NSB's Austen Truslow beats tall odds, now faces more at this week's U.S. Open | KEN WILLIS

If Austen Truslow let odds weigh him down, it’s doubtful he’d be teeing it up this week at the U.S. Open in Los Angeles.

Sometimes, you have to stack up some desire against the heaviest obstacles.

“It’s been a dream of mine my whole life to play in the U.S. Open,” says the 29-year-old golfer, who’ll do just that, beginning Thursday at historic L.A. Country Club.

Currently ranked No. 3,681 in the official world golf rankings, but one of just 156 men in this week’s national championship, Truslow has already beaten back some tall math.

More than 10,000 golfers paid their $200 entry fee and competed in local U.S. Open qualifying this spring, and roughly 6% of them — 645 — advanced from 18-hole qualifiers to one of 10 final, 36-hole qualifiers last Monday. Those 645 were competing for just 42 U.S. Open spots not already secured by exempt players.

OPEN BOUND: Former Spruce Creek golfer Austen Truslow qualifies for next week's U.S. Open

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Truslow shot rounds of 66-69 at the par-70 Pine Tree Golf Club in Boynton Beach, where just the top three finishers would advance from a field of 52. He not only advanced, but finished first by two shots.

It was, Truslow said, the “ultimate Monday qualifier,” and he knows of such things. He’s spent many Mondays in recent years attempting to play his way into PGA and Korn Ferry Tour tournaments, which reserve a few spots for the dozens of fledgling pros who hope to get hot on the Monday of tournament week and earn a Thursday tee time.

“I’ve been playing well. Been shooting under par in all the qualifiers, but those qualifiers are difficult,” Truslow says. “Those Korn Ferry qualifiers, you generally have to shoot 7 under to get through. I’ve been shooting 3-unders and 4-unders, which are solid rounds but don’t get the job done.”

On this week’s entry list, like all others he gets onto, Truslow’s hometown will be listed as New Smyrna Beach, where he lived from the age of 6 months to 16 years, when he transferred from Spruce Creek High to Lake Mary Prep following the Hawks’ 2010 state championship in his sophomore year.

He currently lives in Tampa, from where he darts to Monday qualifiers, and sometimes it’s a long dart. Of the two PGA Tour events he’s made this season, one was the Hawaiian Open in January. Seems like a tough climb, but he makes it happily, considering a damaged left wrist seemed capable of derailing a career that, just three years ago on the Korn Ferry Tour, had a definite upward trajectory.

An eventual surgery in June of 2021 was followed by another a year later, after which he began feeling better and playing better.

Largely unrelated to his wrist issues is perhaps the thing Truslow is known for within the golf world.

“The guy who chips one-handed.”

“It started as a drill,” Truslow says of his right-hand-only technique, which he uses less these days than he did a few years ago.

He’ll likely need everything both hands can give him around the greens this week, given the thick greenside rough the USGA likes to drape around its championship greens.

Truslow spent the past week simulating Open conditions as much as possible while also using modern technology to get an early look at L.A. Country Club.

His original travel plans for this week involved a Monday qualifier in Kansas, for this week’s Korn Ferry tournament in Wichita.

“Glad I don’t have to go there,” he says. “That qualifier is brutal. “You usually have to shoot 8 under, at least.”

Truslow left the University of Virginia during his freshman year in 2013, turned pro and began playing the mini-tours and attempting Monday qualifiers while completing his college education at Rollins in Winter Park.

In the past few years, he played 20 Korn Ferry events before the wrist injury halted a decent run, and has also made seven PGA Tour tournaments, including the 2019 Puerto Rico Open, where he finished 10th.

While he says he’ll lean on those experiences as much as possible this week, he knows the U.S. Open is a different animal. Ben Hogan would explain that golf and tournament golf might as well be two different games. Major championship golf takes it to yet another atmosphere.

“I know for a fact I won’t be eating anything Thursday or Friday other than protein shakes,” Truslow says. “I don’t have the strongest stomach, and when I get nervous it’s hard to keep anything down.”

A small, and familiar, price to pay, he says.

“Nerves are a a part of it.”

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: U.S. Open: Austen Truslow beats one set of odds, faces more in L.A.