Open qualifying: Phoenix Golf Club's Oli Sullivan taking different route to Hoylake

For the third time this season, he had maneuvered himself into position to strike for the title on the biggest golf circuit in England outside of the European Challenge Tour.

What happened next is not exactly what you sign up for when embarking on the life of a professional golfer.

“It got to about half 10, I’d just dropped off to sleep when we all woke up to this horrendous noise,” begins Sullivan, who was sharing digs with a fellow Yorkshire professional in George Mason and a player from Ireland.

“It was just all these cows mooing - they must have been getting milked or something. It went on for about an hour!

“I suppose that’s what you get when you’re staying in a static caravan on a farm in Ireland, overlooking a field full of cows.

“This golf club we’re playing at is in the middle of nowhere, it’s in the countryside just up from Belfast.”

It is hardly the Crow’s Nest at Augusta, or some of the million-dollar homes the likes of Rory McIlroy will have stayed in for the recent US Open at the exclusive Los Angeles Country Club.

But this is the reality for a player on golf’s bread line.

Not that Sullivan begrudges where he plays and what he can afford to stay in.

This is his first full season playing professionally and he intends to relish every minute of it and make it last as long as he can.

For you never know in this game when you might be a few rounds from everything changing for the better.

Like last week in Ireland - when he earned a bit of prize money to supplement the sponsorship he gets from ICD Europe. Or on Monday, closer to home at Lindrick Golf Club, when he will tee it up alongside a huge cast list of amateurs, club professionals and Tour professionals bidding to move a step closer to competing in the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club from July 20-23.

More than 100 golfers at 15 sites across Britain will play one round to determine who progresses to local final qualifying held the week before the Open, when more established players who have yet to qualify by other means vie for just 16 places at Hoylake awarded to the top four players at each of the four qualifying sites.

Sullivan has reached that stage twice before, in 2019 and again last year, but got no further.

At Lindrick, where he holds a membership, he is hoping to again make it to final qualifying.

“Hopefully course knowledge will count for something,” Sullivan says of the heathland and moorland set-up that once hosted the Ryder Cup and is a staple of the Open’s qualifying rota.

“With how bouncy it is as well it only takes a few bad bounces and a few poor lines and it’s over. It’s not like you’ve got two rounds to try and claw it back.

“It’s not luck on the day but you need a few things to go your way to get into those qualifying positions.

“So for me, knowing which holes you can get up to and which holes you need to hit an iron off the tee from is key.

“As long as you can chip away with pars, a few birdies, and not do anything silly then you have a chance, because you don’t need to shoot loads under.

“But if you have one bad hole it is hard to get it back, so you have to be patient.”

Sullivan’s mantra is to try and grab the opportunity with both hands. His has not been a conventional route to becoming a golf pro.

He is not a qualified PGA professional, but instead went to Balby Carr Golf Academy to study his A-Levels and then got a job at 18 for a few hours a week in the shop at Phoenix Golf Club in Brinsworth, Rotherham, a 10-minute drive over the M1 from his home in Handsworth.

“I thought I’d give myself a couple of years full-time trying to make it on the tours before going down the PGA professional route,” explains Sullivan, who acquitted himself well on the EuroPro Tour last year and has finished in the money four out of seven times on the Clutch Tour this summer.

“I lost the whole of 2021 to a knee injury so this year I’m setting more short-term targets; top 60 on the Clutch order of merit, that would be a half-decent year. It’s gauging how I get on travelling and playing full-time this year, to see what targets I’ll set for the next few years.”

In the more immediate term the target is simple: keep the Open dream alive.

“I do dream about it, there’s no point entering if you don’t want to play in the Open,” he smiles.

“I’ll take it one round at a time, hopefully get through regional and then two rounds at final qualifying. It’s only three rounds to the Open.”