The Dentist Who Drilled His Way Into the U.S. Open

Wall Street Journal

a day ago

Dr. Matt Vogt had just finished playing 36 holes of golf last week, and as soon as he got off the course, he put in an urgent call to his dental practice.
Someone would need to cover his patients the next week, Vogt explained. He was going to miss work again, and he had an unusual excuse.
He had just qualified for the U.S. Open.
The field of 156 players at Oakmont Country Club vying to win the third major of the season includes the likes of world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, defending champion Bryson DeChambeau, Masters winner Rory McIlroy—and exactly one doctor of dental surgery.
Vogt punched his ticket for the tournament in final qualifying, while many full-time pros saw their hopes of taking part get dashed.
'It's been fun to hear the stories of people pointing at their TV and saying, 'Wait a second, honey, that's our dentist,' Vogt says.
What makes Vogt's presence at this U.S. Open so remarkable isn't merely that he spends more time drilling teeth than drilling golf balls. It's that even among the many unlikely figures who grind their way into majors, he qualifies as an ultra long shot.
He was a flameout on his college golf team who's currently the world's 2,078th ranked amateur. The closest he figured he would get to playing in the U.S. Open were the summers he spent as a caddie at one of the country's most notoriously challenging courses.
As it happened, that was none other than Oakmont.
Which meant that when Vogt packed his car to drive from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh last weekend, he was taking a trip back to where he grew up. And this time, he's returning as the dentist who's playing the best golf of his life at 34 years old—and can drive the ball farther than most guys on the PGA Tour.
'He won't look like a dentist that everybody thinks of filling their cavities, that's for sure,' says his instructor Max Niehans. 'They'll see one tee shot and go, 'Damn, that guy can hit it.''
As a kid in the Pittsburgh suburbs, Vogt's first love was actually baseball. But he decided to give the golf team a shot in high school, and it didn't take long for the coach to realize he had a special talent on his team.
Steve Mayes, his coach at Seneca Valley High School, remembers watching Vogt tee off on a 460-yard par-5 and coming up only 130 yards short of the hole. Despite having that type of power, though, Vogt wasn't like the other students who spent all their time on the driving range and not nearly enough chipping and putting.
'He was out there for one reason: to play golf and get better,' Mayes says.
Vogt got so good that he was recruited to play at Butler, but he lasted only a few semesters on the team before quitting. He wasn't ready for the drudgery of college sports. Besides, this self-described 'math-science geek' already had a different goal in mind: going to dental school.
That's exactly what he did, and for a few years afterward, the only holes he thought about were the ones in people's teeth. But in 2018, two life-changing things happened. Vogt started his own dental practice. And he caught the golf bug again.
Niehans, an instructor at a local club, had a sense that Vogt might be a bit different than other doctors who sign up for lessons when he saw his 6-foot-6 frame. Then Niehans watched him swing a club—and Vogt proceeded to smash the enamel off the ball.
'He looks like a tour player,' Niehans says.
Soon, Vogt started to become known as one of the better amateur golfers in Indiana. One of his first breakthroughs came when he qualified for the 2021 U.S. Amateur at a course he knew rather well: Oakmont.
Vogt had spent five summers as a caddie at the club that's now set to host the U.S. Open for the 10th time. Every day, he'd throw one bag on each shoulder and cover every inch of the course. And on Monday nights, the caddies were allowed to actually play from 6 p.m. until dark.
All that local knowledge didn't help when Vogt went out and fired an 81. Even when he carded one of the lower scores in the next round, it wasn't enough to erase such a poor start.
Oddly enough, that experience in the U.S. Amateur is why he's more optimistic for this week's U.S. Open. When he returned to Pittsburgh four years ago, he was besieged by family and friends—and he didn't have a clue how to manage it.
'Now I've played a tournament at Oakmont,' Vogt says. 'So I can know generally what I'm getting into.'
What he still has no idea about is what it's like to play Oakmont under U.S. Open conditions. But he earned the privilege to find out when what's known as 'Golf's Longest Day' became the best day of his golf career.
Final qualifying for the U.S. Open is held around the country, with one-day, 36-hole events attended by top amateurs and pros alike. It puts everyone from Matt Vogt to Max Homa—who last year was ranked in the world's top-10—on a level playing field.
Vogt picked the qualifier at Wine Valley Golf Club in Walla Walla, Wash. because he thought the course suited his game—and he was spot on. He shot the lowest score to claim one of the two available spots.
Nowadays, barely a day goes by when Vogt doesn't touch a golf club, even if it's just hitting putts in the basement. After all, he still has a day job. In addition to his dental practice—where he's very thankful for a colleague who is covering for him this week—he also consults for other dentists who need advice on starting their own businesses.
But this week, the task in front of Vogt is golf's equivalent to a root canal. Oakmont is known for inflicting excruciating pain on the world's best players, who dread the fast greens and thick rough.
That hasn't diminished Vogt's excitement one bit.
'Here we are driving to the U.S. Open,' he says, 'which is just crazy to even say out loud.'
Write to Andrew Beaton at [e-mail]