Justin Rose went to great lengths to secure a spot at Royal Troon Golf Club later this month, and it paid off Tuesday when he posted rounds of 66-68 to be among 16 players who qualified at four links courses for the British Open.
Sergio Garcia missed out for the second straight year as only two LIV Golf League players qualified for the final major championship tournament of 2024.
The British Open is July 18-21 at Royal Troon.
Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open champion with career finishes of third or better at all four majors, has been exempt at the British Open for the better part of two decades and won the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach in 2023. But this year has been a struggle for the 43-year-old Englishman, who dropped out of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, so he figured his best option was 36 holes of qualifying in the United Kingdom.
“You kind of take it for granted,” Rose said. “As you get a little older, things get a little harder. It makes you appreciate how special the Open is.”
Rose was co-medalist at Burnham & Berrow Golf Club in Somerset, England, with countryman Dominic Clemons, who played college golf last year at Stetson and recently signed with Alabama. Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, who competes in the LIV Golf League, and Sweden’s Charlie Lindh advanced from a three-man playoff, with LIV golfer Anirban Lahiri of India making a bogey on the first extra hole.
Garcia was among eight LIV players who attempted to qualify but failed. The 44-year-old Spaniard had rounds of 71-70 at West Lancashire Golf Club in Liverpool and missed the four qualifying spots by two shots.
“It was tough conditions, and sometimes things don’t always go your way,” the 2017 Masters champion said. “I tried everything I could, and that’s all I can ask of myself.”
LIV player Sam Horsfield was among the four who made it from West Lancashire, joining fellow English players Daniel Brown and Matthew Dodd-Berry and Japan’s Masahiro Kawamura.
Jack McDonald, who grew up about 15 minutes away from Royal Troon, won a playoff to get the final spot out of Dundonald Links in Scotland and join England’s Sam Hutsby, Spain’s Angel Hidalgo and Irish amateur Liam Noland.
At Royal Cinque Ports in Deal, England’s Matthew Southgate led four qualifiers, two of them Spanish amateurs Jaime Montojo Fernandez and Luis Masaveu, who will be competing in the European team championship ahead of the 152nd British Open. The fourth was Australia’s Elvis Smylie.
Among the LIV players who failed to qualify at Royal Cinque Ports were Eugenio Chacarra, Branden Grace — who was beaten by Masaveu in a playoff — and Graeme McDowell.
That puts the British Open field at 149 players, with 10 more spots available — two from the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic, which starts Thursday, three from next week’s Scottish Open and five DP World Tour players who are among the top 20 in the Europe-based circuit’s season-long Race to Dubai standings after this week.