7 random dudes you can root for in the U.S. Open now that so many stars are out

Tiger Woods is out of the U.S. Open after 36 holes. So are Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day. A lot of the sport’s marquee names are non-factors this weekend.

Some of the names in contention are familiar to anyone with more than a glancing interest in the sport. Leader Dustin Johnson is the world No. 1. Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson are major champions. Rickie Fowler’s in the hunt for his first major title and an international celebrity. Yeah, it’s perfectly cool if any of those guys turns out to be your champion.

But why root for someone everyone has heard of when you could be a golf hipster and cape for someone most people have never heard of and might not remember a week from now? If you’re trying to be a connoisseur of random golf, these are your guys.

Piercy’s been around for a while and even won four PGA Tour events, so you’re forgiven if you think he’s too mainstream for inclusion here. But he’s a 39-year-old journeyman who turned pro all the way back in 2001 and shocked up at seven different U.S. Opens since 2008. Four times, he’s missed the cut. Another time, he tied for 51st.

But two years ago at Oakmont, he finished second to Dustin Johnson. He was the 25th-ranked player in the world then. He’s spent the last two years falling all the way to 181st now. So we’ve got a not-that-famous, kind of old guy who looks like he’s on the downside of his career. But now he’s doing a fine job taming Shinnecock Hills and contending again for the national championship, chasing the only guy who beat him in 2016? That’s fun.

He ended Friday at even par and plays with Johnson in the final tee time on Saturday.

This 31-year-old amateur is a firefighter from Massachusetts. He’s on leave from his department. He qualified for the Masters and this tournament by winning the U.S. Mid-Am in 2017. He didn’t make the cut at the Masters, but he did here. Soon he’ll likely return to working 24-hour firefighting shifts in Brockton, Mass. But for the moment, he’s a dude who woke up on Saturday eight shots back of the leader at Shinnecock Hills. What a life.

Can I interest you in a 23-year-old from Scotland who played his college golf at Western New Mexico State and is in his first U.S. Open? His chief golfing accomplishment so far, other than qualifying for the national championship via a New Jersey sectional, is that he was the player of the year in the Rocky Moutnain Athletic Conference in 2016.

He ended Friday 4 over, eight shots back of Johnson.

A couple of amateurs here.

Grimmer plays for Ohio State, where he just wrapped his junior season. He’s won a handful of amateur tournaments. The wildest thing about him is that he’s 21, you’ve probably never heard of him, and he’s somehow already playing in his second U.S. Open. He played his first one in 2014, when he was 17. He shot 17 over in two rounds and got cut, but who cares?

Gagne, a 5’9, 20-year old from Costa Rica who just finished his junior year at LSU, qualified in a Jupiter, Fla., sectional. He’s a business administration major and first-team All-SEC player, so he’s good, but he’s never been in anything like this position before. He’s competed in two U.S. Amateurs but never gotten past the quarterfinals. Now he’s got a legit shot at a top-10 finish in a U.S. Open. Reminder: He’s 20! And he’s 5’9!

Grimmer ended Friday nine shots off the lead, Gagne 11 shots off.

Maybe the most random guy who’s even in the vicinity of contention. DeMorat played at Eastern Florida State, where he was a junior college All-American. He transferred to Liberty in 2015 and posted some top-10s in the vaunted Big South Conference, but didn’t win any tournaments on an individual or team level. He missed the cut at the 2016 U.S. Amateur and qualified for Shinnecock out of nowhere by shooting a 141 at a sectional event in Maryland earlier in June. That was good enough for the last of four spots available there.

“I didn’t think this would happen, honestly,” he told SB Nation after he qualified. “This is my fourth time playing sectionals but I have only been kind of close one other time before...I haven’t won any big amateur tournaments or anything like that, no college tournaments.”

He turned 23 on Thursday and turned pro earlier this month, because why not? He went to bed Friday eight shots off the lead at the freaking U.S. Open.

The Aussie is another longtime Tour pro, but most of us normal people forgot he existed between 2007 and now. That’s when he led the U.S. Open going into the final round and was paired on Sunday at Oakmont with Tiger Woods, but triple-bogeyed the first hole and was well out of the competition by the time Angel Cabrera won in the evening.

Baddeley is 37 now. He was an amateur legend a long time ago but the game has changed and left him behind. He won the 2011 Northern Trust Open and 2016 Barbasol Championship, but for our purposes, he’s a dark horse. He ended Friday 10 back.