[PThomas]

It surely cant be because of architectural greatness/maybe even goodness...cause they are using a course near my house apparently that is average at best

but i guess it works out for the course, cause then they get to advertise the fact that they are  "US Open qualifying site", which, to most people, i would guess, indicates a quality layout


**amendment  - I'm sure some/many? of the courses are quality layouts

[JMEvensky]

I can answer about the Sectional in Memphis.

For the most part,it's a question of availability.There's no site fee,so you need a club which is willing to give up its golf course for the greater good.You have to make the golf course available for practice rounds on the Saturday and Sunday before--always something which the membership adores.Your maintenance staff works extra hours for non-members--always something the Board adores.

Basically,you need a couple of members who can convince enough other people that it's the right thing to do.

As to advertising as a qualifying site--we don't,but I believe it does frequently happen.

[Mark Smolens]

I caddied in a local qualifier this year at Water's Edge in Worth, IL -- a public facility which would barely meet Paul's "averagage at best" standard. While they had the course in better condition than I'd ever seen it, I can't imagine that with the demographics of their clientele the ability to advertise as an "Open qualifying site" could possibly have had much value. My guess would be the the CDGA has a lot of difficulty locating courses willing to donate their facilities.

[TEPaul]

Generally, once the basic qualifying site regions are in place the USGA gets the local and regional golf associations of those regions to select the qualifying courses. With the GAP it really didn't have much to do with architectural quality, more like which course was the easiest to schedule. A few regions pretty much use the same course year after year. One of the scheduling problems used to be if the USGA assigned too many qualifiers to a particular region thereby essentially making it tough to get all the players through on qualifying day. I think there may've been times when two courses became necessary but I don't specifically remember that and I don't know how that worked out for the qualifiers. Another problem with scheduling courses that were too appealing is that tends to generate some additional bullshit qualifier applications who apparently just want to play the course. That just creates additional scheduling problems.

[Mark Smolens]

I had my buddy play in the local at Water's Edge because it's public, and he was therefore able to play practice rounds much easier than driving up to the NW burbs to play the private course Hawthorn Woods. Since he was on the golf team at the University of St. Andrews, and therefore played his "home course" in college over a thousand times -- yes, the Old Course was their "home course"  - the prospect of a round of country club golf doesn't have the same level of appeal that it would for me. 

In the Chicago District the great private clubs, and their members, are very generous at giving up their courses for a wide range of events during our relatively short golf season (Beverly will be hosting this year's Illinois Amateur, and Skokie has the Western Am on tap). While I wouldn't go so far as to fake my handicap in order to try to qualify on one of these great private clubs, I have taken full advantage of my meager skills when signing up for some of these events over the years when I was so eligible. . .

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