SOUTHPORT – For Tommy Fleetwood, the walk to Royal Birkdale’s first tee on Thursday morning will carry a weight most competitors at a major championship never experience. He grew up minutes from this Lancashire links, trained at the Southport & Birkdale Sports Club where a mural on the clubhouse wall bears his likeness, and has watched every Open held at Birkdale as a spectator imagining what contention from the inside would feel like. Ranked third in the world this week, without a finish worse than 14th in any of his last five events, Fleetwood arrives with an answer worth giving.
The 154th Open Championship begins July 16 at Royal Birkdale, and nobody in the 156-man field will be playing the course they remember.
Royal Birkdale has been significantly redesigned since Jordan Spieth’s dramatic victory in 2017, as Sky Sports detailed. The par-3 14th hole has been removed entirely. The fifth has been converted into a driveable par-4. A new long par-5 reshapes the mid-section of the routing. The par-3 15th, playing 240 yards, is already the field’s most discussed unknown: a hole played in practice over the past several days but never contested under major championship conditions. The 18th tee has been repositioned. The final layout measures 7,223 yards at par 70, unfamiliar in character even to former champions.
That novelty flattens the field in ways recent form and world rankings cannot fully reflect.
Scottie Scheffler arrives as defending champion and the world’s top-ranked player, but his week leading into Birkdale has offered cause for scrutiny. At the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick last week, where Tom Kim ended a 1,001-day PGA Tour drought with a final-round 64, Scheffler missed the cut. His approach-play statistics have slipped outside the top 90 on tour this season, a meaningful figure at a links venue where controlled ball flight into narrow, undulating greens is not negotiable. He remains the prohibitive favorite in the betting markets, but he is not arriving with the certainty of someone who dismantled Augusta in April.
Rory McIlroy comes in on six career majors following his 2026 Masters title and carries a tied-fourth finish from the last time Birkdale hosted the Open in 2017. The left-miss ball flight tendency his camp has publicly acknowledged working through carries particular consequence here: out-of-bounds stakes and punishing rough run along the left edge of several holes, and a week with that miss repeating would end any title ambitions by Friday. Ranked fourth in the world, McIlroy has demonstrated across 2026 the conviction of a player who believes no major is beyond reach at any given week.
Bryson DeChambeau has missed the cut at three of the four majors he has started in 2026. One more at Birkdale would complete what observers have taken to calling a grand slam of missed cuts, an unwelcome characterization for a player of his caliber who remains among the longest drivers in the field. He is capable of either contending or departing on Friday, with little predictable ground in between.
The English contingent has rarely arrived at a home Open with more viable candidates. Fleetwood leads that group by geography and recent form. Matthew Fitzpatrick, ranked second in the world, has assembled one of the most consistently strong major campaigns in the field this season. Justin Rose, contesting his 91st major at 45, finished fourth here as an amateur in 1998 and has never entirely left the conversation at links venues where experience has currency. Aaron Rai claimed the 2026 PGA Championship to become the first English player to win that title since 1919, bringing major-championship credibility of a specific and recent kind to a lineup already stacked with contenders.
As Sky Sports outlined, the American depth in the field runs broader than the top names. Wyndham Clark, who won the 2026 US Open, has proven he can close under the pressure a major applies. Chris Gotterup has collected three PGA Tour wins this season and is playing with a momentum the rankings have not fully caught up with. Russell Henley, consistently inside the world’s top five this year, brings a precision that suits what Birkdale demands from approach play.
Joe Dean qualified for the final spot in the field today at the Local Qualifying Competition, writing himself into the tournament’s narrative before the first competitive round has been played. He travels to Royal Birkdale with three days to prepare for Thursday’s opening round.
Television coverage begins at 1:30 AM ET Thursday on USA Network, Golf Channel, NBC, and Peacock. More than 300,000 spectators are expected across the four rounds, a projected record for the venue.
What nobody knows entering Thursday is how the redesigned 15th plays when a Claret Jug is on the line. The 240-yard par-3 has been the field’s most discussed hole through practice rounds, but professional golfers discussing a hole and professional golfers playing it for a major title are different propositions. The architects designed it to produce decisive moments. Whether it delivers on that intention, and which player’s tournament it shapes, is the question Royal Birkdale has kept buried in the Lancashire sea grass until the first round begins.
