At least four Canadians will tee it up at the U.S. Open.
Nick Taylor and Mackenzie Hughes locked up their spots at the third major of the season by virtue of sitting within the top 60 of the Official World Golf Rankings on Monday.
Taylor and Hughes will join fellow Canadians Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith in the field in June at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa.
Both Taylor, ranked 42nd, and Hughes, ranked 48th, missed the cut at the PGA Championship but are otherwise enjoying solid seasons.
Taylor won the Sony Open in January in Hawaii and added another top-10 finish at the Genesis Invitational, a signature event, the next month.
Hughes enjoyed a stretch of three top-10s in four starts prior to the PGA Championship, including a playoff loss at the Myrtle Beach Classic a week prior.
Pendrith and Conners qualified for the U.S. Open after advancing to the Tour Championship last season.
Both placed within the top 20 at the PGA, with Pendrith’s fifth-place finish marking the best result for a Canadian at a men’s major championship since Mike Weir also placed fifth at the 2005 Masters.
Taylor and Hughes were among the 36 players now exempt from qualifying, also including Davis Riley and Joe Highsmith who both did well enough in the final round of the PGA Championship to move into the top 60 in the world ranking.
The U.S. Open is June 12-15 at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, where Dustin Johnson won his first major. Johnson played a practice round that week with Scheffler, who was 19 and making his U.S. Open debut. Scheffler opened with 69, then shot 78 and missed the cut.
LIV Golf added four more of its players to the field when Jinichiro Kozuma was among three players who made it through the Japan qualifier. Joaquin Niemann was added as the leading player on LIV points, while the top 60 in the world added Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Reed.
Sergio Garcia and Abraham Ancer were among players playing in the 36-hole qualifier in Dallas. Most of the final qualifying is scheduled for June 2 across the U.S. and in Canada.
The field of exempt players — not including the qualifying sites — was 85 players, a little higher than normal for a U.S. Open that strives to have about half the field (78 players) qualify.
Riley, Highsmith, Jhonattan Vegas and Si Woo Kim each moved into the top 60 in the world in the final week. Riley was in contention when he took a triple bogey on the seventh hole. He was 4 over for his round at that point, but played bogey-free the rest of the way to tie for second.
That was enough to move him from No. 100 into the top 60 at 53rd in the world. Ditto for Highsmith, who played bogey-free with three birdies over the final 12 holes to move up nine spots to No. 60.
That bumped Laurie Canter, though he became exempt for being the highest-ranked player on the European tour points list not already eligible.
The only other exempt spot available is the NCAA men’s individual champion, which will be decided May 26 at La Costa Resort in California.
The U.S. Open is immediately preceded by the RBC Canadian Open, which will be contested for the first time at TPC Toronto from June 5-8.
