BATON ROUGE – Two former members of the LSU men’s golf team get the opportunity to take on what is being billed as one of the toughest tracts for the U.S. Open, Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont Pennsylvania.
Even on its website, Oakmont Country Club bills itself as “The ultimate examination of championship golf.” This examination over four pays will play to a length of 7,372 yards and a par of 70.
Tackling the grounds will be former Tiger and PGA Tour star Sam Burns and returning for his second Open appearance will be Philip Barbaree Jr., who went through the qualifying route to get his spot in the field.
A third former Tiger, John Peterson, the 2011 NCAA Champion, was listed as the third alternate for the Championship and was on the Oakmont grounds with hopes of getting a starting time on Thursday if enough players withdraw.
The 28-year-old Burns, from Shreveport, Louisiana is presently 29th on the Fed Ex Cup standings with three top 10s this year. He is coming into the Open in good form, with four top 15 finishes in his last six starts. He was second, losing in a four-hole playoff, last week in the RBC Canadian Open and was fifth in the Byron Nelson Classic. He has earned $3.5 million this season on the PGA Tour.
Burns has won six times on the PGA Tour, the last in 2023 and this will be his seventh appearance in the U.S. Open with his best finish two years ago in 2024 at T9.
Burns won four tournaments in 15 collegiate starts at LSU during his sophomore season. He was named a first-team All-American and was the NCAA Division I Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year for the 2016–17 season. Burns represented the United States on the winning 2017 Arnold Palmer Cup team.
Barbaree, 26-years of age and also from Shreveport, has played six events this year and made four cuts on the PGA Tour Americas with his best finish in his last start of T3 in the Inter Rapidisimo Golf Championships in Bogota, Columbia. He shot 69-64 in the rain delayed West Palm Beach qualifier at Emerald Dunes Golf Club to earn co-medalist honors and his trip to Oakmont.
His wife, Chloe, whom he married in March, has been his caddy for over a year now and the site of the two together on the course has become standard. She will again be on the bag for the U.S. Open.
In 2015 Barbaree won the final match of the U.S. Junior Amateur, where he stormed back from 5 down with eight holes to play to win in 37 holes. He enrolled a semester early at LSU in Spring 2017, was teammates with Burns and turned pro a semester early, halfway through his fifth year, in November 2020. In between, he posted the fourth lowest scoring average in Tigers’ history along with eight top-5 finishes.
It was after his second season, he qualified for the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, where he missed the cut.
Barbaree will tee off Thursday at 7:57 a.m. CT, with Burns in the afternoon wave at 12:14 p.m. CT.
Live coverage of the U.S. Open on Thursday begins on USA Network at 5:30 a.m. CT until 4 p.m. when coverage will switch to Peacock until 7 p.m. CT. Friday, coverage begins on Peacock at 5:30 a.m. CT with NBC covering the tournament from Noon-6 p.m. with Peacock back from 6-7 p.m.
Weekend coverage will begin on USA Network and then move to NBC.