 The most remarkable part about Michael Quagliano's journey to his first U.S. Open this week at Torrey Pines in San Diego was how it almost didn't happen.
It was little more than a week ago, and the White Plains native was on the driving range at GlenArbor Golf Club in Bedford Hills when he got a call from the USGA.
After missing the sectional qualifier by a shot, he was offered a last-minute spot, not at nearby Purchase, but in Cardova, Tenn. Quagliano was torn. His back had tightened up the day before, and his father didn't think he could handle a plane ride followed by 36 grueling holes. Then Quagliano called his swing coach, GlenArbor teaching pro Dave Gagnon.
"I was driving up to a wedding, and he called and said, 'I've got a question for you. The USGA has a spot for me, but it's in Tennessee. Do you think I should go?' " Gagnon said. "I said, 'Are you kidding me? Of course you should go.' "
Three days and more than $1,000 in travel expenses later, Quagliano found himself in a sectional qualifier dominated by PGA Tour players. He shot 68 in the first round, 64 in the second.
As recently as a few months earlier, the Duke University senior couldn't make a full swing because of a back and rib injury, and his college golf career had been swept to the side as a result. Now he was on his way to his first major championship.
"I don't think it was completely out of nowhere, but it was something that I had been waiting for," Quagliano said at GlenArbor last week. "To qualify for an Open when you haven't been playing much, it was a breakthrough I had been hoping for for a couple of years."
No tournament indulges the dreams of golfers more than the U.S. Open, where players of all shapes and backgrounds emerge from obscurity to play alongside the best in the world.
There are always journeymen who make it into the field, and there is always a collection of fresh-faced amateurs. Quagliano might fall somewhere in between.
He is 21 and still has a year of college eligibility remaining. But he's also traveled an impressive distance just to get to this point.
"It's just a miracle," said Steve Quagliano, Michael's father. "It's a miracle not that he qualified, but that he is where is, that he was able to go to a golf course loaded with tour professionals and show he's physically and mentally prepared to go to the next level. The qualifying was less gratifying than that he was physically able to do it."
That a player who once wouldn't blink at hitting 600 balls in a practice session was now marveling at playing 36 pain-free holes speaks to the trials of the past two years.
After a standout career at Ardsley High, where he won the state golf championship in 2004, Quagliano continued on the same path at Duke the next two seasons. But during his junior year, he first experienced discomfort in his back, and it became so painful that it was not only affecting his swing, but it also prevented him from sleeping.
The months that followed were a succession of setbacks and doctor's visits. Quagliano missed most of his junior season, recovered enough last June to win the Westchester Amateur, but then was struck by the same condition last fall. At one point during a doctor's visit, his father asked if Michael needed to give up golf.
"We looked at Michael's face and you could tell that it was the first time it ever dawned on him that it could be that debilitating," Steve Quagliano said. "At that point he looked as if he was losing someone in the family, that it could be the end of life as he knew it."
Eventually doctors discovered two bone spurs along his spine and diagnosed a rib dysfunction, a condition that would continue to be aggravated by the awkward rotating motion of the golf swing. Quagliano was told he wouldn't have to quit golf, but would need months of therapy and exercise to build up his strength.
His senior season was the casualty. Quagliano was redshirted and he spent the next few months merely chipping and putting while his teammates played for hours on end. Even when he started making appearances on the golf course in March, the dramatic dip in his game was unavoidable.
"It was actually pretty depressing. I'd play nine holes with guys on the team and I'd remember thinking, 'Am I ever going to hit balls like I used to?' " Quagliano said. "And I'd kind of get funny looks from the guys on the team like, 'Is this how you're always going to hit it from now on?' "
He answered that question himself. Quagliano kept persisting with his therapy and exercise, and was able to build up his stamina on the course as a result. Nine holes became 18 holes. A hundred balls on the range became 200. When he returned home and played in a U.S. Open local qualifier, it was his second competitive round since September. Quagliano thought he played well, but he missed by a shot.
As far as he knew, the next tournament he was preparing for was his title defense in this week's Westchester Amateur. But then came the call from the USGA, followed by the frenetic dash down to Tennessee the following morning.
Quagliano hooked up with a tour caddie who had been looking for a job, but other than that, he spent most of the two days before the qualifier alone with his thoughts.
"I was just lucky that my friends and family were calling me wishing me luck because I'd get on the phone and say, 'I haven't talked to anyone for three hours, so it's good to talk to somebody,' " he said.
By last Monday evening, though, plenty of people were talking to him. In a sectional qualifier that featured PGA Tour winners such as Jeff Maggert, Olin Browne and Paul Goydos, Quagliano's two-round total of 11-under 132 was the day's second best score, and he was on his way to Torrey Pines. He received a packet of instructions about the Open. The veteran tour players on hand advised him to quickly arrange for his hotel room and his flight. Then came the phone calls, what felt like hundreds of them.
"At 10 o'clock that night he said, 'I can't talk to you on the phone. I haven't showered. I haven't eaten. I've got to eat something or I'm going to collapse,' " Steve Quagliano said.
Not that he was really complaining. Given the adventures of the past two years, the Open is something Quagliano intends to savor. He will prepare himself to play well, studying the course as well as the world-class players around him.
Golf is still the career he wants to pursue once he completes his eligibility at Duke next spring, so when he takes 10 minutes to ogle Tiger Woods hitting balls, he'll do so more as a student than as a fan.
The difference is Quagliano now knows how tenuous success can be.
"It's very difficult to play in majors," he said. "I think confidence is great, but I think you'd be foolish to think you're going to go out after college on tour and play in majors. It's going to be a tough road ahead so this could possibly be my first and last major. So I want to go out and have an awesome time."
By Sam Weinman
The Journal News • June 9, 2008
Reach Sam Weinman at sweinman@lohud.com and read his golf blog at golf.lohudblogs.com.
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July 3rd, 2008
