By Jon Levy - Staff Writer

June 24, 2010
-- Pebble Beach, Cal.

Known as the toughest, most grueling test in golf -- The U.S. Open -- eight of the 16 current and former Gateway Tour players to tee it up at Pebble Beach last week made the 36-hole cut, with Alum, Brandt Snedeker, leading the way at T8.

Without a doubt, if you watched the carnage that ensued with the world’s best players in the final round of the 110th playing of the United States’ national championship, it was easy to see how quickly the round could get away from them. Even par, after all, was the winning score, which the USGA always seems to set as their target.

Mission accomplished and point conceded for the USGA then, the mission was also accomplished for Sean O’Hair (T12), John Mallinger (T22), Robert Gates (T40), Chris Stroud (T47), Jason Allred (T47), Steve Wheatcroft (T63) and Steve Marino (T63), who joined Snedeker as the other seven players in the field with Gateway Tour ties to at least somewhat survive Pebble’s prowess and make it to the weekend.

Starting with Snedeker, his impressive final round of even par moved him up five spots to catch a share of the eighth position, worth $177,534, which comes as Snedeker’s third top-10 of the year and 19th of his career. Aided heavily by his T2 at the Farmers Insurance Open early in the year, Snedeker has now earned $955,780 this season and stands in 40th place in the FedEx Cup standings.

Ironically, Snedeker sits just one position ahead of fellow Alum, O’Hair, whose T12 finish was strangely the third T12 effort of his last four starts. Accomplishing the feat at the Memorial and HP Byron Nelson Championship, while mixing in a missed-cut at Colonial, O’Hair is showing signs of good, consistent play, though he’s still riding a T4 at the season-opening SBS Championship as his lone top-10 this season. Regardless, O’Hair’s $143,714 week at Pebble has helped him crack the $1 million mark ($1,135.759) for the sixth straight season on the PGA TOUR. Starting his career as TOUR Rookie of the Year in 2005, O’Hair has accrued over $13 million in PGA TOUR earnings since playing on The Gateway Tour.

Noting also the efforts of Mallinger, who has struggled so far this season, as his finish at Pebble comes as just his third made cut in 17 starts after three previous $1 million + seasons, Gates, the first-year Nationwide Tour player who made the cut in his first U.S. Open and who looks primed to earn his 2011 PGA TOUR card by sitting in fourth in THE 25, and Stroud, a fourth-year TOUR player who seems to keep building a nice career, with over $2.3 million in PGA TOUR earnings, perhaps the most noteworthy of the next four finishers on the list is Allred, who qualified for the Open as a former PGA TOUR and Nationwide Tour member who has had no status on either tour since 2008.
What’s more, Allred won The Gateway Tour’s Desert Winter Series No. 8 earlier this season to show how truly fine the line is between The Gateway Tour and the PGA TOUR. Playing a varied schedule this season, Allred is hoping to take his $23,385 Open effort on towards a quick comeback trail to the PGA TOUR.

Finally, noting the efforts of Wheatcroft and Marino, whose seasons heavily contrast to date (with Wheatcroft having earned just $275,650 from five of 15 cuts made and Marino having earned $1,193,994 from 11 of 15 cuts made and two top-10s), each player’s T63 at Pebble undoubtedly came a positive experience for both.

It was, after all, a U.S. Open being held at one of the most revered and elite venues in the world. So there just has to be something to be said for surviving four days of the USGA’s hardest test of golf. Congratulations, guys.


Click here for full field results of the 110th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, from majorchampionships.com…