THERE was no repeat of the Justin Rose Open fairytale for four of Hampshire’s top amateurs when Final Open Qualifying was played on Tuesday.
Walker Cup prospect Charlie Forster, fresh from playing in last week’s European Amateur Championship, where he finished tied 12th for a second year in a row, and Hartley Wintney’s Charlie Preston both teed it up at Burnham & Berrow, the course where Rose qualified for the 1998 Open at Royal Birkdale.
Rose would finish tied fourth alongside Tiger Woods after holing his approach shot on the last and turned pro within hours of becoming an overnight name in the golf world.
Forster and Preston, who like Rose, have both been junior members at North Hants – where Justin became renowned as a top teenage talent by winning the Hampshire Hog as a 14-year-old – and were desperate to follow in the Olympic Gold Medal winner’s footsteps by making it through to The Open.
Forster, who was called up into England’s team for next week’s European Amateur Team Championship, in Ireland, last week, travelled to Somerset having been given an exemption into Final Qualifying by virtue of his ranking in the amateur game.
Preston had earned the right as one of the field of 72 starters chasing just five places in the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush, in two weeks’ time, after earning his place at North Hants, last week.
Eighteen-year-old Charlie, the beaten finalist in the Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Channel Islands Amateur Championship a month ago, finished tied for ninth in Regional Qualifying at North Hants, before sinking a birdie putt at the first extra-hole, to progress to Final Qualifying
The links with Rose are even stronger for Preston, who has also been a member at Hartley Wintney, where Justin was also a junior in the early 1990s before joining North Hants.
Preston has been a member at both as he progressed through the Hampshire Junior age squads while Forster was something of a late bloomer having played football predominantly until he took golf more seriously as a teenager.
The former Hampshire U16 and U18 champion could only card a one-over par 72 before lunch, having picked up a shot at the par-five fourth to cancel out a bogey at the second.
A fine three at the 10th got him under par for the first time, but he gave the shot straight back at the 11th with back-to-back bogeys at the 14th and 15th unsettling the Great Britain and Ireland international.
A birdie three at the 16th gave the two-time Long Beach State winner, who has spent the last two years in California, a glimmer of hope, with former South African DP World Tour player Justin Walters leading after a round of 65.
Forster needed a fast star but the wind increased considerably in strength, and as the winning member of the international team at last month’s Arnold Palmer Cup in the States, quickly found, putting your foot to the floor and taking risks on a very firm and fast-running links like Burnham & Berrow, inevitably means taking risks, and dropping shots if you miscalculated that wind.
He made two double bogeys on the front nine, turning in five-over, before dropping four more shots from the 12th to finish with a disappointing 80, a score matched by Hampshire’s former Amateur Champion Harry Ellis, who had carded a 75 before lunch.
Preston fared better having played the course a number of times as a junior. Charlie was aware that Burnham & Berrow was the course where Hartley Wintney legend Stan Fox won the Brabazon Trophy in 1956.
Fifty-five years later it was Corhampton’s Neil Raymond’s turn to win the English Amateur Strokeplay Championship at the West Country venue, which was also where Rose won the Carris Trophy – at the English Boys’ Amateur Strokeplay, in 1995.
But with all that good county karma in his mind, Preston opened up with a level-par 71. As scoring generally was much tougher in the afternoon, Preston was not disgraced by his 75, which left him five-over par for the day.
He did make back-to-back birdies on the front nine, including a two at the short fifth. A double-bogey six at the next and a dropped shot at the seventh cancelled out that good work as he turned in two-over.
Another double at the 12th proved how tough conditions had become, but he bounced back from a bogey-five at the 13th with a fine birdie at the 14th. The tough par-three at 17 cost him another shot as he carded a 76 to finish in a tie for 45th, five shots and 16 places better than Forster.
Elsewhere, recently-crowned county champion Joe Buenfeld, who beat Preston in the final at Shanklin & Sandown, opened up with a one-over par 73 despite an excellent eagle at the third hole.
The Stoneham ace dropped two shots on both the outward and inward halves, making a single birdie at the 11th to trail LIV player David Puig by nine shots, at Royal Cinque Ports.
But as the Spaniard crumbled on the Kent coast, Buenfeld was unable to make up sufficient ground to challenge for one of the sacred five Open spots on offer at Deal despite a bright start to his second round.
Again, he made an eagle at the third, and made three more birdies on the front nine, but after his third birdie in a row at the 10th, the former European Junior Open winner made four birdies in his next five holes before carding a very respectable level-par 72.
With the likes of Ryder Cup legend Ian Poulter, and his son Luke, who like Forster is expected to make GB&I’s Walker Cup team to face the USA at Cypress Point, in September, in the field for Final Open Qualifying, plenty of Tour stars were left disappointed outside the top five, including US Open winner Graeme McDowell.
That trio all tied on one-under – tied for 13th – as Buenfeld, who has just completed his four-year scholarship at Texas’ University of the Incarnate Word, finished in a share of 21st place.
South Africa’s LIV winner Dean Burmester fired a brilliant 64 after lunch to lead the five qualifiers who will head to Portrush, where Ireland’s Shane Lowry will return to where he hoisted the famous Claret Jug in 2019.
Rob Wheeler – the other North Hants player to make it through to Final Open Qualifying – was given a lesson in how tough links golf can be, as he carded a second round 77, having shot 79 before lunch, to finish a share of 55th place.
The 22-year-old, from Aldershot, will defend his Hampshire Open trophy at Alresford, on Thursday (July 3), as he seeks to maintain his lead at the top of the county Order of Merit, which he also won last year.
The Tournament Golf College graduate claimed the Cullen Quaich in 2024 after claiming the Hampshire PGA’s flagship event at Hockley, when it was played last September, just days after he had finished runner-up in the Courage Trophy at Army GC in his home town.
But the biggest Hampshire heartbreak came north of the border where former Shanklin & Sandown junior Jordan Sundborg came within a whisker of making it to Royal Portrush.
Sundborg, who was crowned British and European Universities Champion while at Stirling University, was in pole position on five-under after four holes of his second round.
But he dropped four shots in three holes to the turn, followed by three birdies in three holes from the 10th, to drop out of the top five places.
Having become the first Isle of Wight player to win the Sloane-Stanley Challenge Cup in 78 years after beating Martin Young in the Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Channel Islands Amateur Championship in Jersey, in 2017, Sundborg swapped two more birdies with two more bogeys in his last six holes to finish on three-under.
Former World No. 1 Lee Westwood – who was fourth at Royal Portrush in 2019 – booked his first start in the Open in three years by carded rounds of 70 and 67 in blustery conditions at the Ayrshire course.
The Worksop wonder – who was runner-up to Stewart Cink at Turnberry in 2009 – will play in his 28th Open in Northern Ireland later this month. Scottish amateur Connor Graham, a team-mate of Forster in last year’s St Andrews Trophy, came through a play-off at Dundonald to become the fourth amateur to earn a place in the 153rd Open through Final Open Qualifying.
RESULTS FINAL OPEN QUALIFYING:
Burnham & Berrow | Royal Cinque Ports | Dundonald Links | West Lancashire