Landry's roots helped him be successful at U.S. Open

OAKMONT, Pa. – Imagine the group that would have gathered at The Patch Golf Club for the final round of this year’s U.S. Open. If that little course in southeast Texas were still open today, there’s no doubt that its passionate regulars would have congregated around the television to watch the local boy chase his dream in his national championship.

Andrew Landry grew up four houses down from The Patch, a nine-hole course in the blue-collar town of Groves, Texas. Your golf ball had to traverse no more than 6,300 yards to cover two trips around The Patch, which occupied about 50 acres of flat land where peas used to grow. The rectangular piece of property was bordered by streets on two sides and drainage ditches on the other two. There were only a few trees that players had to avoid on the property.

“As long as you hit it to the right, you could find your ball,” said PGA TOUR player Chris Stroud, who also played The Patch as a boy. A player’s ball was flirting with the course’s perimeter if it sailed left of its target.

The Patch’s main defense was its small, turtleback greens that got crispy from baking in the hot Texas sun.

It definitely wasn’t the typical training ground for PGA TOUR players, but it offered benefits that couldn’t be replicated at an opulent country club. Players had to prepare for imperfect lies, especially if they missed the fairway, so they had to be tough. Whiners weren’t going to last long out there. The bare dirt lies demanded that they learn to strike the ball cleanly. The tiny greens demanded a deft wedge game. And, if a player was seeking competition, the course’s weekly Tuesday game was a good place to find it.

“A lot of guys would show up to that golf course thinking they could bulldoze it over,” said Web.com Tour player Michael Arnaud, who grew up in nearby Orange, Texas, and is friends with Landry. “They would leave there shooting 4 or 5 over and shaking their head, not knowing what happened.”

The Patch, which closed a couple years ago to make room for a housing development, would never be confused with Oakmont Country Club, one of the United States’ historic courses, but the little layout taught Landry lessons that took him to the final group of last week’s U.S. Open. The final scoreboard shows that he finished 15th at Oakmont, but that doesn’t do justice to his role in the proceedings. The world’s 624th-ranked player fought his way into Sunday’s final group, giving the U.S. Open its Cinderella storyline.

“Walking down 18, I was like, ‘Man, I wish I could just take a picture of this,’ because it’s the coolest view from a player,” Landry said. “It was pretty awesome to watch, to be there first-hand and be in the moment.”

Landry, 28, had played only 12 PGA TOUR events before the U.S. Open, but the rookie started his first major by breaking a record owned by two World Golf Hall of Famers. His first-round 66 was the lowest opening-round score in a U.S. Open at Oakmont, breaking the mark set by Gary Player (1973) and Ben Hogan (1953).

The deluge that hit Oakmont last Thursday required Landry to finish his historic round at 7:30 a.m. Friday. He had to return to early in the morning to hit just one shot, a 10-foot birdie putt at the ninth hole. The early start meant there were few to see him make history. He’s used to toiling in anonymity, though. When a reporter asked if he had ever received such sparse applause after making birdie on his last hole, he replied, “Yes, many times. It’s called the mini-tours.”

Those minor leagues are where Landry had spent the majority of his pro career. He turned pro in 2009 after an All-American career at Arkansas, but didn’t play his first Web.com Tour season until last year. Just a few years ago, Landry was competing in something called the Silsbee Invitational the same week as the U.S. Open. Held on a nine-hole course in small-town Texas, the tournament is part of what’s known as the BBQ Circuit. First place was $3,000.

As he stood in Oakmont's historic locker room Sunday evening, he recalled quitting Q-School one year, overcome by frustration and questioning if he'd achieve his dreams. "There were multiple times I wanted to hang it up," he said.

Landry had just one top-10 in 23 starts on the Web.com Tour in 2015, but it was a victory, and so it was enough for him to graduate to the PGA TOUR.

Landry’s road to the U.S. Open almost ended at the tournament’s first qualifying stage. According to the USGA, he showed up to Duke University Golf Club wearing metal spikes. They’re allowed on the TOUR but not at that qualifier. An official helped him change to plastic cleats moments before his tee time. He would have been disqualified if he’d teed off in metal spikes.

