The Open Road

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Masters has “Moving Day,” but few monikers are more evocative than “Golf’s Longest Day.”  Synonymous with the final stage of qualifying for each summer’s United States Open, it’s a one-day, two-round marathon of dreams realized, hopes dashed and meritocratic toil. If good enough, for long enough, anyone can advance to play alongside the best in the world in one of the signature events in American sports.

And that’s before we even consider the commute.

For Vanderbilt alumnus Harrison Ott, Golf’s Longest Day didn’t end with his final putt on his 36th hole at Kinsale Golf and Fitness Club near Columbus, Ohio, one of 13 sectional qualifying sites nationwide for golfers who advance from 110 local sites. It didn’t end with the handshakes and congratulatory messages that flooded in once he was assured a place among the five golfers in Columbus who advanced to the U.S. Open at Oakmont—allowing him to play in his first major before even debuting in a PGA Tour event.

For Ott, Golf’s Longest Day didn’t end until after he and his wife drove through the winding Appalachian foothills as night fell on the way home to Franklin, Tennessee.

You don’t reach the U.S. Open without remarkable skill, just as Ott didn’t get to Vanderbilt without the natural gifts that made him part of back-to-back SEC champions and teams that reached two NCAA semifinals, one quarterfinal and four NCAA Championships in all.

You don’t survive Golf’s Longest Day without understanding why the game matters to you.

Since playing his final round as a Commodore, Ott pursued that answer around golf courses from Latin America to Canada. Grinding to even qualify for events on tours that feed pro golf’s elite levels, his life in pro sports has to this point been neither glamorous nor lucrative. It has, on the other hand, been richly illuminating.

A long day on the golf course? There are worse ways to spend your hours.

“Honestly, it makes your priority list pretty clear,” Ott said. “If I’m going to go sleep on a friend’s couch at a rental condo, without even being guaranteed a place in tournaments but just to play Monday qualifiers to get into tournaments, I think that just shows you how badly I want to be in tournaments and how badly I want to be successful at professional golf.”

"That’s another thing about college is you don’t understand how much Coach Limbaugh thinks about your development until you’re out of it. You don’t even realize how much he does for you.”

Harrison Ott

Surviving Golf’s Longest Day

More than 10,000 players entered U.S. Open local qualifying. Anyone may enter if they are amateurs with a Handicap Index of 0.4 or better or, like Ott, are professionals. Ott’s road started in early May alongside 84 competitors in the local qualifying site at the North Shore Country Club in Mequon, Wisconsin, his home state.

Nothing comes easy in qualifying, but Ott shot a round of 70 and squeaked through among five advancing golfers.

He had always planned to try and qualify for the Knoxville Open later in May, but the Korn Ferry Tour stop took on added significance as a preparatory tool for Golf’s Longest Day. While he ultimately missed the cut in Knoxville, qualifying for the main event and playing competitive rounds on a firm course reminiscent of his Vanderbilt days helped tune his game for Columbus, mentally and physically.

“Knoxville was huge for me, recalibrating my thinking to ‘Oh you can’t just shoot at the pin, you’re not trying to birdie every hole,’” Ott said. “I give a lot of the credit for getting through sectionals to going and playing in the Knoxville Open. It prepared me for a tougher challenge that would take a lot of patience.”

Two years ago, Ott came within a stroke of a playoff for the final U.S. Open qualifying spot. But a year ago, even as he watched fellow Vanderbilt alumnus Luke List attack the course and come within a stroke of qualifying, he couldn’t shake his own conservatism. He was waiting for birdies to come to him, unwilling to risk mistakes in search of them. He was playing to be average. He finished nine shots off the qualifying line.

Sometimes, patience is sticking to a plan. Ott committed to playing on the front foot this time around. Sure enough, he shot an opening round 67, second-best in the field. After, as he put it, scarfing down a pound of chicken and tuna salad, a couple of cartons of Greek yogurt, some watermelon and coffee in the roughly 20 minutes between rounds, he made it to the tee with four minutes to spare and held his nerve in the second round.

