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?
- Live updates from Hoylake
- 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.
Live updates from Hoylake
Day 3: Wednesday match play, 17 June
Sudden death playoff
I roll into the car park at 7.05am with perhaps only five other golf nuts. It is a pleasant cool morning with a light wind, just enough to rustle the trousers. Already there is a quiet nervousness about the place. That is because 21 players are vying for only 10 remaining spots in the matchplay stage of the championship, having all finished on the cut number from Tuesday’s stroke play. Perhaps the most notable being the highest-ranked player in the field, Luke Poulter.
In a rare and quirky situation, I join the back of the 6-ball playing the 17th. It is a very strange sensation listening to the starter reel off “now on the tee…” six times rather than the conventional two, three or four. Immediately you are reminded of just how different a game these guys are playing. Smooth, unhurried swings produce unrecognisable sounds and ball flights, invariably touching down softly in the fairway some 300 yards or more away. This is going to be an enjoyable day.
The format is sudden death, meaning you need to match or better anyone else’s score on the hole. Par is essential really, and bogeys are going to see you eliminated and heading home early. In this group Luke Poulter left himself a tricky short-sided third and ended up making a five. The big lad from Florida cut a dejected figure, cap pushed back, hands in pockets. German team member Nils-Levi Bock made a birdie and advanced straight through to the day’s matchplay draw, and was obviously delighted.
There are so many great outlets with detailed reports, but I will share personal anecdotes and observations which are the essence of this tournament when compared to pro events, because of how close you can get. The final playoff hole was the 18th, green surrounded by pot bunkers. Six guys pulled a headcover off and sent their ball most of the way down there with no respect for the wispy rough or revetted bunkers. One player however had a confusingly short-shafted iron out and clipped it down the fairway. Due to the unique no-ropes access I quietly and politely asked him which iron it was. An eight, which he then followed with a nine into the heart of the green. Kudos for knowing your game.
The quirkiness did not end there, though. That same player hit his first putt with one putter and used a second alternative putter to hit the one-foot tap-in. The putt missed, the cap came off, both putters went firmly in the bag and the player and caddie headed straight for the car. Brutal.
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Athletic aesthetic
The first thing I noticed is that the current baggy renaissance that is commonplace amongst influencers, and present in pockets of the tour, has not trickled down to the elite amateur arena. The general look here is performance fabrics and athletic fits. I did not do an extensive survey, but I would say the outfit of the day would be stone-coloured five-pocket trousers and a pale blue lightweight performance hoodie. Quarter zips probably came second and crew-neck knits third. No sign of v-necks amongst these cool kids.
There was not really anyone standing out with individual style in the manner of a Keith Mitchell, but I think that is because these guys are collegiate athletes and they are very much playing a sport.
There is a thing at play in The Amateur whereby most players are either representing their national golf body or a US college, and as such their apparel and bags are special-edition branded versions. Glenmuir’s own embroidery service has dressed national teams and championship clubs for decades, including The Open, the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup. There is something particularly satisfying about a sweater with your country’s three letters across the chest. It has to feel great wearing, for example, the navy blue of Sweden with SWE and your name on your bag.
Subtle touches are everywhere if you know where to look. Perhaps my favourite was a French national player with a tricolour on the right foot and an Eiffel Tower on the left foot of his white FootJoy Premieres.
Regardless of your budget and outfit choices, please people, always have a clean shoe.
Matchplay needle and threaded long irons
There is so much golf to watch on the first day of the matchplay that the first job is to try to pick a game to follow, or a point on the course to set up camp. My strategy was to follow two guys I was aware of from previous competitions.
First up was Niall Shiels Donegan, a player with serious creds, having reached the semi-finals of the 2025 US Amateur and represented GB&I in the Walker Cup. Niall was fully branded up in North Carolina baby blue.
The second guy I followed in the afternoon was the enigmatic Richard Teder of Estonia. I was one of about a hundred folks who, in the dim light of the evening, watched Teder hole his second shot in a sudden death playoff at West Lancs last year to grab a spot at The Open. The clip went somewhat viral.
