U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP 2026

June 19, 2026

Harry Higgs

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

Flash Interview

THE MODERATOR: Here we're with Harry Higgs, 2-under 68. A tale of two nines for you out there.

HARRY HIGGS: Yeah, shoot, I played pretty good on both nines. I really only hit a few bad shots. Maybe a few poor putts. Tough to tell. Bumpy poa in the afternoon. Definitely had some short ones that were immediately not going to go in the hole, so you don't really know what happened there. Could have been me; could have been the ground; could have been the wind. Who knows? Don't need to dwell on that.

Yeah, I had a great day. I felt pretty good going into it, and I hit a lot of good shots which allowed me to build momentum and be nice to myself. Sometimes when I start hitting bad shots, I'm not nice to myself, and I strip any momentum that I would ever have.

Yeah, I let the day build and build and build, and man, I felt like a rock star out there. I felt like I could do anything.

Unfortunately, you know, spent a few at the end, but I really wasn't that far off. Looking forward to trying to replicate that tomorrow.

THE MODERATOR: You do find yourself top 10 of a major championship. What's the mindset going into the weekend?

HARRY HIGGS: Yeah, I don't know that I've had enough time to wrap my head around that after the finish, but there's going to be maybe a quiet reflection on the drive home. Hopefully there's not a whole lot of traffic, which I'm sure there will be.

Do more of what I did today. Make the choice to be simply just, like, confident and believe in yourself no matter what happens. I need to do that in every aspect, every golf tournament. I don't know why it came. Maybe this is just so hard that I could shrug off all the bad things that happened to me a little easier, but man, for the first time in a while I truly thought that, like, yeah, I can do this.

This is Friday. Who knows? I'm sure it's going to be harder tomorrow, and I'm sure it's going to be even harder Sunday.

I haven't had that feeling in a while. I would love to recreate it over the next two days, and if I don't, I'm just going to try my damnedest and see what happens.

Q. When did you decide to start being kind to yourself, and can you give me an example of doing that on the golf course?

HARRY HIGGS: I was pretty nervous on the first, and I hit a good tee shot. I pulled an 8-iron off to the left. I mean, nervous, nervous. Then I hit probably a 45-footer about five feet past the hole, and now all of a sudden we've got a 5-footer that was, boy, breaking two feet, and you have to tap it. I holed that.

In that I allowed myself -- allowed myself is probably not the right way. I forced myself maybe, for lack of a better term, to, like, hey, man, pick a spot, hit it there. Like, this is just kind of -- this is all we can do here. Fortunately, it went in.

Golf is so dumb, and I'm not the best mentally at it, but I'd like to think that had it not gone in, I would have still been able to get to where I got to today mentally. Then I had a nice up-and-down on 2.

Really from the third hole on, I was, like, you know what, I can handle all this. This is fine. I'm going to walk with my shoulders back and my head held high, no matter what happens. I just kind of, like, every step just kept telling myself again, shoulders back, head up. Not going to whine and bitch and moan at every single thing if it doesn't go my way or I hit a poor shot. I'm not going to let myself degrade myself enough to where I feel small, insignificant, and I'm not trying to say that I'm certainly not significant, but I'd like to be a factor here.

Again, there's a lot of golf left, but I can be a -- I can just choose to be a factor. If the golf goes my way and the result goes my way, great, but I can choose to just, like, hey, you don't have to be a small, insignificant piece of the 156 that was playing here, even though I think I was 156 of 156.

I can be a part of this. I have done this before.

Yeah, long answer. I probably still need a little bit of time to reflect on all that, but I'm looking forward to trying to do it again tomorrow.

Q. A little bit of a weird follow-up. Can you walk us through why you showed up in shorts yesterday? Did you just forget?

HARRY HIGGS: Still wild how many people know this. Yeah, just 3:30 a.m. wake-up. 4:00 leaving the house. I normally set aside -- I haven't unpacked this week. That's the big one. The suitcase is still in the living room, so that's the first one.

But normally I set aside shorts and pants on Wednesday. You know, the short pile goes back into the suitcase. Yeah, just grabbed a pair of gray shorts instead of gray pants yesterday. I had a five-minute freak-out. Again, this is my fault.

Sorted it out. One of the Darrell Survey guys gave me his pants, which had I had to have worn for -- I was here for ten hours yesterday -- I would have 100% ripped them. They fit, but not that great. It would have been real funny trying to get a ball out of the hole and teeing it up.

God love my wife. I called her at 5:30 in the morning, and she quick got out, grabbed me a pair of pants. Shoot, grabbed me two just in case, trying to maybe make me look good. By about 6:15 before my 6:35 tee time I had my own pair of pants.

Just kind of told the same story. Maybe I should do stuff like that more often. Well, that is important, because they will not let me play, but this just -- it's really not that important. I'm not a robot. I'm going to make mistakes. That's a very rare one for me. I pride myself on being very prepared.

We've got an 8-month-old now, so all that's going out the window, and no one sleeps. Everybody is -- yeah, we're coming to terms with life as it is now. It certainly wasn't his fault either, but glad I got to play yesterday in pants and my own.

Q. Harry, can you shed light on the process for you Sunday playing on the Korn Ferry to not knowing if you're in this field and then when you got the call and knew that you were playing here?

HARRY HIGGS: I had a pretty good idea. There's a guy on Twitter that gave me, like, all the scenarios, so I knew exactly who I was rooting against pretty much all of Canada.

Yeah, Bud winning allowed -- I knew that there were, what -- I was fifth alternate on Sunday, and there were six spots available. Bud took one of those six, and then I would be the last guy in.