“I made it a goal to play aggressive from the start of my two rounds in Columbus,” Ott said. “And then from there, when you’re four, five, six under, it’s the challenge of trying to stay aggressive. That’s where I sometimes struggle, and I’m very rarely going to play too aggressively when I’m six under—whereas there are players who definitely jeopardize losing strokes by playing too aggressively in those moments. So for me, it’s just being aware of that and continually trying to keep my foot on the gas.”

It’s an apt metaphor for someone whose golf life is decidedly not of the private jet variety.

Getting to Columbus

After completing his Vanderbilt career, Ott played two years on the PGA Tour Canada, a developmental tour that fed the Korn Ferry Tour, which in turn feeds the PGA Tour. He then spent the 2024 season playing PGA Tour Americas events across Latin and North America when that circuit emerged from a reorganization of golf’s minor leagues.

This year, he’s competed mostly on the so-called mini-tours, specifically the GProTour with its bevy of East Coast events within driving range for him.

Along the way, he guesses he’s logged close to 50,000 miles behind the wheel or riding shotgun, splitting driving duties and gas expenses with friends on the same journey. He’s slept in basements, crammed more than the recommended number of people into hotel rooms and eaten plenty of fast food. Once, he booked an AirBNB for an event in the wilds of northern Minnesota. It turned out to be a doublewide trailer. They shrugged and stayed.

“I don’t think it is fun in some of those moments,” Ott allowed, “But looking back on it, and if you have the right attitude, I think it’s pretty fun. There’s a lot that goes into it.”

When Thomas F. Roush, M.D., and Family Men’s Golf Head Coach Scott Limbaugh jokes that his Vanderbilt charges don’t know how good they have it, Ott can only nod his head. He’s been there.

“I would complain about the greens at a course that’s now a PGA Tour stop,” Ott said with a laugh about his outlook in college. “Maybe they weren’t the best greens we played all year, but they’d be some of the best greens that I play all year at the level I’m at now. You have no idea how fortunate you are when you’re in college.

“Even the lunch buffets we had, that’s definitely not a thing for me out here.”

The food is far from the only thing he misses, or the only way that his time at Vanderbilt prepared him to chase his dreams across a continent and all the way to Oakmont.

Along with his dad, who introduced him to the game, and the swing coach he’s had for most of his golfing life, Limbaugh remains among his most important mentors. He’s the one Ott consulted after the stop in Knoxville, Limbaugh helping him talk through his approach.

He doesn’t even have to be in the room to exert influence. When Ott was a sophomore, Limbaugh went through a putting drill with him after every round of every tournament for the final couple of months of the season. Tournament days are long days. The coach could have gone home to his family. But he stayed and worked with a student-athlete who wasn’t yet a star. Once he was on his own, Ott fell out of the habit of doing the drill—it’s easier when working in tandem with someone. He forced himself to start again last fall, soon wondering why he ever stopped.

Sure enough, while famous names like Rickie Fowler and Max Homa came up just short in qualifying in Columbus, Ott’s concentration and reads on the greens never failed.

“I try to give him and the team space—his job is to make the team good, it’s not make the alumni successful professional golfers,” Ott said. “But I just try to soak up the time I have with him and be intentional with the questions I ask him. That’s another thing about college is you don’t understand how much Coach Limbaugh thinks about your development until you’re out of it. You don’t even realize how much he does for you.”

The U.S. Open Awaits

Even after the heartbreak of coming so close to qualifying two years ago, Ott watched the U.S. Open. He’s watched the majors his whole life. Watching others live a dream almost within your grasp might seem painful. He finds it inspiring. Two years ago, Lucas Glover was among the golfers who finished one shot ahead of him in qualifying, a former U.S. Open winner still grinding. Glover ultimately missed the Open in a painful playoff, but he went on to have the summer of his life—or at least his late career—piling up top-10 finishes.

In Ott’s mind, as long as he’s willing to tee it up, that could be him.

“That part is cool to me,” Ott said. “The idea of that guy beat me by a shot and then almost made the Ryder Cup. That’s pretty dang cool.”

It’s what makes the long days worth it.

All the more when they land you a tee time in the 125th U.S. Open.