These guys likely won’t win The Open on Sunday at Royal Birkdale, but whether they’re in contention or not, their stories will surely capture the attention of those watching:
David Howard
After being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a 7-year-old, Howard Googled his life expectancy and was met with a harrowing answer: mid-20s.
Well, he’s now 27 and competing in his first major.
“I’ve passed my sell-by date,” said Howard, the Irish amateur from Cork who final-qualified out of Dundonald Links despite only getting into that field as a reserve.
Howard takes medication daily to thin mucus buildup in his lungs and help him digest foods without a functioning pancreas. He also travels with a physiotherapist in case symptoms arise during tournaments. But Howard’s journey to Royal Birkdale goes beyond his battle with CF.
While in secondary school, Howard began using alcohol.
“If I got caught drinking, I would run away or say, ‘Sure, it doesn’t matter, I won’t be here much longer,’” he told the Irish Times.
Eventually, Howard sought counseling, and unable to play contact sports, Howard gravitated to golf as an outlet. He continued to play casually after graduation as he accepted a job as an auto mechanic with Audi. But Howard slipped back into depression during the COVID-19 pandemic, locking himself indoors for fear of catching the virus with his preexisting condition. The isolation literally drove Howard insane, as he experienced manic episodes and psychosis. He ended up hospitalized for several weeks and was put on antipsychotic medication.
“I couldn’t get out of bed for a few months,” Howard added. “It was a tough few months, and that my parents were told I might never be the same again was hard to hear after I got back to myself.”
Howard returned to work and golf, and at the start of 2024, he quit his job to pursue competitive golf full-time. Still an amateur, his resume includes a victory at the 2025 East of Ireland Championship and runner-up at this year’s Irish Amateur. His dad, John, will be on the bag this week at Birkdale.
“I am not worrying at the moment,” Howard said. “The mindset is to keep on trying to do what I am doing and have no regrets down the line.”
He added to the Irish Examiner: “If I do well [in The Open], I’m sure that could change a lot of things. I suppose it’s a big achievement getting there in the first place, so we’ll see where that takes me.”
Marcus Plunkett
After losing his Korn Ferry Tour card last season, the 32-year-old Plunkett turned his focus to Asia this year and has posted five top-15s in seven starts between the Asian and Asian Development tours.
It’s not the first time that Plunkett has been overseas.
Plunkett played college golf at the U.S. Military Academy and upon graduating from West Point in 2016, he served five years in the Army as a transportation officer. He spent his first year in South Korea before transferring to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He also did a six-month deployment in Afghanistan.
Toward the end of his military service, Plunkett started playing golf again, breaking the record at Fort Carson’s course, Cheyenne Shadows. When he was discharged in May 2021, Plunkett decided to chase pro golf. He won the Dakotas Tour money list in 2024, then earned KFT status through Q-School later that year. However, he made just 8 of 20 cuts and finished No. 134 in points.
Now, Plunkett, ranked No. 777 in the world, will play his first career major after a T-4 finish in final qualifying at Dundonald Links.
Cameron John
John, who hails from Melbourne, Australia, was struggling mentally and already planning on quitting golf when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“I had a plan when I was done playing some pro-ams in Canberra that I was just going to put the clubs away and maybe never touch them again,” John told news.com.au earlier this year. “It never really occurred to me that we’d be forced into a break. At that point, it kind of worked out because there was such an extended period of time where no one could really do anything, so I was going to try to do something else.”
John started working as a carpenter’s apprentice and didn’t return to competition until late 2021, all while he battled depression and alcohol issues.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever not be dealing with my mental health, but only in the past 12-15 months did I start heading in a forward direction,” John wrote in May 2022.
Now 27, John is coming off a three-win campaign on the PGA Tour of Australasia. His runner-up finish at the Asian Tour’s Singapore Open back in April not only moved him to a career-best No. 219 in the world rankings but earned him a spot in this week’s Open Championship, which will be his major debut.
Lev Grinberg
The 18-year-old Grinberg is already well accomplished. He made a DP World Tour cut in 2022 at age 14. He has represented Europe in multiple international team events and is verbally committed to Arkansas. Earlier this summer, he captured the St. Andrews Links Trophy by a whopping seven shots and has risen to No. 40 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
And this week, he will become the first Ukrainian-born player to compete in a major championship when he tees it up at Royal Birkdale courtesy of him topping the Open Amateur Series points race.
Grinberg was born in Kyiv, though his family moved to Belgium when he was 11 years old. His grandfather still lives in Ukraine, which has just two operational golf courses after a third was destroyed four years ago in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. But Grinberg now plays under the French flag as he’s been attending academy at Le Golf National in Paris for the last few years.
“I was searching for opportunities to train and get better,” Grinberg told Today’s Golfer. “It’s like an Olympic training center, very, very golf focused, and they were very kind to let me in. … I had to learn the language (Grinberg now speaks four) to go through all the process. It was a long, long process, but it was smooth, and I feel like the support that I’m getting from them is amazing.”
Tom Sloman
This is very much a make-or-break year for Sloman, the former GB&I Walker Cupper who turned 30 years old last week.
The Englishman, who represented GB&I at Royal Liverpool in 2019 and captured the MENA Tour’s order of merit in 2022, still plies his trade on various developmental tours, including the MENA, Clutch Pro Tour and HotelPlanner Tour. He didn’t notch a top-20 finish on any of those tours this season – he was T-52 in a MENA tournament in March – until tying for second at the HPT’s Swiss Challenge last month.
“I obviously can’t keep up playing on the Clutch Tour for much longer,” Sloman said at the start of the year. “You can’t make a life out of that, can you? You have got to be [competing] toward the top of the HotelPlanner Tour or on the DP World Tour, really. I am going to stick it out this year and see how it goes.”
Sloman, who has slipped from a career-best of No. 492 in the Official World Golf Ranking to No. 935, got through Open final qualifying at his home club, Burnham and Berrow. He boasts less than 1,000 Instagram followers, and despite what his surname would suggest, he’s a fairly fast-paced player.
