Sam Horsfield’s attempt to qualify for The Open Championship at West Lancashire Golf Club on Tuesday could not have gone worse.
Horsfield, a member of LIV Golf’s Majesticks team, teed off this morning at Open Final Qualifying with ambitions to book his place at Royal Portrush in two weeks’ time.
The Open Championship is the most prestigious tournament in the game of golf, and thousands of amateurs, journeymen professionals and even tour pros tee it up every year throughout various stages to try and qualify for the event.
Horsfield was one of those attempting to secure one of five spots available at West Lancs.
However, he withdrew after only nine holes, after completing them in seven-over par.
Horsfield was then disqualified from Final Open Qualifying after failing to inform the relevant people about his withdrawal.
Sam Horsfield releases statement after being disqualified from Open Qualifying
Horsfield took to social media on Tuesday evening to set the record straight.
However, the problem was that he didn’t actually give a decent excuse for failing to inform anyone of his withdrawal.
Photo by Richard Martin-Roberts/R&A/R&A via Getty Images
The 28-year-old took to Instagram and said: “So I flew back home Sunday night and landed into Heathrow at 4pm by the time I got up to west lancs it was about (sic) late. Had a bit of dinner and fell asleep at 1030/11. At 1AM the fire alarm went off and we had to go stand outside for an hour or so. I eventually got back sleep around 530 for a 6am alarm which I slept thru but fortunately my caddy woke me up. I felt completely dizzy and out of it all day. Don’t listen to the propaganda out there against LIV players by some of these pages. Hope this clears things up. See you guys in Valderrama next week.“
That’s all well and good, and his awful night’s sleep obviously contributed to his poor performance on the course.
However, nobody was criticising him for that. After all, a lot of tour pros withdraw early from these events after starting poorly.
The one thing that was missing from his lengthy statement was an apology for failing to let anyone know that he had actually walked in and left the golf course.
LIV’s problematic schedule needs to be addressed
The fact that there was a LIV event in Dallas that finished just 36 hours before the Open Final Qualifying got underway in England and Scotland is quite frankly ridiculous.
The golfers on LIV do not receive world ranking points when playing on the Saudi-backed golf league.
So many of them who haven’t won majors will be in a position whereby they have to qualify for the two ‘open’ major tournaments each year.
The powers that be at LIV need to look at Horsfield’s issues on Tuesday, and address their schedule for next season.
However, in the interest of balance, Lee Westwood, Dean Burmester and Lucas Herbert all won their respective qualifying sections.
That said, all of them would have undoubtedly appreciated more of a rest heading into the qualifiers.
