US Open Free Picks

The United States Open Championship is an annual men's golf tournament staged by the United States Golf Association each June. It is one of the four major championships in men's golf and is on the official schedule of both the PGA TOUR and the PGA European Tour. The U.S. Open is staged at a variety of courses, and they are usually set up in such a way that low scoring is very difficult and there is a premium on accurate driving.

Around half of the field is made up of players who are fully exempt from qualifying. There are seventeen full exemption categories, including winners of the U.S. Open for the last ten years and the other three majors for the last five years, the top 30 from the previous year's PGA Tour money list, the top 15 from the previous year's European Tour money list, and the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings as of two weeks before the tournament. [1].

Would be competitors who are not fully exempt must enter the Qualifying process, which has two stages. Firstly there is Local Qualifying, which is played over 18 holes at over 100 courses around the United States. Many leading players are exempt from this first stage [2], and they join the successful local qualifiers at the Sectional Qualifying stage, which is played over 36 holes at several sites in the U.S. and one each in Europe and Japan.

The purse at the 2005 U.S. Open was $6,500,000, and the winner's share was $1,170,000. In line with the other majors, winning the U.S. Open gives a golfer several privileges which make his career much more secure, if he is not already one of the elite of the sport. U.S. Open champions are automatically invited to play in the other three majors (The Masters, British Open and the PGA Championship) for the next five years, and are exempt from qualifying for the U.S. Open itself for ten years. They also receive membership on the PGA TOUR for the following five seasons and invitations to THE PLAYERS Championship for five years.

Multiple Winners

The following golfers have won the U.S. Open more than once through 2005.

4 wins

Willie Anderson: 1901, 1903, 1904, 1905

Bobby Jones: 1923, 1926, 1929, 1930

Ben Hogan: 1948, 1950, 1951, 1953

Jack Nicklaus: 1962, 1967, 1972, 1980

3 wins

Hale Irwin 1974, 1979, 1990

2 wins

Alex Smith: 1906, 1910

John J. McDermott: 1911, 1912

Walter Hagen: 1914, 1919

Gene Sarazen: 1922, 1932

Ralph Guldahl: 1937, 1938

Cary Middlecoff: 1949, 1956

Julius Boros: 1952, 1963

Billy Casper: 1959, 1966

Lee Trevino: 1969, 1971

Andy North: 1978, 1985

Curtis Strange: 1988, 1989

Ernie Els: 1994, 1997

Lee Janzen: 1993, 1998

Payne Stewart: 1991, 1999

Tiger Woods: 2000, 2002

Retief Goosen: 2001, 2004