David Puig, the industrious golfer, will play three hard-won majors this year after qualifying for the US Open on Monday winning one of the qualifying phases. Puig, 22 years old, won with two brilliant rounds of 64 and 68 strokes, with 12 birdies and without a bogey, the division that was held at the Lake Merced golf club in Daly City (California). Also qualifying alongside him were the Mexican amateur Omar Morales, who, like Puig, already played in last year’s edition, and the Americans John Chin and Charles Reiter.
It will be the third major that the Fireballs golfer, the LIV Golf Tour team, plays in his career. after having done so in 2023 in the edition held at the Los Angeles Country Club, in which he was thirty-ninth, and in this year’s PGA, where he did not make the cut. In addition, he is guaranteed a place in the British Open this summer, a place he won by winning the Malaysia Open last February.
In Pinehurst, from June 13 to 16, he will coincide with two other players on the circuit supported by the Public Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), Jon Rahm and Eugenio López Chacarra, his teammate, who also entered the qualifiers. The only thing missing, except for the loss of one of those classified in the Dallas preview, Sergio García, who appears as the first reserve.
The victory will also give him one last opportunity to get the second Spanish place in the running for the Paris Olympic Games. if Adrián Otaegui, Nacho Elvira, Jorge Campillo or Pablo Larrazábal surpass him this week in the world ranking at the Scandinavian Open. The classification will be closed at the end of the big one in North Carolina. Chacarra will also have an option if he manages to finish in the top two at the US Open. Puig will now fly to Houston, where this week he will be playing the LIV Golf test starting Friday.
Two other Spaniards, both amateurs, played the last qualifiers that gave them a ticket for the great one with the most American flavor. Josele Ballester, like Puig and Rahm, a student at Arizona State University, was not far away. He finished eighth (69 and 68) three strokes away from the goal, while Josep María Serra, with +5 in Jupiter (Florida), did not agree either. Among the illustrious who passed the screen in the 10 fields that distributed places were Matt Kuchar, Dean Burmester, Mark Hubbard, Webb Simpson, Seamus Power and Cameron Davis.
