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.
Against a changing golf and socio-economic landscape, the head of the R&A said he would not rule out the governing body getting into business with Saudi Arabia.
So far the proposal has elicited strong, emotional responses from all walks of the game, but R&A boss Martin Slumbers said there have been two areas receiving the most interest.
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championship, yet in a heartbreaking Instagram post on May 15, he announced publicly for the first time that he had withdrawn after being diagnosed with leukaemia.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.
It has happened before, but not since 1985 when Manuel Ballesteros joined his wee brother, Seve, in the Open Championship field at Royal St George’s alongside another pair of siblings, Tateo and Naomichi Ozaki from Japan. So the sight of Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick and Rasmus and Nicolai Hojgaard in the starting line-up this week is unusual rather than unique.
Golf’s civil war is over. Well, it might be over. Depends who you ask. The professional game has at least reached detente, and though no one knows for certain where the sport is going and who will be guiding it and what it all means, there is one incontrovertible takeaway from two years of drama, conflict, instability, and struggle:
Open champion Cameron Smith has had some jobs in his 29 years. The mullet-wearing Australian’s first ever gig was working for his father, Des, in his printing business.
For almost 20 years, Garry Harvey has etched some of golf’s most famous names into the claret jug in his role as the R&A’s official engraver at the Open Championship.
Australian Golf Digest
