Indianapolis Open champion can play. But in a world where talent is table stakes, sitting 1,173rd in the world rank … excuse us, 1,173rd in the world amateur rankings … tells you everything about how steep this mountain really is.
Brady Calkins tees off during the 2023 UNC Health Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Grant Halverson
And yet, against astronomical odds, Vogt will tee it up alongside the world's best at the national championship. So will Brady Calkins (top photo, left), a different kind of long shot—something of a mini-tour folk hero whose legend was built as much in clubhouse bars as on golf courses. The former high school baseball standout was blessed with immense talent and cursed with an equally immense thirst for nightlife.
One year at the College of Spokane was enough before he turned professional at 19. He became a menace in Scottsdale money games, a force on the Dakota Tours, the kind of player whose reputation preceded him. But talent has limits. At 30, Calkins still chases regular tour status, having missed 12 of 16 cuts during his lone Korn Ferry Tour campaign in 2023. Yet here he is, Pennsylvania-bound after posting 68-69 at Wine Valley Golf Club in Washington—proof that in golf, redemption is always just two good rounds away.
You know who won’t be at Oakmont? Rickie Fowler, who has earned several special exemptions into tournaments this year—including at the PGA Championship. Same with Max Homa, after falling short in a Columbus final qualifying playoff. Homa and Fowler, inarguably two of the most popular players in golf, out. Dr. Vogt and Mr. Calkins—riding their 0.16 percent odds—in.
Raj Mehta
They're not alone in their journeys. There's 17-year-old Mason Howell, still figuring out his swing and his future. Zach Bauchou, who was the fifth man on his college team—barely making the lineup, now making history. And James Nicholas, a Korn Ferry Tour grinder who earned his spot at Canoe Brook in New Jersey, with half his hometown cheering him on.
“I’ve had this circled on my calendar for years,” Nicholas said on Golf Channel’s telecast. “When I was 15 years old and got through locals for the first time, that was just a kid with a dream. I was just so raw, I was not ever going to make it through. … But I told myself one day I’m going to be playing in a major championship, one day I’m going to win a major championship, and this is that first step."
A 0.16 percent chance. Stories like these fill the U.S. Open every year, and that's precisely the championship's beauty—it's open to all. But this promise arrives during professional golf's strangest chapter. Two years have passed since the surprise framework agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf's Saudi Arabian backers, and by all accounts, the deal sits in stalemate after a White House meeting went sideways this spring.
Golf's civil war drags on with no resolution in sight. The public battles have quieted, but the collateral damage lingers. A handful of the world's best players toil in relative obscurity except for four major championship weeks each year, their careers now tied to a regime facing serious human rights accusations. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour has steadied itself with fans—television ratings suggest as much—yet its own membership grows restless. Signature events have moved to limited fields with precious few entry points beyond sponsor exemptions for well-connected players. Monday qualifiers have vanished. Mini-tour opportunities have shrunk. The rank-and-file feel abandoned as the tour reshapes itself around its elite.
Which makes the U.S. Open a beautiful anachronism. While both sides of golf's divide preach meritocracy, this championship embodies it. The U.S. Open doesn't care about your name, your résumé, your tour affiliation or your agent's rolodex. Invitations aren't distributed—they're earned. You can't walk from a pickup game at Rucker Park into the NBA Finals, or stride from Thursday night softball into a Yankees tryout. But in golf, if you can move your ball around a course better than everyone else for 54 holes, you've earned a shot.
All the more reason to root for Vogt, who revealed at his interview's end that he lost his father to cancer two months ago. His dad was the one who put a club in his hands, who followed every round from afar through online scoreboards, who sent those perfectly timed texts that only a father knows how to write.
"I knew he was tracking me today," Vogt said Monday. "I wish he was here to share it with me, but I know he was watching."
That's a feeling that can’t be quantified, the kind that makes 0.16 percent feel like destiny.