On Friday, after lipping out a par putt on the 10th hole, fiery Spaniard Jon Rahm unleashed a muy picante F-bomb that will reverberate around Royal Liverpool for decades to come. Ear muffs, kiddos.
Travis Smyth, the 28-year-old Asian Tour pro from Kiama in New South Wales who played part of last year on LIV Golf, may not claim the claret jug this year, but he can always claim a Hoylake tournament first.
It wasn’t the flat patch of land or Hoylake’s calm conditions that defined the opening 18 holes of the year’s final men’s major, but, rather, the devilish bunkers (81 overall) that litter the place.
A new legend unknowingly joined the Open Championship broadcast while hitting balls parallel to the course. He didn’t just get a moment of glory but a swing breakdown from golf great and former Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger.
Leading into the tournament we were warned about all of Hoylake’s internal out-of-bounds and told by one top coach that the course’s new par 3 “could ruin somebody’s career”. But it was an old links standard that caused this disaster: the pot bunker.
Adam Scott and Royal Liverpool have history. The Australian star is the only player in the 151st Open Championship field who finished in the top 10 in both the 2006 and 2014 Opens at Royal Liverpool.
Standing at 6-foot-8, South African Christo Lamprecht crushes the golf ball unlike any of the 156 players in the field. The 22-year-old leads a six-strong amateur contingent at Royal Liverpool.
The 43-year-old New Zealander was one of 13 Australasian players to earn a place in golf’s most feted major championship, yet in a heartbreaking Instagram post on May 15, he announced publicly for the first time that he had withdrawn after being diagnosed with leukaemia.
Playing in The Open is a long way to have come from the days in 2020 when he rather famously returned to his Western Australian Golf Club to work as a greenkeeper because there was nowhere for him to play.
The 10-player Australian contingent teeing up at the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool this week includes everything from an amateur and a 36-hole final qualifier all the way up to the tournament’s defending champion, Cameron Smith. We’ve got everything, including several solid chances at victory.
Australian Golf Digest
