Japanese Triumvirate Chasing Open Championship Glory

St Andrews: For the second time this year, a trio of Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) winners will tee-off in a Major championship.

Three months after appearing in the Masters Tournament at Augusta National, the Japanese triumvirate of Hideki Matsuyama, Takumi Kanaya and Keita Nakajima have reconvened at St Andrews.

Joining them in the starting line-up for The 150th Open Championship at St Andrews are no fewer than nine other players who have participated in the AAC.

Prominent among them are Australians Cameron Smith, currently sixth in the Official World Golf Ranking, Lucas Herbert and Min Woo Lee, New Zealand’s Ryan Fox and Koreans KH Lee and Kim Si-woo.

Two-time AAC winner Matsuyama (2010 and 2011) commences his bid for a second Major crown at 10.20 am local time in the company of Americans Will Zalatoris and Tony Finau.

In the following group will be Kanaya, who has endured a difficult year and is setting his sights on surviving the half-way cut at The Open for the first time in three appearances.

Matsuyama and Kanaya will both be close to finishing their opening rounds when Nakajima sets off at 2.37 pm in the company of American Harris English and South African Louis Oosthuizen, winner of The Open at St Andrews in 2010.

Winner of the 2021 AAC in Dubai, Nakajima has played in The Masters and US Open this year, missing the cut on both occasions.

As well as hoping to end that streak, Nakajima has an opportunity to extend his lead as the number one player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR).

Among those he is challenging for the honour of being the Low Amateur this week are South African Aldrich Potgieter, winner of last month’s Amateur Championship, Italian Filippo Celli, this year’s European Amateur champion, and Aaron Jarvis from the Cayman Islands, the Latin America Amateur champion.

Also in the field are England’s Sam Bairstow, beaten by Potgieter in the Amateur Championship final, and Barclay Brown.