Yorkshire could have eight players in the Open: Here's a look at their chances
Thirty-four years have passed since an Englishman last won the Open and the return of the game’s oldest major to these shores next week will again see that anomalous narrative resurface.
Not since Sir Nick Faldo won the third of his Opens at Muirfield in 1992 has an English golfer hoisted the Claret Jug aloft. Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Paul Casey to name but a few, tried and failed.
Justin Rose has outlasted all those since his breakthrough as a teenager at Royal Birkdale in 1998. The Open’s return to Southport, allied with Rose’s career renaissance in his mid-40s, makes his bid to at long last win his home major the most romantic of storylines. His form remains strong: a win on the PGA Tour this year and finishing no lower than 11th in the first three majors.
Tommy Fleetwood will have the weight of the home crowd backing his every shot. Three years ago at Hoylake, the Wirral reverberated to sounds of “G’wan Tommee Lad”, but he just couldn’t quite reel in Brian Harman.
Very much the nearly man of major championships, he shed that tag dramatically on the PGA Tour last year but has not yet replicated that form in 2026 and the home expectation and a stacked field may be too much to overcome.
Tyrell Hatton is always good for a run at a major and Aaron Rai showed the way to do it at Aronimink when accelerating away from the field on the back nine to win the PGA Championship in May.
In total, there are 13 Englishmen in the field at Birkdale from Thursday, but the safest bet to end the long wait for an heir to Faldo might come from across the Pennines in Yorkshire, which is represented by six players. And one of them is among the favourites.
Matt Fitzpatrick has been one of the form players in the world this year, winning three times on the PGA Tour and starting well at the Genesis Scottish Open this week.
A major champion already having won the US Open in 2022, the one disappointment about the Sheffielder’s season so far is that like a batsman, he has got started in majors, but then played himself out of contention - the US Open at Shinnecock was a case in point when he began the third round in the final group but fell outside the top 20. His previous at an Open is also not great, until last year when he finished fourth chasing Scottie Scheffler.
His younger brother Alex is another form horse. The 27-year-old debuted at the 2023 Open at Royal Liverpool and is making his first return after a phenomenal transition to life on the PGA Tour. He had been struggling to break through on the DP World Tour until finally doing so in India in March before backing that up with victory alongside Matt in New Orleans, punching his ticket to a life in America. The younger Fitzpatrick has shown no fear in sharing the tops of leaderboards with the game’s biggest players.
The renaissance of John Parry continues apace. The 39-year-old from Harrogate used to have to try and quality for an Open - doing so in 2022 - but he is back in the field for Birkdale by virtue of his high finish on the DP World Tour order of merit in 2025, which earned him his year on the PGA Tour. That has been going steadily and peaked at Shinnecock where he finished 11th..
A fourth Yorkshireman who plies his trade in America now but is back for the Open, is Northallerton’s Dan Brown. Every year, an unheralded player makes a run in the Open and in 2024 at Troon it was Brown who played his way into the final group and an eventual finish of 10th place.
He has not adapted to life in America as well as Parry but always plays better in the second half of a season.
One man hoping to follow Parry, Brown and the younger Fitzpatrick to America is Wakefield’s Dan Bradbury. If the DP World Tour season were to end now, he would achieve that as he sits inside the top-10 thanks primarily to his win at the Joburg Open. Bradbury is making his third appearance at the Open in four years with the main aim of making the cut for the first time.
And the final member of the White Rose sextet is Sam Bairstow, a left-hander from Sheffield who continues to cast aside indifferent form on the DP World Tour by dominating 36-hole qualifying events, this being the fifth time he has qualified for a major via that route.
There might still be time for two more Yorkshiremen to make it: Danny Willett is trying to get back to the top table after years of injuries and is going well chasing the last qualification spot in Scotland. And Joe Dean is one of 12 players who will contest a shootout for the final spot at Birkdale on Monday.
What price one of those potentially eight Yorkshiremen ending England barren spell at the Open?