Donegan faced Frenchman Arthur Carlier and really never got into the match. Carlier played pretty faultless and effortless-looking golf, causing the Scotsman to push and get increasingly frustrated. Hoylake is not a driver course really, and Carlier just relentlessly threaded a 2-iron down the fairway with a penetrating three-yard draw, and long. It must have been so frustrating to play against when you are hoping the guy might eventually pull a headcover off and spray one, and to my obviously uneducated eye it seemed like it forced Donegan’s hand to push with driver and make mistakes. The match ended on the dramatic par-3 15th, much to the frustration of Niall, whose putter temporarily turned scythe, being whipped into the long grass as he trudged off, dad pulling the trolley a safe distance behind.
After a break and refuel at the more than acceptable on-site catering trucks, I was ready for more golf, and picked up the Teder match on the second. Please go and look up Richard Teder on YouTube. I think he is going to attract a lot of attention for his refreshingly open personality, quirky style and prodigious hitting. He wears his heart and pretty much all other organs on his sleeve. A great poker player he would not make.
Right from the off he imposed his strategy, waiting for the green on the 366-yard par 4. In my opinion this game had a nice little bit of needle to it, with his opponent and caddie almost scathingly asking if Teder was waiting for the green and subsequently striding off down the fairway to their ball. Teder was unfazed, going through his rehearsal of shifting pressure into his left side, ripping the air with the driver head. Suffice to say the ball was sent far and sure to the front edge of the green. Statement made.
Later in the match an R&A official cruised up in his buggy and issued a timing warning to the Estonian. The caddie of Vincent Cervantes got quite involved in the interaction, and there were clearly some mind games going on. Again, Teder remained calm and got up and down from the front bunker. Being close enough (literally walking alongside on the fairways) to hear these little interactions is what marks this experience apart from attending professional golf, and why you really ought to go. Credit to Cervantes, he remained stoic and pushed Teder to the final hole before a brief handshake saw the Estonian on his way to the second round, and the American on his way home.
I rumbled across the grass car park and out of the gate ten hours after I arrived, feeling tired, inspired and sunburned. When you go, remember sunscreen!
Day 4: Thursday match play, last 16, 18 June
Keeping the updates as short as you’d want your putts for a half from here on in.
My guy Richard Teder survived a scare and got through against Yuki Miya of New Zealand. Teder might need to improve his play around the turn if he wants to go all the way this year.
Frenchman Arthur Carlier, he of the Eiffel Tower shoes, lost to Matt Moloney of the USA after a gruelling 24 holes in the heat of the afternoon.
If you’re not working Friday, or even if you are, don’t tell your boss and get down to the Wirral to watch the quarters tomorrow.
Day 5: Friday quarter-finals and semi-finals, 19 June
Come on now Richard Teder, what are you doing to our nerves?! In typical mercurial fashion our Estonian charge chalked up six birdies alongside four bogeys and a double to squeak past Reed Arnaldo and book his spot in the semi-finals this afternoon.
Unfortunately, in the afternoon of Friday, Richard Teder’s highly tuned V12 eventually misfired after one too many hot laps and he succumbed to Stuart Grehan’s more steady but impressive progress through the knockout stages. The Estonian fell 2&1 to the Irishman.
Matt Moloney, the cool customer from the south of the United States, beat his German opponent Emil Riegger by just one hole to set up a final with the much more experienced Grehan of Ireland, to be contested over two loops of Hoylake.
Still not too late to get down to Royal Liverpool and watch, I promise you won’t regret it. If not, catch the action on R&A TV and Sky Sports Mix.
Day 6: Saturday Final, 20 June
Stuart Grehan, former professional and now reinstated amateur, is The Amateur Champion 2026, beating Matt Moloney on the last hole after a little late wobble that added a final bit of drama to the viewing.
Moloney was great to watch, just 20 years old but with a demeanour that suggested more advanced years. His putter, which was newly in the bag that week, performed brilliantly and his temperament was largely unshakable. Grehan, who had given up professional status and now has a career in finance, will no doubt be delighted with his new trophy and importantly a spot in three majors and a DP World Tour event. It will be interesting to see if, following those events, he is tempted to return to the pro game.
So, surely by now you must be tempted to watch some elite amateur golf? Well, next year will be a treat over the water at Royal Portrush from 14 to 19 June 2027.
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.
