[PHOTO: Ross Kinnaird]
“I’m as happy now in my life as I’ve ever been,” Marc Leishman was saying last Wednesday on the eve of his first major championship appearance in nearly three years. “I’m happy with the decision I’ve made and happy to be back here in the US Open, and I’m just in a really good place right now.”
Seldom is a player who joined the LIV Golf League so unequivocally positive about making the leap into the golf unknown, joining an upstart tour that offered unprecedented riches and unanticipated question marks. But while Leishman has missed major-championship golf, he otherwise has no regrets or recriminations since he went to the land of shotgun starts and team standings.
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Still, he’s had a bounce in his stride this week at Oakmont Country Club, and the languid Victorian is reminding the larger golf community of his ability to manage his game on difficult layouts. Among his previous 11 US Open starts was a T-18 finish in the 2016 championship at Oakmont.
The latest proof came during the third round when he battled his way to a two-under 68, the best score among a handful of early finishers who managed to break par on the soggy but still stringent course. He posted four-over 214 for 54 holes and sits eight shots off the lead in a tie for 11th (the top 10 after the final round, incidentally, will earn a return trip to next year’s US Open at Shinnecock Hills).
A run of three late bogeys took a bit of shine off his scorecard, but it didn’t dampen his mood, perhaps owing to his successful fight to save par at the last after missing the fairway by no more than six inches and having no way to reach the green. Needing only 26 putts on Oakmont’s famously puzzling putting surfaces also had to feel good – even if he felt he could have done better.
But, then, doesn’t everyone feel that way at Oakmont?
“Had short birdie putts on the first maybe five or six holes. Scrambled pretty well, but yeah, obviously a little disappointing about the three bogeys in a row [from 14-16], but you don’t have to do much wrong on this golf course to make bogeys,” said Leishman, 41. “I didn’t let it get me down too much. Nice to fight back with a birdie on 17 and then obviously a nice up-and-down there on 18 to finish the day.”
The winner of six PGA Tour titles and the tour’s rookie of the year in 2009, Leishman has slipped to 539th in the world while playing on LIV, which offers no world ranking points. He earned his way into this championship by surviving a three-for-two playoff in a final qualifier at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland.
He’ll also play in the Open Championship next month at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland thanks to a tie for third in the Australian Open last December, an event that offered three qualifying spots in the year’s final major.
“Yeah, two good chances, and I want to make the most of them,” he told Golf Digest on Wednesday after a practice round with countrymen Adam Scott and Cam Smith, the latter a teammate on the Ripper GC team on LIV.
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Short of winning this championship, Leishman is eyeing a top-four finish at Oakmont, which would earn him a place in all four majors in 2026. He refused to go down the path of wondering what might have been the past two-plus years without a major start. “I knew that was going to be a chance when I signed with LIV,” he said. “I knew [not being in majors] could have been one of the negatives. But the positives so much outweighed the negatives for me.”
He even made the argument that LIV has been good for his game, though he has only one victory on the LIV circuit, that coming in April at Doral’s Blue Monster course in Miami, Florida.
“I’ve been playing probably some of my best golf of my career this year,” Leishman claimed. “I think the schedule sort of lends itself to be able to work on your game between tournaments, and I was able to really prepare for this tournament. Just happy to make the most of qualifying. Sometimes you can get in and you think it’s a done deal and away you go. But really wanted to make the most of getting in and doing that hard work, so hopefully a good round tomorrow will do that. Hopefully I can get off to a start like I did today and give [the leaders] something to look at.”
He’d also like to give his three children something to look at, not just in the final round on what will be Father’s Day in America, but in other major championships.
There have been pluses and minuses to being at home watching other players vie for major titles. Again, he has no regrets.
“Of course I would rather be playing the majors, but I really enjoyed just sitting down with my kids and mates watching the Masters and the PGA,” Leishman said. “I’m a lot happier if people were to be sitting down watching me, but it was a pretty good two weeks for me.”
This man knows a glass half full when he sees it.
