On Monday, 713 pros and Joes will embark on a quest to qualify for the 2026 U.S. Open. Unfortunately for six PGA Tour Americas players, “Golf’s Longest Day” was a very short one this year.
As Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine reports, on Sunday night seven PGA Tour Americas players—including Luis Gagne, the co-low amateur at the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock—boarded a flight bound from Mexico City to Miami. After completing their finals rounds at the Mexico Championship on Sunday, they hoped to tee it up at BallenIsles Country Club on Monday morning with a U.S. Open berth hanging in the balance. Unfortunately, a sick passenger on their flight had other plans.
Gagne was a rising senior at LSU at the time, and he’d go on to win four times in college, the same as former Tigers teammate Sam Burns, and turned pro in 2019.
Let’s start by saying that a U.S. Open Qualifier should take a back seat compared to genuine medical emergency and we hope that the sick passenger is doing well. Still, it’s an extremely tough break for the contingent of lower-tour pros who all happened to find themselves on the same flight on Sunday.
After rerouting to Veracruz, deplaning and re-boarding a different flight, the group took off for Miami around 2 a.m. CT. They touched down at their destination at 6:45 a.m. ET but unfortunately only Chris Nido—who had the last tee time off in the morning and was forced to play a friend’s clubs after leaving his behind in Mexico—made it in time.
Clearly, this is not the sort of story you want to kick off Golf’s Longest Day with, but it is an inevitable one. Somewhere someone was going to draw life’s short straw today, and unfortunately it happened to be seven guys who are battling every week to make the big show. The good news is that there’s always next year, but something tells us this crew will be booking MUCH earlier flights come GLD 2027.