Peter Williams: Batty makes Costner film come alive

Here's an idea of just how high a hurdle Doug Batty jumped this week to make the US Open. There were 9086 entries for the tournament. Only 63 were exempt from qualifying.

The majority of the Tin Cup wannabes - lower ranked professionals and amateurs - started, and mostly finished, their US Open dreams in one of the 112 local tournaments. On May 19 Doug Batty, a battler about as far down the golfing food chain as it's possible to be, a touring pro without a tour , shot 69 at some place called Industry City Golf Club in California. He advanced to sectional qualifying this past Monday.

The sectional fields also include hundreds of PGA and Nationwide Tour players who didn't make one of the USGA's 17 Open exempt categories. Some of them were pretty damn good. Like Davis Love III, ranked number 45 in the world, and who had a chance to beat Tiger Woods at Jack Nicklaus' Memorial tournament last week. Or Lee Janzen, twice a US Open champion, most recently in 1998 and now for the first time outside the 10 exempt years that victory gave him.

In all there were 767 players teeing it up at 13 sectional tournaments around America last Monday, the number qualifying from each one dependent on the size and quality of the particular field. In Columbus, Ohio, there were 17 places available to 120 players. That's where Love shot rounds of 68 and 69, and still missed out by two shots. Janzen returned 68-72 and was even further back.

But in Somis, California, Batty, who seems to have last played a serious tournament in August 2008, when he won $1450 for 33rd equal in the Montreal Open, was in a sectional field of 80. There were four places in the US Open available and you'd have to think a PGA Tour winner like Duffy Waldorf would have a better chance than a 29-year-old no name from Whangarei. Batty's chances improved slightly when ageless superstar Fred Couples withdrew, but the one time Auckland Grammar boy was, to say the least, a face in the crowd.

However Kevin Costner's famous movie wasn't all fiction. Batty, with no reputation and no form, shot 74 in the morning to find 22 players in front of him at the halfway point. He probably thought his US Open dream had just died. But most of those who shot low in the morning collapsed in the afternoon. Batty scored 70 and raced up the leaderboard to tie for second place. PGA Tour player Charlie Wi won comfortably, so Batty had to play off with three guys called Nathan Tyler, Michael Miles and Scott Lewis. With only three to go to Bethpage, Lewis missed out.

So there'll be three Kiwis at the notoriously tough course on Long Island on Friday. David Smail, fresh from another top five finish in Japan, should do best. Michael Campbell will just be aiming for respectability. But of Doug Batty, we need have no expectation whatsoever. In recent times, he's garnered a reputation for some erudite and perceptive magazine writing about life in pro golf's Struggle Street. He's just played his way to the story of lifetime.