OAKMONT, Pa. — While all eyes are on the leaders on Saturday at the U.S. Open, some of the best stories come from the bottom of the leaderboard.
When inclement weather hit Oakmont on Friday evening, the second round was suspended with a handful of players left on the course. One was Phillip Barbaree Jr., who was sitting right on the cut line in the biggest tournament of his career to date.
He had to return early Saturday morning and on his 36th hole (the 9th hole), he faced a 5-footer to make the weekend. The video said it all, from the putt to the reaction.
Making the cut matters.
— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 14, 2025
Just ask the Barbarees ❤️ pic.twitter.com/VSQnLFIycS
“Probably a lot of pent-up emotion and stress from sleeping last night or not sleeping last night, just knowing that I pretty much had to come out and make par on one of the hardest holes on the course,” Barbaree said, “and then to actually do it, that’s what you practice for, that’s what you care about.”
If you don’t know who Phillip Barbaree Jr. is, you’re not alone. The 26-year-old pro is from Shreveport, La., and played at LSU, and this year has a card on the PGA Tour Americas. It’s a Tour that pays more in frequent-flyer points than cash, with tournaments in South America and Canada.
Barbaree has played in six events on the tour this season, with four made cuts and a high finish of T3 at the 36-hole Inter Rapidisimo Golf Championship in Bogota, Colombia. He has made $16,481.25.
He’s 0-for-5 in cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour and 0-for-2 in his only two starts on the PGA Tour, most recently the 2018 U.S. Open when he qualified at age 19.
Barbaree survived local and final qualifying to get to Oakmont, then after making the cut had to turn right back around Saturday morning to play the third round as a single at 9:12 a.m. (his wife, Chloe, is his caddie). He shot 75 and sits at T56.
But a 56th-place finish Sunday would make some $45,000, a massive check for a young pro who toils on a minor tour. And making the U.S. Open cut exempts him from the first stage of PGA Tour Q-school.
“Yeah, I mean, anytime you can skip a stage—Q-school is hard. Oakmont is hard, but Q-school as a whole might be harder,” Barbaree said. “Just to be able to skip a stage, it’s huge.”
But first things first, namely a Sunday tee time at the U.S. Open.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Young Pro Makes U.S. Open Cut Saturday Morning, Set Up for Career Payday.
