The Open returns to the Southport coast for the first time since 2017. Scottie Scheffler arrives as the defending champion, Rory McIlroy with a second green jacket on his back, and a strong English line led by ‘local lad made good’ Tommy Fleetwood, will have a hometown crowd behind him and a large chunk of unfinished business to deal with.
The Open is back at Royal Birkdale. From 16 to 19 July, the oldest Major in golf returns to the Southport coast for the first time since 2017. It is the 11th time Birkdale has staged the Championship. Since it joined the rota in 1954, only St Andrews has hosted more.
Birkdale first held The Open in 1954, when Peter Thomson won the first of his five Claret Jugs. The names on the honours board since read like a roll call of the game’s best: Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Mark O’Meara, Padraig Harrington. The most recent is Jordan Spieth. This year the field is 156 strong, and plenty of the storylines are already written.22
Royal Birkdale is links golf without the lottery. Other links can punish a good shot with a bad bounce. Birkdale tends not to. The fairways sit in valleys between the dunes, the lines off the tee are clear, and the player who drives it straight is rewarded. Miss, and the willow scrub rough and the revetted bunkers do the rest. There’s rarely a way to muscle out of a Birkdale bunker towards the green. Most of the time the only option is sideways.
The greens are small, quick and subtly contoured. The wind comes off the Irish Sea and changes its mind often. Par is usually a good score, and when the weather turns it becomes one of the hardest tests in the game. Tommy Fleetwood, who knows the place better than anyone in the field, put it plainly.
“Birkdale is a driving golf course,” said the Englishman. “You have to know what you’re doing and you need to have a plan before you step foot on the tee.”
No one in the field has a closer tie to this course than Fleetwood. He was born in Southport, three miles from the first tee. As a boy he and his dad would sneak onto Birkdale to play a few holes. The first Open he ever watched was here, in 1998.
In 2017 the dream turned real. Fleetwood arrived as the home favourite, his face on the banners along the roads into town.
“Birkdale was the first Open I had been to as a seven-year-old, and now I was the face of it,” he said.
An opening 76 took the early shine off, but he rallied over the weekend to make the cut and finish tied 27th, calling it a week he’ll never forget.
He’s come a long way since. After 164 starts and 30 top-five finishes, more than anyone on the PGA Tour in a century, Fleetwood finally won on American soil at the 2025 Tour Championship, taking the FedEx Cup and its $10 million prize. He added the DP World India Championship in October and was part of the European side that won the Ryder Cup in dramatic style at Bethpage. The 35-year-old arrives at Birkdale ranked World No.7.
He’s gone close at The Open before, most notably as runner-up to Shane Lowry at Portrush in 2019. The Major he wants above all the others has never been in doubt.
“It’s been a dream of mine to win The Open,” he said, “ever since I was a very young kid growing up in Southport.”
There’s history on the line too. No Englishman has won The Open on English soil since Tony Jacklin at Royal Lytham in 1969. There’s been no English Champion Golfer of any kind since Nick Faldo in 1992. A Fleetwood win at Birkdale would settle both, in the town where he learned the game.
Scottie Scheffler returns as Champion Golfer of the Year. He won the 2025 Open and remains World No.1, a position he’s held with a grip few players in the game’s history have managed.
By his own standards, 2026 has been quiet. One win, back in January, and four runner-up finishes, the Masters among them, where he closed to within a shot of McIlroy. He’s looked frustrated at times. Yet he hasn’t finished outside the top 25 since the summer of 2024, still leads the Tour in the numbers that matter, and remains the man the rest of the field measures itself against. Writing him off at a course that rewards control and ball-striking would be a mistake.
Rory McIlroy comes in as a two-time reigning Masters champion, the back-to-back green jackets confirming the best stretch of his career. The Northern Irishman completed the career Grand Slam at Augusta in 2025, and he already knows how to win this one. His single Open title came at Royal Liverpool in 2014, just down the coast at Hoylake. He’s got the links pedigree, the power and the experience to add another, and will be among the most watched players all week.
England has strength beyond Fleetwood. Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 US Open champion, has been the most prolific winner of 2026 with three PGA Tour titles. Aaron Rai arrives as a Major champion in his own right after a surprise win at the PGA Championship at Aronimink. Tyrrell Hatton, still with the faltering LIV Golf, is among the best ball-strikers in the game. Justin Rose, a Major winner and former World No.1, keeps turning up on leaderboards. Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre has the game for links golf and the temperament to go with it.
Cameron Young opened 2026 by winning the Players Championship and has finally turned a habit of near-misses into wins. Xander Schauffele, the 2024 Open champion, will be keen to remind everyone what he can do after a flatter year. There’s no shortage of players who can lift the Claret Jug come Sunday.
Jordan Spieth hasn’t been the same player of late. But this is where he won the Claret Jug in 2017, and few venues will stir more memories for him.
His final round nine years ago remains one of the strangest and best closing stretches the Open has produced. A wild drive on the 13th sent him miles right and onto the practice ground. He took an age over a penalty drop, made bogey, then played the next five holes in five under to break Matt Kuchar’s heart and win by three. Whether his current form allows anything close to a repeat is another matter. The story of his return is worth following regardless.
The R&A has added a few things to Open week. The headline change is the Last-Chance Qualifier. On the Monday, July 13, twelve players who narrowly missed out through the other routes will play 18 holes at Birkdale for the final place in the field. One round, one spot, winner takes all.
There’s also a Heroes Classic showcase during the practice days, and a new range of ticket and hospitality options called The Open Experiences, with Birkdale the first venue to host them. The R&A expects the week to draw more than 300,000 spectators, which would be a record, from over a million ticket applications.
Birkdale does not give much away. It asks for straight driving, clean iron play and patience when the wind gets up, and it tends to reward the most complete player in the field rather than the hottest putter. Scheffler will defend, McIlroy will chase, and a deep English contingent will fancy their chances.
But the loudest noise all week will be for the man who grew up three miles away. Fleetwood has spent his whole life around this course. From 16 July, he gets four days to finish the story properly.
