The U.S. Open’s unlikeliest contender is thriving after an incredibly unusual choice

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Every so often, Cormac McCarthy writes a line that blows a hole straight through your eye sockets.

Everyone who’s ever read McCarthy can attest to having experienced one of these moments, which I would describe as the closest thing literature has to letting someone wind up and punch you in the face. One of them arrived for me last summer, deep into McCarthy’s The Passenger, when I stumbled upon this one.

“But salvation, like many another prize, may be simply a matter of daring. You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it’s a bad bargain.”

I did not expect to be thinking about Cormac McCarthy on Friday afternoon at the U.S. Open. In fact, I hadn’t considered that line — which was so good it sent a tingle down my spine even when I copied it just a moment ago — since logging it months ago in the “Notes” app on my phone, where I semi-frequently catalog significant pieces of literature.

But then I stumbled into Harry Higgs’ press conference on Friday afternoon at Shinnecock Hills and realized he was saying the line to me.

“I can just choose to be a factor,” Higgs said Friday. “I can choose to just be like, you don’t have to be a small insignificant piece of the 156 playing here — and I believe I was 156 out of 156. I can be part of this, I have done this before.”

Higgs was talking about a most unusual Friday at Shinnecock — one that saw him claim his first made-cut on the PGA Tour in 2026, that gave him a legitimate shot at contention at the U.S. Open, that saw him keep his cool in the hardest test in pro golf. Higgs was a person of interest on account of his score (his one under was good enough for T7 in a crowded field at Shinnecock), but he was a story for the things he said afterward, when he opened up on the journey through golf hell that had brought him to here, on the brink of a weekend in contention at the U.S. Open.

“Through six holes [at U.S. Open final qualifying one week earlier], I was really close to quitting golf,” Higgs said. “It went the same way as it’s always gone. I missed a bunch of putts from short range early for birdie and then made a terrible bogey on 6. Took my phone out, booked a flight back home to Kansas City from Charlotte. We were playing just outside Charlotte and I was like, I’m just going to go home. I’m going to walk off after the ninth hole. I’m just going to go home. I don’t even know if I’m going to go to Amarillo and play the Korn Ferry, and I don’t know that I’m going to keep doing this.“

The 34-year-old did not quit golf. He made 13 birdies in his next 30 holes to force his way into a playoff for a U.S. Open spot. He lost the playoff but gained first-alternate status. More importantly, though, he stoked something within that has been simmering ever since.

“I don’t know if I know the lesson that I taught myself, but I think today was a byproduct of that,” Higgs said Friday, four days after he earned late entry into the national championship as an alternate, and the same day he made four birdies to move to the first page of the leaderboard.

“Man, I was cool. I was cool with bad shots. I was cool if things didn’t go my way. I was just going to have my shoulders back, my head up,” Higgs said. “I was going to walk around like I owned this place. And boy, do I not.“

Higgs didn’t need much time to prove that he does not, in fact, own Shinnecock. He showed up to the golf course after a 3:30 a.m. wakeup on Thursday morning without pants, briefly borrowing an ill-fitting pair from a golf equipment staffer before his wife arrived minutes before his tee time with a pair of backups.

“I would have 100% ripped them,” he said. “They fit, but not that great. It would have been real funny trying to get a ball out of the hole and teeing it up.”

And yet he survived. And then, on Friday, he thrived.

“I’m coming to the realization that all these guys that do this consistently and win all these deals, I think they just make the choice to do that all the time,” he said. “I think the results make it maybe a little easier, but only just a little. Those guys wake up and do the work and choose to act and believe that they are the best.”

Every so often, a golfer possesses such precociousness that a major championship victory seems less like a miracle and more like a foregone conclusion. Much more rarely do they possess the knowledge that a major championship victory is very likely an impossibility … and the stubbornness to pursue it anyway.

On Friday at Shinnecock, Higgs separated himself for the latter. Salvation has not arrived, at least not yet, but rest assured it is not for a lack of daring.

“Why not believe in myself?” Higgs said. “Why not think that I can do well at this? I allow myself to feel insignificant … I don’t need to do that anymore.”

And as for that nagging question, the one you’ve been thinking since McCarthy’s roundhouse kick at the top: Can confidence really be chosen?

“For the rest of this week I’m going to say yes,” Higgs said.

Who knows if he’s right.

But at the very least, it’s a good bargain.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.