Northbrook’s Nick Hardy has had better seasons as a golf touring pro. The former Illinois star was a PGA Tour regular and even won a tournament – the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event in 2023 – but he’s struggled this season on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Hardy, 30, survived the 36-hole cut in four of his six starts but his best finish was only a tie for 36th on the PGA’s alternate circuit, but good days may be returning. On Monday he qualified for the U.S. Open for the the fifth time thanks a tie for third in the final qualifier played at Springfield Country Club in Ohio.
Five berths in the 156-man finals at New York’s Shinnecock Hills in two weeks were on the line at Springfield. Hardy used that course as a road to his previous Opens and made a big splash in the tournament proper with a tie for 14th in 2022 at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.
Hardy survived “Golf’s Longest Day’’ – when 10 final qualifiers are staged around the country — for the first time in 2015. This time he shot 65-68 to share third with PGA Tour veteran Billy Horschel and Northwestern alum Dylan Wu in the 36-hole competition. They were are 7-under-par 133. Neal Shipley, from Pittsburgh, and Zac Blair, of Orem, Utah, matched the day’s low scores at 8-under 132.
There were only nine Illinois-connected players in Monday’s final qualifiers. Other than Hardy and Wu, only Andy Svoboda, the recently-crowned Illinois PGA Match Play champion, came close to surviving. He was the second alternate in the elimination at Purchase, N.Y.
This year’s Open had 10,201 entries, one shy of the tournament record set in 2025. Most had to survive 108 local qualifiers — 18-hole eliminations held between April 20 and May 18 — to compete on Monday. Entrants had to either be professionals or have a handicap index that didn’t exceed 0.4 to enter the U.S. Open.
ILLINOIS PGA: Vince India, a long-time Korn Ferry Tour member now working at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, won the Section’s Assistants Championship at Bryn Mawr, in Lincolnwood. He tied the course record with an opening round 10-under-par 62 and finished the 36-hole competition at 18-under 126.
“It’s nice to play competitive golf,’’ said India, a two-time winner of the Illinois Open. “The less golf I play, the more I appreciate it, and the more fun I have. It was nice to play good golf for the first time in a long time.’’
India held off Briarwood’s Matthew Rion for the title with Conway Farm’s Crimson Callahan holding off defending champion Kyle Donovan, of Oak Park, in a playoff for the third and final berth in November’s PGA Professional Assistants Championship in Florida.
ILLINOIS WOMEN’S AMATEUR: Gracie Piar, of East Alton, won the 93rd annual championship by beating Naperville’s Lisa Copeland, an incoming freshman at University of Illinois, in a three-hole playoff at Elgin Country Club.
Piar, who played collegiately at California State Northridge, was an Illinois high school champion in 2021. Her win qualified Piar for the U.S. Women’s Amateur at The Honors Course in Tennessee in August, and she plans to turn pro in September at the LPGA Qualifying School.
U.S. WOMEN’S OPEN: Addie Dobson was the only Illinois qualifier for last week’s U.S. Women’s Open. A resident of downstate Jacksonville and a senior at the University of Missouri, she missed the cut at Riviera in California.