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The last time an English golfer won the Open Championship in England, Harold Wilson was the prime minister, the Beatles and Elvis Presley were around the top of the charts and Neil Armstrong was still eight days away from becoming the first man to walk on the moon.
Incredibly you have to go all the way back to 12 July 1969, when Tony Jacklin became the first home winner for 18 years by beating Bob Charles by two strokes at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Another Englishman, Nick Faldo, has won the Open three times since then – the last of which came in 1992 – but all three of his victories were in Scotland.
Will an Englishman finally end the home curse at Royal Birkdale? Quite possibly – given the signs are perhaps more encouraging than they have been for a generation.
Matt Fitzpatrick and Tommy Fleetwood are third in the betting, behind only Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. Aaron Rai won May’s US PGA Championship. Tyrrell Hatton has shown flashes of rounding into form. And even at 45 Justin Rose can rightfully dream of glory.
“The Open Championship for a British player is the pinnacle of the game” says Rose, who came fourth at Birkdale as an amateur in 1998. “It’s the one that I would love to win the most.”
A similar sentiment is shared by the 31-year-old Rai, who says his earliest memories involved watching highlights of the Open on the BBC. “We used to watch it from five, six years old,” he says. “I remember David Duval winning [in 2001]. I used to support Tiger Woods a lot. I’m British, and this is a home Open, so it’s a very, very special tournament.”
So why has the English drought at the Open lasted so long? Some of it is down to pure numbers. The best players tend to win majors more often, and since Faldo’s peak as world No 1, English golfers have rarely topped the rankings. Luke Donald was No 1 for 56 weeks, Lee Westwood for 22 weeks, Rose 13 weeks. And that is it.
Compare that with Woods and Scheffler, who between them have been on top of the world for 883 weeks – or nearly 17 years.
Then there is the pressure element. As McIlroy, who has twice played a home Open at Royal Portrush, explains, it creates very different expectations. “It’s a tough environment,” he says. “You just feel the extra expectation on your shoulders, and you feel like you’re trying to play well for everyone else and not for yourself.
However, McIlroy thinks Fleetwood and Fitzpatrick can deal with it. “A lot of those guys are pretty level-headed, and they’ll go out there and stick to their routines and do their thing, and it will be great,” he says. “It would be great for them all to have a great week because obviously with England in the World Cup and everything that’s going on, it would just be an amazing atmosphere for the tournament.”
Of course there would be no more popular winner than Fleetwood, who grew up in Southport and used to sneak into Birkdale as a child. He insists he will not be feeling the pressure of having thousands of fans willing him on.
“It’s an absolute dream to play here in my home town in front of people who are all here to support me,” he says. “There are only positives really. I just go back to the original me being an eight-year-old kid, the thought of playing in an Open at Birkdale was unbelievably special.”
But perhaps it is Fitzpatrick, who has won three times on the PGA Tour this year, who has the best chance of breaking the drought – especially as he believes he is in better form than when he won his only major in 2022, the US Open. “I’m definitely playing better,” he says. “Short game’s been really, really good, and so have my irons. That’s a first for me. My irons have never really been a strength – whereas now I feel like I’ve got that.”
No wonder there is optimism among the 21 English players and the thousands of spectators at Birkdale that the Open will finally be coming home. However, 135 players from 27 other countries will be doing their utmost to ruin their hopes and dreams again.
