Champions Tour player fulfills dad’s wish by qualifying for U.S. Open at home course
Michael Allen graduated from Nevada with a promising job waiting for him at Morgan Stanley. But his stockbroker father — of all people — had other ideas.
Wouldn’t it be nice, Charles Allen thought, if his son could play in the 1987 U.S. Open at their home club, Olympic in San Francisco? But the tournament came and went without Allen even getting beyond local qualifying.
Twenty-five years later, however, Allen has made his late father’s dream come true. In a grueling 36-hole sectional qualifier in San Francisco on Monday, Allen fired a 137 (67-70) to secure one of seven slots in a field of 130.
| Tradition |
| When » Thursday-Sunday |
| Where » Shoal Creek GCC, |
| Birmingham, Ala. |
| TV » Golf Channel |
“That was harder than winning a tournament,” Allen told the San Francisco Examiner. “I just wanted this so bad for so long. That’s why I started playing, to play in the Open at the Olympic Club. To be able to do it at 53, it’s obviously my last chance [there].”
When the Open tees off next Thursday, Allen will be the oldest player in the field. He also will have the most local knowledge as a 39-year member of Olympic Club.
“However well I do there is irrelevant,” Allen said. “I just always wanted to play in front of my friends, a home crowd and on my home course.”
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it happened last year when Prince George’s County native Fred Funk qualified at age 54 for the Open in Bethesda. The short-hitting Funk was overmatched by the length of Congressional (7,574 yards), missing the cut by three shots. But Allen might have a better chance at Olympic, which will play at a more manageable 7,170 yards.
This will be the sixth Open in the vagabond, late-blooming career of Allen, who qualified for the first time in 1994 but has never played golf’s national championship near his hometown.
When Olympic hosted in 1998, Allen was the first alternate but never got a call as all players in the field showed up healthy. Allen also came up short of qualifying for Opens at nearby Pebble Beach in 2010, 2000 and 1992.
At 53, after scuffling with mixed results on the Sunshine (South Africa), European, Nationwide and PGA tours and working briefly as a homebuilder, salesman and as a club pro at Winged Foot (N.Y.), Allen has found his game on the Champions Tour. He has two victories this year and leads the circuit in scoring average (68.8), earnings ($1.01 million) and Charles Schwab Cup points.
When Allen tees off Thursday in the Tradition at Shoal Creek in Birmingham, Ala., he seeks the second senior major of his career. The first came in the 2009 Senior PGA, his first event on the Champions Tour.
“It’s a wonderful place to play,” Allen said after winning in Tampa, Fla., two months ago. “And you don’t have to fight it out selling mortgages.”
