"British Open qualifying leaves younger players out"

Doug Ferguson opens his weekly notes column by analyzing the changing nature of Open Championship qualifying, and while he appears to lament (as do I) the loss of 36-hole qualifiers that might have allowed some Web.com Tour and top amateurs to gain entry, it's hard to argue with the field quality bump The Open gets with its current system of taking the top four not already in from Congressional and Greenbrier along with top three no in from the Irish, French and Scottish.

“These matters have been very much considered by the European Tour and the PGA Tour, and their request certainly has been to evolve from what we were with the 36-hole stand-alone into the series we have now,” R&A; executive director Michael Tate said Tuesday. “They don’t have that simple opportunity. They can, of course, still travel to the UK and qualify. But I understand how difficult that is. I think in the world of the game of golf, what we achieved and what we are doing now is probably correct.”

Indeed, 288 players currently are playing for 12 spots at four regional spots in Britain the next two days. A decade ago, local qualifying was the only way into The Open, and it was held the weekend before the championship.

Here are the current qualifying results posted at The Open website.

At Sunningdale, England’s Matthew Southgate and Chris Rodgers and South Korea’s Byeong-Hun An qualified. At Gailes Links, three Scottish golfers earned their passage to The Open, Marc Warren, Jamie McLeary and Paul McKechnie. At Woburn, the places went to amateur Paul Dunne of Ireland, and England’s Oliver Fisher and Rhys Enoch, and at Hillside the three qualifers were John Singleton and Christopher Hanson of England and Oscar Floren of Sweden.