I was just watching The Greatest Game Ever Played, and there’s a line in it about the protagonist, who is an amateur, not being eligible for any prize money at the US Open. Only the professionals will get prize money. Is this true?
If so, when did that change? I’m sure that anyone who gets into the US Open at this point is equally eligible for the prize.
Amateurs can play in just about any pro tournament and just not get any prize money. If an amateur finishes first, the pro with the best score gets the first place money.
The US Open usually has a couple amateurs in it each year as does The Masters. They will have an “a-” before them in the scoring.
Seriously? Even now? Like, I could be so awesome that I climb up through however many layers of qualifiers there are, beat the 100+ pros, and get $0 for the whole thing? Wow.
Sure you could. And you can also declare any time you want “I’m no longer an amateur, bring on the paycheck!”
So why wouldn’t everyone do this?
A variety of reasons, probably the most popular is that to professionally win even a single dollar at a sport means you’re permanently barred from competing in any NCAA events ever again.
Now, it’s (relatively) easy to justify that when your paycheck’s in the millions but are you willing to forgoe your college competitions and scholarships over a $10,000 paycheck?
Amateurs were gentlemen. Pros were, ugh, professionals. You know, working men. They didn’t used to let the pros in the club house. Golfers like the showboating Walter Hagen had to break down a lot of barriers for professionals. He had a limo to change his shoes in at one of the British Opens, just to embarass the club.
ETA - some golfers, notably Bobby Jones, remained amateurs throughout a long career that anybody else would call a “professional career”. That’s why amateurs have a special place at the Masters’, which is Jones’ tournament. The guy who wins the National Amateur gets an automatic invite and a neat room in the clubhouse to stay in.
Not quite true. You have to declare at the time of your entry into the Open whether you are competing as an amateur or a professional. So you can’t enter as an amateur and then change your mind on Sunday of the last round. 
Which I believe is the attic tower, called the Crow’s Nest, where all the amateurs stay during the Masters.
I hear it’s not at all palatial, but of course a great honor.
For some reason I’m thinking lodging in the Crow’s Nest is available to 1st time Master’s competitors - perhaps in addition to amateurs. But I may well be mistaken.
Most amateur and other non professional tournament participants get to play by way of a sponsor’s exemption. That is how Michelle Wie has played in the men’s tournaments. Amateurs can’t play in the qualifying schools, those are for non qualified pros only. Also, as with many other sports, being an amateur does not mean you don’t get “paid”. Many of the better amateur golfers can earn a quite nice living through sponsorships and “working” for these companies.
It is for first time amateurs. See here.
Bobby Jones won the “Grand Slam” in 1930, which at the time was the US Open, the Open, the US amateur championship and the UK amateur championship. Nowadays the US PGA and Masters have replaced the latter 2 as grand slam events.
I assume the PGA is not open to amateurs? In other words, is it not at all possible (except through maybe a sponsor’s exemption) for an amateur to win the modern Grand Slam?
The Wikipedia page on the US Open seems to suggest that anyone not already invited can qualify through a series of qualifying tournaments. I thought that the fact that anyone could compete is what makes it “Open”. Do you have a cite otherwise?
This is fascinating to me. I guess I always assumed that “professional” and “gets paid for it” were pretty much synonymous.
Correct. The PGA is open to professionals only, the only one of the four majors that is like that.
The answer to this is yes. The U.S. Open holds out 50 or so spots to players not already qualified, and those spots are filled through a series of qualifiers. An amatuer could make it through local and sectional qualifiers and make the field, win the tournament and get 0 dollars for winning. Johnny Godman was the last amatuer to win the U.S. Open in 1933, although Jack Niclaus finished second in 1960.
In 1985, Scott Verplank, then a student at Oklahoma State, beat Jim Thorpe in a playoff at the Western Open. Verplank won the trophy but first place prize money of $90,000 went to Thorpe.
The US Open is not a PGA sponsored event, it is an USGA event and has different rules for participants. I assumed your previous post was about regular PGA events, sorry.
The difference is how they are paid. The pros get paid on how well they do in the tournament, amateurs get paid by being an “employee” of the companies that make golf equipment and other golf sponsors, by giving golf lessons, and by public appearances.
And, in the old days, if you made any money from playing sports (including endorsements), you were considered a pro. Francis Ouimet was declard a pro and ineligible for amateur tournaments because he opened a store selling golf equipment (the USGA later relented).
Other amateur sports were similarly anal about who could play. The Olympics took away Jim Thorpe’s gold medals for taking $15 a game playing baseball ($15 had much more buying power back then, but it still wasn’t a ton of money).
Tennis used to have a very strong amateur structure. Most events were open to amateurs only, until the US Open broke that taboo in 1968 (before that, it was the US Amateur Tennis Tournament).
The US Open may have broken its own taboo in 1968, but it was not the first event or even Grand Slam event to open its doors to professionals. Roland Garros (the French) was the first Grand Slam event that permitted professionals, followed by Wimbledon.