Landry had to hole a 40-foot putt on the qualifier’s final hole just to advance to sectional qualifying. He was outside the top 200 in the FedExCup when he qualified in Memphis for the U.S. Open -- and had never finished better than 41st in a TOUR event -- but was already confident about his chances.

Landry had heard from his swing coach, Chuck Cook, that a U.S. Open at Oakmont is about as tough as they come. Cook should know. He coached Payne Stewart, Tom Kite and Corey Pavin to U.S. Open victories. Landry was excited to face Oakmont’s challenges. The tougher, the better.

“I like a golf course where par is a good score. I’m not a birdie guy, I’m not going to overpower golf courses,” Landry said that Monday in Memphis. “No one is going to make a bunch of birdies and I feel like my game is so straight that I can hit it in tighter fairways and squeeze it into tighter places.”

It sounded like naïve optimism at the time, but turned out to be prophetic.

At the University of Arkansas, Landry was known for keeping his scores around par. Tough golf courses were a perfect fit because they made pars more valuable.

“He shot 71 or 70 so much that we’d say, ‘You just need to play in the U.S. Open every week,” said Brad McMakin, the school’s golf coach.

Those who know Landry weren’t shocked by his U.S. Open success. Yes, his resume was shorter than his peers’ but his laser-like driving – he ranks 11th in strokes gained: off-the-tee – and gritty demeanor are well-suited for the tournament’s challenges.

He made the most of his opportunity. He was the biggest surprise in a U.S. Open’s final group since Jason Gore, then a Web.com Tour player, joined Retief Goosen in the last pairing at Pinehurst in 2005. Or, if fictional characters are eligible for consideration, since Roy McAvoy. Yes, McAvoy was a driving range pro while Landry possessed a PGA TOUR card, but both developed their games on dusty Texas tracks and rose out of modest means to contend at the U.S. Open.

Landry is the son of a FedEx driver and teacher. His parents cut lawns to help finance his pro career, taking on extra work so that he didn’t have to.

“They sacrificed a lot for me,” he said.

McAvoy financed his U.S. Open run by sporting the logos of Rio Grande Short-Haul Trucking, Briggs and Brown Sanitation, First State Bank of Salome and Woody’s Smokehouse. Landry added a new sponsor just for the U.S. Open. He signed an endorsement deal with Moonshine Sweet Tea the evening after the first round, when he was a few hours from posting his record-breaking score. The logo appeared on his right sleeve Saturday morning. The deal was only for U.S. Open week, but may be extended because of its initial success.

Landry’s older brother, Adam, played youth baseball and high-school golf with Stroud, who is in his 10th PGA TOUR season. They all attended Port Neches-Groves High School in a region of Texas known as the Golden Triangle. Not far from the Gulf of Mexico, it’s a blue-collar area full of folks who work in the refineries.

“It’s like any typical place in small-town Texas. We have Whataburgers and we have Dairy Queens and we love Friday-night football,” Arnaud said. “We take pride that we come from a smaller area. I think it gives us a lot more determination to go out there and succeed.”

Landry’s parents helped instill that work ethic, as did the adults at The Pea Patch. They didn’t like losing to the teenaged Landry brothers, which happened often, but also took the boys under their wings.

“The people there are what made that place,” Adam Landry said. “They instilled a lot of morals and values and work ethic into us. A lot of the older guys, they wouldn’t let us play in their games until we hit so many buckets of balls. We played against those guys as kids growing up. They were going to do anything in their power to kind of get in your head, to challenge you. That’s where (Andrew) got a lot of his tunnel vision growing up.

“(The Patch) was a little rough around the edges but we appreciated it, we respected it, we loved it and we took care of it like it was our own.”

Landry followed in Stroud’s footsteps to Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. McMakin developed a reputation there for taking rosters of overlooked players and turning them into nationally-competitive teams. Landry was only about 120 pounds when he entered college. McMakin didn’t mind. He looked for tough players who fought to save every stroke, figuring they’d get stronger as they matured and spent time in the gym. Landry still stands only 5-foot-7 and weighs approximately 160 pounds. He makes up for it, though.

“Andrew has a lot of fight in him,” Stroud said.

He squared off against the world’s best players at Oakmont. He didn’t win, but he proved that a small-town kid from a scraggly public course in Texas can hold his own.