SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. Harry Higgs forgetting to bring a pair of pants to the first round of the U.S. Open is about the third-craziest thing youll read in this story but lets start there.Higgs, who had the first tee time off the 10thhole at 6:35 a.m. ET, woke up at 3:30 a.m. ET, and left the house at 4. Normally, he sets aside shorts and pants but hes got an 8-month old child and he said he hadn't unpacked yet.I just grabbed a pair of gray shorts instead of gray pants yesterday. I had a five-minute freak-out, he said.He told his caddie to find him some pants and while searching for some rain pants that might fit, he bumped into Anthony Naylor, who works for the Darrell Survey and volunteered the ones he was wearing. Fortunately, Higgs reached his wife who rushed to the course and delivered two pair for him to pick from what a wife! by 6:15.I would have 100 percent ripped them. They fit, but not that great, Higgs said of the pair he borrowed to warm up on the range. It would have been real funny trying to get a ball out of the hole and teeing it up.Added Higgs: Maybe I should do stuff like that more often.He shot 1-over 71 and followed up with a 68 on Friday to sit T-7 at the midway point. Its all the more remarkable considering that Higgs nearly quit after nine holes at his 36-hole final qualifying site in Charlotte.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,' he said, adding he wasnt even sure if he was going to head to Amarillo, Texas, for the next Korn Ferry Tour event. 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.He got the good news that he was one of the last alternates to get in the field via a phone call as he was taxiing on the runway.I hadn't had a cocktail in a while, but I did have a cocktail to celebrate that, he said.Friday was one of those rounds that he wont soon forget.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, he said.For the first time in a while I truly thought that, like, yeah, I can do this.I haven't had that feeling in a while.The highlight reel shot was from off the green at the menacing par-3 11th and he used a putter and as if being controlled by a magnet his ball tracked into the hole for the most unlikely deuce.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, he said.THE BIG RIG! Spectacular birdie from well off the green for Harry Higgs! pic.twitter.com/w6QaSeqGd8 U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 19, 2026Higgs has come to the realization that hes been too hard on himself and hes choosing to believe in himself this week. Hes contended in a major before five years ago at the PGA Championship at Kiawah he finished T-4 and hes adopted an attitude of why not me?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, he said.But the only one who warmed up to play a major championship at Shinnecock in another mans pants.This article originally appeared on Golfweek: US Open: Harry Higgs goes from alternate to top 10 through 36 holes