Wesley Bryan is one of a dozen players who will compete in the R&A’s inaugural Last Chance Qualifier, where the winner will earn a berth in the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.
The 18-hole qualifier will take place Monday at Birkdale, beginning at 7:30 a.m. local time.
Bryan bogeyed his final hole of final qualifying at West Lancashire to miss a playoff by one shot along with Spain’s Adri Arnaus and American Charlie Huntzinger, who are also in Monday’s field. Englishmen Joe Dean and Sam Easterbrook lost to Matthew Jordan in that playoff.
None of the other four final-qualifying sites put more than one finisher in the Last Chance Qualifier, which includes both players who lost in playoffs at final qualifying and those, like Bryan, who finished a shot back. Here is the verbiage on the exemption criteria for those players:
Exemption 4 – Players that finished one position behind the competitors who secured a place in The Open at Final Qualifying (FQ).
In the event the number of players exceeds the starting field limit, the order in which this exemption is taken will be determined by 4(i) & (ii).
(i) a player will be taken from each FQ venue in strength of field order as determined by The R&A. One player will be taken from each venue before returning to the strongest field to take a second player and so on.
(ii) in the event of a tied score at each FQ venue, the player with the highest OWGR ranking as published on Monday 29 June 2026 will be awarded the place.
West Lancs was determined to have the strongest strength of field, though it’s uncertain why it got three players who finished a shot back into the Last Chance Qualifier while another site, Burnham and Berrow, which had three players tie for sixth, only had one player selected. Golf Channel has reached out to the R&A for clarification.
Bryan, at No. 1,028 in the Official World Golf Ranking on June 29, edged No. 1,040 Giles Evans for having the third best OWGR out of that T-8 group from West Lancs.
Easterbook, who plays collegiately at Purdue and figures to be a Walker Cup selection for Great Britain and Ireland later this summer, is one of two amateurs among the 12 competitors. The other is Georgia’s Matt Maloney, who was runner-up at last month’s British Amateur.
PGA Tour members Aldrich Potgieter and Matti Schmid, the top two eligible players via the Official World Golf Ranking, each received last-chance nods.
Here is the full field:
• Adri Arnaus
• Wesley Bryan
• Joe Dean
• Sam Easterbrook (a)
• John Gough
• Marcus Helligkilde
• Angel Hidalgo
• Charles Huntzinger
• Matt Moloney (a)
• Aldrich Potgieter
• Matti Schmid
• Andrew Wilson
