Oakmont Country Club, outside Pittsburgh, Pa., will host the U.S. Open for a record 10th time.
Gary Lisbon
Question: What do Ken Venturi and Orville Moody have in common?
Answer: They’re the only two men to ever win the U.S. Open after passing through both local and final qualifying stages.
Maybe you could be the third.
You’ll never know if you don’t try, and you’ll never get to try if you don’t know when and where those qualifiers are being held.
That information is now public.
On Monday, the USGA announced dates and locations for local and final qualifying in advance of the 125th U.S. Open Championship, which will be contested at Oakmont Country Club for a record 10th time from June 12-15.
Local qualifying, conducted over 18 holes at 110 sites in 43 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico, will take place between April 16-May 19. Players advancing through the local stage will join locally exempt competitors in final qualifying, which will unfold over 36 holes in England and Japan (May 19); Canada (June 2); and 10 sites in the U.S., one on May 19 and the other nine on June 2.
The process is called U.S. Open qualifying for good reason. It’s open to anyone, within reason. To be eligible, you have to be either a professional or an amateur with a handicap not exceeding 0.4.
In the early years of the U.S. Open, qualifying did not exist. From the birth of the championship, in 1895, until 1913, you just filled out an entry, and you were in. But as the event grew in popularity, the fields grew too large to retain the status quo. Various forms of qualifying were adopted. Local qualifying was instituted in 1959 and has remained in place ever since. International qualifying has been in place since 2005. On three occasions, the USGA has received more 10,000 qualifying entires, including 2023 and 2024, when the U.S. Open was held at Los Angeles Country Club and Pinehurst No. 2, respectively.
Courses used as qualifying sites tend to be top-notch, and this year is no exception. The 2025 crop (full list below) includes such respected clubs as Canoe Brook in Summit, N.J., Wine Valley Golf Club in Walla Walla, Wash., and Walton Heath, in Surrey, England.
Online player registration for the 2025 U.S. Open will begin Feb. 17 and continue through 5 p.m. EDT on April 9. To enter, click here.
2025 U.S. Open Championship Local Qualifying Sites (110)*
A golf, food and travel writer, Josh Sens has been a GOLF Magazine contributor since 2004 and now contributes across all of GOLF’s platforms. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting. He is also the co-author, with Sammy Hagar, of Are We Having Any Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.
