The 154th Open begins on Thursday at Royal Birkdale, and for most of the 156 players in the field that means a flight, a hotel, and a week of trying to feel at home on a golf course that owes them nothing. For Tommy Fleetwood it means something closer to an actual walk. He grew up a few minutes from the front gate in Southport, spent enough of his childhood sneaking onto the course that the club almost certainly knew about it, and stood behind the ropes here as a seven-year-old in 1998 watching the game he now plays for a living. This week he gets to play it on his own doorstep, in a Claret Jug field that has him tied for third favourite.
A different Birkdale to the one that got away
The last time the Open visited Royal Birkdale, in 2017, Fleetwood was part of the field and gone from contention almost before it started, an opening 76 on a course softened by rain that let Jordan Spieth play a version of target golf few thought possible on a British links. Nine years on, the club has been reworked by Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert, who spent from 2024 rebuilding tee complexes, relocating bunkers to recapture their rough-edged 1934 appearance, and narrowing fairways that were already unforgiving by modern standards. Add a forecast with barely a mention of rain in it, a rarity for this stretch of Lancashire coast in July, and the players arriving this week are bracing for a Birkdale that plays firm, fast, and considerably meaner off the tee than the one Spieth tamed.
Scottie Scheffler arrives as the clear favourite, with Rory McIlroy next in the betting and still chasing a first Claret Jug since 2014. Matt Fitzpatrick and Fleetwood sit level as the next name on most cards, two Englishmen with a share of the week’s best domestic story between them. No Englishman has won this championship since Nick Faldo in 1992, and before that you have to go back to Tony Jacklin in 1969, a drought long enough that Fitzpatrick and Fleetwood both being live contenders in the same year has the build-up buzzing in a way it rarely does.
Some of that buzz has been building on the course itself. Final qualifying for the last spots in this week’s field was played at Birkdale only days ago, a reminder of how much golf this stretch of coastline has already absorbed before a single Open tee shot is struck.
All 12 players are out on the course at Royal Birkdale, battling for the final qualifying spot at The 154th Open.
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 13, 2026
Live leaderboard: https://t.co/DooyxTZRS1 pic.twitter.com/C4iq8WLycM
The boy who used to sneak onto this course
Southport has not been shy about what this week means. A fifty-metre mural of Fleetwood now covers the side of the Southport and Birkdale Sports Club, painted by the local street artist Paul Curtis after more than a year of planning, and the town has turned itself into what organisers are calling the largest fan festival the area has seen. On Tuesday, two days before the Championship proper, Fleetwood played in the inaugural Heroes Classic, a Texas Scramble exhibition over three holes that paired him with Miyu Yamashita and the former rugby international Bryan Habana while Scottie Scheffler and Justin Rose took on Padraig Harrington and Jordan Spieth in the group behind. It was exhibition golf, low-stakes and high on atmosphere, but it set a tone for a week that already feels different from a normal Open.
The pairing that will matter more arrives on Thursday morning, when Fleetwood tees off with Jon Rahm and Jordan Spieth, the last man to win a Claret Jug on this ground. There is a neatness to that grouping that no amount of R&A scheduling algorithms could have planned better on purpose, the home favourite walking out alongside the two-time major winner and the player who denied Birkdale its home celebration nine years ago.
What a week like this actually asks of a player
Fleetwood arrives as the reigning FedEx Cup champion, his win at last year’s Tour Championship still his only PGA Tour title despite a career built on the kind of consistency that produces top tens more reliably than it produces trophies. He is thirty-five, ranked ninth in the world, and about as firmly established as “the best player without a major” as anyone currently playing, a label that follows him into every big week and will follow him particularly loudly into this one. Playing a major at home carries its own tax. The crowd wants it more than they want to be neutral about it, the mural is visible from parts of the course, and every interview question this week will circle back to Southport whether he wants it to or not.
None of that decides anything by itself. Firm turf and a redesigned set of fairways will test driving discipline more than local knowledge, and the players who strike it best off the tee for four days will still be the ones near the top of the leaderboard on Sunday evening, wherever they grew up. But golf keeps a soft spot for stories like this one, and Royal Birkdale, dressed differently than it was in 2017 and considerably firmer underfoot, is about to find out whether it wants to write a different ending for the player who knows it best.