OAKMONT, Pa. — Imagine a five-foot putt, one shorter than the width of your outstretched arms. If you’re a professional golfer, you’ve got a roughly three-in-four chance of making it. The odds are very much in your favor.
Now imagine that putt is to make the cut at a major — in this case, the U.S. Open. Suddenly that five feet starts to look like five miles, doesn’t it?
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Philip Barbaree faced that exact challenge Saturday morning. The former Junior Amateur champion returned to the course early Saturday to finish out his rain-delayed second round. He needed to make par on his final hole to make the cut. No pressure.
With his wife Chloe caddying for him, with his entire career leading up to this very moment, Barbaree stepped up to the ball, gave it a tap, and watched it roll slightly uphill and true:
The moment of sheer joy, the exultation and embrace of Philip and Chloe, rocketed around social media with good reason. Even if you don’t know who the Barbarees are — and, let’s be honest, most golf fans don’t — you can see the joy on their faces, pride and relief and exultation all at once. It was a welcome antidote to all the seething, griping and club-tossing happening elsewhere on the course.
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Here’s how it came together.
Barbaree has spent most of the last half-decade trying to find his way in the merciless world of professional golf. The 2015 U.S. Junior Amateur champion — he won it two years after a guy named Scottie Scheffler — Barbaree has struggled since turning pro out of LSU in 2021. At one point, he went three years without making a cut on a national-level tour. He only qualified for this year’s U.S. Open through local and regional tournaments, but an opening-round 76 appeared to put his dreams of making the cut in jeopardy.
The less-than-desirable late-Friday tee time meant Barbaree would have a whole lot of time to think about how to attack the cut line. He posted a three-birdie, two-bogey round through the first 15 holes of Friday to get two strokes clear of the +7 cut line. The finish line was in sight.
But at Oakmont, nothing is ever easy. Barbaree bogeyed the par-4 7th, shrinking his margin of error to a single stroke. At that point, the heavens above Oakmont erupted, sending Barbaree and the other few golfers still on the course home for the night. He would have to return to Oakmont at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning, and he would be facing the two toughest holes on the course.
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On the par-3 8th, his tee shot reached the green, but 101 feet from the pin. With the greens more unpredictable after an inch of rain had fallen, Barbaree three-putted, eliminating all cushion. Now he would need to make a par on the par-4 ninth hole — the toughest hole on the course, one that had been playing to an average of 4.54 strokes on Friday — to extend his tournament.
His tee shot found the fairway, his second shot reached the green 32 feet from the pin, and his first putt stopped five feet, two inches short. He breathed deep, stepped up … and got it done.
“Knowing that I pretty much had to come out and make par on one of the hardest holes on the course,” Barbaree said after his round, “and then to actually do it, you know, that’s what you practice for, that’s what you dream about.”
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Then he turned to Chloe, who stood beside him smiling. “To be able to pull off a shot like that when it matters, and then with her on the bag,” he said, “is special.”
Chloe has been caddying for Philip for about a year. She doesn’t tote a full tour bag, and she doesn’t necessarily help him with the nuances of the course or club selection the way longtime caddies might.
“I always tell him I’m honored that he chooses me as his caddy because I know that’s a big role to fill,” she said, smiling. “I’m not pushy, you know. I don’t know all the facts, so I’m really there for moral support and encouragement.”
“I don’t like a lot of information out there. I’ll start thinking way too much, so if I start talking it through with the caddy then sometimes I just get it in my own head,” Philip explained with a laugh. “Just to have her there with me, just to provide some peace and comfort, it’s been really nice.”
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Professionally speaking, making the cut at the U.S. Open is a huge benefit to Barbaree’s career. He’ll cash a significant paycheck this week, and he’s proven he can hang with the game’s best; he’s several strokes ahead of major winners Cam Smith and Hideki Matsuyama after three rounds, and that’s not to mention all those who didn’t even make the cut. Beyond that, though, his performance this week exempts him from the first stage of Q School, giving him a leg up on obtaining his full PGA Tour card for the 2026 season.
“Oakmont’s hard, but Q-School as a whole might be harder,” Barbaree said. “Just to be able to skip a stage is huge.”
Also hard: sticking with your golf dreams. Barbaree conceded that he’s gone through some dark times as he’s chased his dream. “There were some down periods, absolutely,” he said, “multiple times where I’m thinking, Do I want to keep playing? Do I want to keep doing this? But I love golf so much that it’s just too hard to give up.”
Plus, as he noted with a smile, there are tougher jobs than pro golfer. “Oakmont is just barely harder than my experience as a busboy at my dad’s steakhouse,” he said. “In two short days I got sick, I cut my finger wide open, and it just wasn’t a whole lot of fun. So I knew I had to get back on the course.”
The decision has paid off nicely so far this week.
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