2026 Platinum
Table of Contents
- What is The Amateur?
- Spectating and keeping track
- Notable past winners and one to watch
- What makes it so unique and special?
- What to wear watching at Hoylake
What is The Amateur?
Make no mistake, while the word “amateur” is common to us mortal handicapped golfers and these guys, we are not playing the same game. These are amateurs only by status, not by any other measure. We are watching future major champions here.
The Amateur Championship, run by The R&A, is the premier amateur golf tournament outside the United States. From Monday to Saturday, 288 male golfers from 41 countries compete in a combination of stroke play and match play.
There will be two rounds of stroke play across West Lancashire and Royal Liverpool to qualify for the match-play knockout rounds, which will then be played at Hoylake from Wednesday to Saturday. The 2026 edition is the 131st staging of the championship and the 19th time it has been held at Hoylake, more than at any other venue in the championship’s history.
To the victor go many priceless spoils: a place in the field for The Open at Birkdale this July, and exemptions into the 2027 Masters and US Open.
Spectating and keeping track
If you want to go, and I heartily recommend you do, the R&A website has all the details on tee times and how to attend. In brief, you can turn up at either West Lancs or Royal Liverpool on Monday and Tuesday for the stroke play, and then just Royal Liverpool from Wednesday to Saturday for the match play. There is no cost, and unless something has changed this year, the greatest part is that there are no ropes, so you can get up close. Of course, remembering the etiquette that makes our game so special.
If you cannot make it in person, the closing stages will be broadcast on R&A TV.
I will be at Hoylake for the first day of match play on Wednesday and will update this article with what I see, hear and feel from the day.
Notable past winners and one to watch
John Ball Jr (eight titles, between 1888 and 1912)
Not a household name for the casual golf fan, but an extraordinary history. Born in Hoylake in 1861 to the manager of the Royal Hotel, which doubled as Royal Liverpool’s first clubhouse, Ball grew up on these very links. He won the Amateur eight times between 1888 and 1912, a record that has never been touched. He is also one of only two men to win the Amateur and The Open in the same year, doing so in 1890 with the Amateur at Hoylake and The Open at Prestwick. Bobby Jones, in 1930, is the only other player to repeat that feat.
Bobby Jones (1930)
Golf’s greatest amateur won just one Amateur Championship across his career, alongside five US Amateurs, at the Old Course of St Andrews in 1930. It was the British leg of his Grand Slam year, the only time in golf history that a single player has won the Amateur and Open championships of both Britain and the United States in one calendar year. Well, if you are going to win just one, you may as well do it at the home of golf.
Jose Maria Olazabal (1984)
Another classy European, Jose Maria beat Colin Montgomerie 5&4 in the 1984 final at Formby. Olazabal was 18 at the time, two years younger than Monty. The Spaniard has always looked good in classic fabrics and neutral tones, which we are seeing a welcome return to on the courses today.
Matteo Manassero (2009)
One of the most elegant ever to do it on the European Tour, the Italian is on his way back to top form, and it is great to see. Matteo won at Formby in 2009 aged 16. He remains the youngest ever winner of the championship.
Aldrich Potgieter (2022)
The PGA Tour’s longest hitter won at Royal Lytham and St Annes in 2022, beating England’s Sam Bairstow 3&2 in the 36-hole final. Aged 17 at the time, Potgieter became the second-youngest Amateur Champion after Manassero. He played in the same field as Ludvig Aberg, who reached the quarterfinals that week. A player with immense power but no shortage of grace, a swing that brings to mind Daly and Montgomerie.
Luke Poulter (one to watch in 2026)
In 2026 the son of bevisored Ryder Cupper Ian is the highest-ranked player in the field at world number 9. Luke just missed out on Open qualifying last year and certainly has the game to go far at Hoylake. If he wins here, the Sunday afternoon press conference will be unmissable.
What makes it so unique and special?
I have personally attended two previous championships, at Lytham and Hillside, each time with a South African victor in Aldrich Potgieter and Christo Lamprecht. The now athletically built Potgieter was a staggeringly long hitter even at 17, with a classic languid swing that marked him out from the more conventional, compact-swinging college players around him. That length has not left Aldrich. He is currently the longest hitter on the PGA Tour.
At Lytham I was also privileged to watch Ludvig Aberg up close, with former Ryder Cup player and six-time DP World Tour winner Peter Hanson on his bag. As a preview of the tone of how I will write about this championship, my abiding memory was of Aberg hitting laser two and four irons down the very middle of the fairways with a sound alien to us aforementioned handicapped golfers. You see, that was probably the point at which my golf illness ramped up, with symptoms comprising an acute observation of grip nuance between players and an ear highly tuned for ball-then-sand-based-turf interaction. Yes friends, my name is Richard Murdoch and I am a golfaholic.
Aberg, by the way, was the world number 3 amateur at the time. He was the first player on Luke Donald’s 2023 European Ryder Cup team who had not yet played a major championship. Watching him at Lytham as an amateur was, in retrospect, a privilege.
What to wear watching at Hoylake
Hoylake in June can run from genuine summer to full coastal wind in the same day. The dunes shelter most holes but the wind off the Wirral coastline can carry, particularly on the closing stretch where the championship grandstands sit exposed to the sea. A lightweight cotton polo and a packable lambswool layer is the spectator’s blueprint. If the forecast hardens, a quarter-zip merino under a thin shell will see you through five hours of standing.
