Sergio Garcia has entered next week’s final qualifying for the Open Championship. The record Ryder Cup points scorer will take his place alongside 287 other hopefuls — a mixture of starry-eyed amateurs and lowly-ranked pros — attempting to win one of the 16 berths on offer for Hoylake.
However, Telegraph Sport has also learned that Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter — two other Ryder Cup legends who are members of the LIV Golf League — will not feature in the draw when it is released on Tuesday, with the veterans electing to skip the 36- hole shootout. This means that Westwood will miss his first Open in 29 years.
Westwood was recently barred from competing in the Senior Open — the week after Hoylake next month — due to the fact that he has outstanding fines to the DP World Tour of more than £800,000 for playing on the LIV circuit, although the former world No 1 contends that as he resigned from the Tour he is not obliged to pay the financial punishment.
The R&A is in joint control of the Senior Open with the Tour, but it is not known whether Westwood’s decision not to enter the Open qualifier is connected to that exclusion.
Garcia’s Open exemption from his 2017 Masters success ran out last year and having dropped to 209th in the world rankings, the LIV golfer was in danger of missing his first British major in more than a quarter of a century.
But despite playing in this week’s £20 million LIV event at Valderrama and then in next week’s £20 million tournament in St Albans, the 43-year-old will compete next Tuesday. Garcia has not before needed to go through the golfing hell that is qualifying for the major in which he first appeared as a 16-year-old in 1996.
Last month, Garcia made his 24th consecutive start at the US Open having earned a spot through that major’s final qualifying in Dallas. He finished in a tie for 27th. Garcia has never made any secret of his desire to lift the Claret Jug, having finished second on two occasions, the most recent being in 2014 when the Wirral links last played host.
“I love this championship and these crowds very, very much,” he said after last year’s tournament. “I’ve come close a few times, but sometimes you don’t get what you want or what you wish.”
Since the merger was announced between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the animosity has apparently calmed down, despite the treatment meted out to Westwood. Garcia and Rory McIlroy had a public falling out after the Spaniard jumped ship, but they have since shared text messages.
Garcia has stressed his desire to represent Europe once again in this September’s match, but, after resigning from the DP World Tour he is ineligible to be a part of Luke Donald’s team in Rome.
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