Tour News (posted 10th June 1998)

1998 U.S. Open sectional qualifying

Zoeller, Sluman, and Beck among final qualifiers

Fuzzy Zoeller, the 1984 U.S. Open champion, and Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion, were among the final 25 qualifiers in today's sectional qualifying for this year's Open.

Zoeller and Sluman were among 19 players to advance from a sectional in Summit, N.J., while three others moved on from both St. Louis and Atlanta.

Eighty-nine qualifiers from 12 sites will join 67 exempt players at The Olympic Club in San Francisco for the opening round on June 18. Ernie Els of South Africa is the defending champion.

Zoeller had the best round of the day at Canoe Brook Country Club, a 6-under-par 66, and his 138 total was one stroke behind Lee Porter, whose parents live one mile from the course.

Sluman had two rounds of 71 and tied for fourth as he was forced to qualify after 10 consecutive Open appearances.

Perhaps the most surprising player to qualify was Chip Beck, who is mired in the longest slump of his professional career, having failed to make a cut in over a year. Beck, who had rounds of 72 and 70, missed making a playoff for the Open in 1989 by a stroke and finished second in The Masters in 1993. Beck, who last played in the Open in 1995, is one of two players to shoot a 59 in a PGA Tour event.

Other PGA Tour players to qualify at Summit, which is near Rye, N.Y., the site of this week's Buick Classic, were Frank Lickliter, Mike Brisky, D.A. Weibring, Bruce Zabriski, Clarence Rose and Gary Hallberg.

A playoff for three positions among seven players took 75 minutes before Gene Fieger, of Newtown Square, Pa., parred the seventh playoff hole to gain the final spot.

At Atlanta's Settindown Creek Golf Club, Phil Tataurangi rode a morning round of 5-under-par 67 to medalist honors with a 137 total. Seventeen-year-old amateur John Engler, from nearby Augusta, nearly became the youngest player in the Open field, but his double bogey on the second playoff hole relegated him to first alternate after he tied Rick Gehr at 143.

At Boone Valley Golf Club just outside St. Louis, Mark Wilson had a 3-under 139 total to take medalist honors.