Vijay Singh gets US Open place - but he didn't "lobby for it"


DUBLIN, Ohio – His streak of consecutive appearances in the major championships will live on, but Vijay Singh insists the exemption into the upcoming U.S. Open isn’t something he lobbied for.

“I just left it up to them,” Vijay Singh said. “If they said no, then it was no.”
Singh, 47, heard late Tuesday that the answer was yes, that the U.S. Golf Association was granting him a spot into the June 17-20 championship at Pebble Beach.
“I’m very happy,” Singh said, but he reiterated that this was the only way in which he was going to get to Pebble Beach. “I was not going to qualify Monday, not for 36 holes.”
Plagued by injuries, Singh has plummeted to No. 63 in the world rankings and thus was pushed into a scenario by which he might have had to have qualified for the U.S. Open for the first time since 1994.
That is no longer an issue, so Singh’s stretch of major-championship appearances will extend to 64. (He’s already eligible for the Open at St Andrews and the US PGA Championship, so he is poised to play in all four majors for a 16th consecutive year.)
“There were many compelling reasons for us to invite Vijay Singh into the field,” said Thomas O’Toole, chairman of the USGA’s championship committee.
The move didn’t surprise some of Singh’s colleagues.
“It’s a legitimate exemption,” Adam Scott said. “I mean, he’s a guy who could win the thing.”
Singh hasn’t missed a major since the 1994 U.S. Open. Though he’s never won the U.S. Open, he’s been Top 10 seven times, including T-8 in 2000 at Pebble Beach