But I got a call. I finished, disregarded about five or six kids' autographs because I went and jumped right in the car and drove to the Amarillo airport to get on a flight to Dallas. Then I was supposed to land -- go from Dallas to La Guardia, landing at maybe just before midnight.

I was TBD whether or not I was going to drive all the way out here then or maybe get an airport hotel. That decision was made for me. The flight was delayed two hours and then canceled while we were in the air to Amarillo.

I landed, found out that I was not going to La Guardia, but I was going to Charlotte instead. Yeah, sitting on the flight for Charlotte I got a phone call as we were taxiing. You know, you're in, here's the info. I sat on the flight.

I hadn't had a cocktail in a while, but I did have a cocktail to celebrate that. Then basically registered and did a lot of stuff that they kind of ask for. Landed in Charlotte, slept for four hours, got up in the morning, and flew here. Then drove out. Speaking of the 8-month-old, made a stop at Target and Whole Foods for formula and diapers.

I got out here at about 4:00 and hit a few putts and then went back and went to sleep, yeah.

Q. I'm wondering, you said you were hoping to choose to be confident.

HARRY HIGGS: Yeah.

Q. Is that something that you can choose?

HARRY HIGGS: For the rest of this week I'm going to say yes. Yes.

I think it is. I'm doing all the right things. I'm doing the stuff that I know has helped me play the best golf for as long as I've done this, so why not believe in myself, right? Why not think that I can do well at this?

I don't know. For a good portion of my career, if not the whole time, like, when I make a few bad swings or get a few bad breaks, I have allowed myself, again, for lack of a better term, to berate myself in a way or be demonstrative and waste energy that makes me feel that I put myself behind the 8-ball.

It doesn't make me feel, but I allow myself to feel in a way insignificant. I don't need to do that anymore. Again, I told this earlier. Through six holes in the 36-hole day, I was really close to quitting golf. It went the same way as it's always gone. I missed a bunch of putts from short range early for birdie and then made a terrible bogey on 6. Took my phone out, booked a flight back home to Kansas City from Charlotte. We were playing just outside Charlotte and was, like, I'm just going to go home. I'm going to walk off after the ninth hole. I'm just going to go home. I don't even know if I'm going to go to Amarillo and play the Korn Ferry, and I don't know that I'm going to keep doing this.

It's okay if I don't, right? I think I'll be okay. Fortunately for me, people like me, so I think I can figure out something to do. I can spend some more time with my family, which is not a bad thing.

For some reason, I walked to that 10th tee, and then I just made a boatload of birdies in 27 holes. It wasn't quite good enough, but I birdied the playoff hole to get an alternate spot to get here.

At the time I don't know -- I don't know it that I still know the lesson that I maybe taught myself, but I think today was a byproduct of that. Man, I was cool. I was cool with bad shots. I was cool if things didn't go my way. I was just going to have my shoulders back, my head up. Like, I was going to walk around like I owned this place. And boy, do I not.

I love it. I love it to death. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to trying to do that again tomorrow. It's going to be harder to do it tomorrow, and if I have another day like today, it's going to be even harder to do it on Sunday.

But I'm coming to the realization that all these guys that do this consistently and win all these deals, I think they just make the choice to do that all the time. I think the results make it maybe a little easier, but only just a little. Those guys wake up and do the work and choose to act and believe that they are the best.

I don't really see why I can't do that. Yeah, looking forward to trying to do that again.

Q. You've obviously had results in your career, a top 5 in a major a few years ago. It's not like things are always bad. How often does the mind go from -- is it hole-to-hole, day-to-day?

HARRY HIGGS: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you play golf. I'm sure you know. It's the same for us as it is -- yeah, it's hole-to-hole, shot-to-shot.

Today was more of a blanket, this is how I'm going to be today no matter what happens. Yeah, I've already made the choice. You got to do it. You got to keep doing it. You got to keep doing it. I missed plenty of short putts. I hit a few bad shots.

You know, but I just -- I just kept doing it. I just kept doing it. You know, I'm going to tee off tomorrow and be plenty nervous. So is everybody. I hope that those subside.

I've got little tools and tricks to try to help them subside and get me kind of building throughout the round and get me to a place where it's, like, yeah, okay, I can do this, I can hit these shots, I can think my way through them, I can pick them, and I can believe that I'm going to hit them successfully.

Yeah, but I mean, the mind is the mind. Hole-to-hole, shot-to-shot, you've got to fight off all the demons, all the --

Q. You stayed high on the tee shot at 11. People said that's not the place to hit it.

HARRY HIGGS: Oh, it's the worst place you can hit it, but again, I would give myself -- I had, like, a 3 out of 10 freak-out as I was getting to my ball there. Just before I was, like, man, let's think our way through this. I was trying to putt the ball about 15 feet left of it, and I didn't hit it hard enough to stay left of it, so it rides up. I thought I putted it off the other short right. It just road the spine the other way, and I kind of got a glimpse of it right at the last gasp, and it disappeared. I was in disbelief.

I think that maybe they gave me a nod there because it was, like, hey, man, you held it together. This was not -- that would have been -- hell, even a week ago, that probably would have been an 8, 9, 10 out of 10 freak-out that I would have blamed something or someone else. To be honest, I hit a good shot. I think I chose the wrong club. Or I chose the wrong time to hit it, and the freakin' wind gusted and the ball flew about 10 yards further than I wanted, and that's what happens.

Also, that hole is so hard (laughing). Yeah, I intend to err missing it in the bunker, like most people do, not hitting it long and left of the green.

But, yeah, I think I did a good enough job today up to that point and after that the golf gods, let's say, gave me a little nod and allowed that ball to not ride off to the right and hung in there left and somehow went in the hole.