Qualifying for the major tournament is every amateur golfer’s dream. After a mistake cost him last year, a delivery man didn’t give up.
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Nick Barrett spends most weekdays zipping across Howard County, Maryland, alone in a brown UPS truck. He’s usually as reliable as they come, but last June, a golf dream ended because one delivery never reached its destination: the scorecard in his back pocket.
On Monday, the 32-year-old amateur golfer gets another chance.
Barrett is a new father with a 6-month-old son at home. When his UPS shift ends most days around 6:30 p.m., there’s usually not enough time or daylight for serious practice. He mostly plays on weekends now.
“It’s just not a super-high priority in terms of trying to carve out practice time,” he said. “By the time I get home, it’s damn near dark anyway.”
But after advancing through local qualifying again, Barrett will return to Woodmont Country Club in Rockville with a chance to chase the U.S. Open dream that ended in heartbreak and frustration a year ago.
There are not many sports where this kind of thing is even possible. Barrett cannot drive his UPS truck to an NFL combine and earn a roster spot for the Baltimore Ravens, and he cannot show up at Wimbledon with a racket bag and a dream.
But the U.S. Open, for all its prestige and punishment, still leaves a side door cracked open. Every spring, amateurs, club pros, college players and various dreamers enter local qualifying, hoping to survive 18 holes and reach final qualifying — 36 holes in one day, the annual marathon known as Golf’s Longest Day.
If things break the right way for Barrett on Monday, the U.S. Open field at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club next week in New York will feature Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and a Maryland delivery driver who never even played in college.
“I definitely go into it thinking that I can make the U.S. Open,” Barrett said in an interview. “Realistically, I don’t think I’m going to have too many more chances to really make a shot at this. I think I would be disappointed in myself looking back on these years if I didn’t think that I actually had a chance.”
That belief is not just wishful thinking. Barrett has been close enough to know what the opportunity looks like — and close enough to know how quickly it can disappear.
Barrett shot 73 in the first round of final qualifying last year at Woodmont, making birdie on his last hole, and still had another 18 holes to find out what was possible. He sat down for a quick bite between rounds with family and friends, and when he stood up from lunch, he patted his back pocket and felt the scorecard.
“As soon as I did that,” Barrett said, “my heart went straight to the bottom of my stomach.”
The card should have been signed and submitted immediately after his round. Barrett raced to the scoring area, but about 20 minutes had already passed. His playing partners had signed their cards. Another group had already come through. Barrett was disqualified, his score — his dream — wiped away.
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Friends and family tried to console him, but Barrett knew the rule and knew he had made a mistake. He also knew he had to somehow get over it.
“I’m not going to sit here and let it eat away at me forever,” he said. “That’s not healthy. So just one step in front of the other.”
By day, those steps come in and out of his delivery truck. Barrett has generated a bit of attention, both because of last year’s scorecard gaffe and because of his day job. During a recent Golf Channel interview, he appeared between deliveries, sitting behind the steering wheel and wearing the company’s familiar brown uniform. Asked about the strengths of his game, Barrett answered earnestly.
“Definitely driving,” he said, without a smile or any acknowledgement of the irony.
Barrett long ago made peace with golf being something other than a career. After high school, he spent time in South Florida playing a minor-league tour, shooting mid-to-high 70s and realizing how far he was from making golf a full-time occupation. He returned to Maryland and worked as a lower-level project manager for a software company but did not like sitting at a desk all day. He remembered working as a seasonal UPS helper in high school and thought the job might offer something closer to the life he wanted.
Seven years later, he still likes the solitude and movement of the work.
“I love being out here every day,” Barrett said from his truck during a recent interview. “It’s just me and the open road. There’s something about that.”
The job and young family leave little time for a sport that does not typically reward neglect. But Barrett has come to believe there may be a small psychological benefit in playing without the burden of constant preparation.
“Since I don’t have the ability to practice so much, I don’t let that expectation set in,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of distraction. Every time that I go out on the golf course now, I don’t want to say that I’m 100 percent freed up, but I don’t have any expectation out there.”
Barrett knows the path is narrow. The field battling at Woodmont includes PGA Tour pros such as Michael Thorbjornsen, Luke List and Karl Vilips. But Barrett has a tee time and already knows that a 36-hole qualifier is a gantlet that requires talent, nerve, conditioning and patience — and leaves little room for mistakes.
Maybe he will go low on Monday. Or maybe it’s just not his day. No matter his score, Barrett knows how the round will end: He’ll walk to the scoring area and do the thing he has been waiting a year to do.
“Regardless of whether I make it through to the U.S. Open or not,” Barrett said, “I’m damn well signing that scorecard. And I can’t wait to do that.”
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