I feel like with 50 good pool rooms around the country it should be possible to have 4-5 qualifiers over the course of a year and thus fill up the main event....
John, they used to have qualifiers for the Open. I remember going to a couple. The Planet Pool Tour, a regional tour under a different name and owner now, used to have qualifiers for the Open. And the Virginia State Championship, as I recall, the first place was money and entry fee for the Open. Those are two that come to mind.
I do believe there was an effort at one time to have such qualifiers, but I have not heard of any recently.