The Open 2026: Someone is going to do something they've never done before

It is Saturday night in Southport, and according to the leaderboard, someone is going to do something they’ve never done before.

Sam Burns is the pace car after 54 holes, his 10-under score good for a two-shot lead at Royal Birkdale. But there are seven players within four, and the connective tissue between Burns and almost all of his chasers is this: None of them has won a major. On Sunday, one of them will.

The majors are notoriously unkind to the inexperienced, putting a number on the part of you that only shows up when the price of missing is highest. You can’t practice for it. You can’t simulate it on a Tuesday or in a standard tour event. Most golfers go their whole careers without ever finding out what they’re made of, because most weeks let them get away with not knowing. A major asks the question on the back nine on Sunday, in front of everyone, and there’s no answer you can fake. That’s why some names keep coming back, and others disappear after one taste of it. It isn’t always about talent or skill, but the one who found out something true about himself and could live with it.

The outlier on Sunday is Bryson DeChambeau, a two-time U.S. Open champion, four back of Burns. Although, in a sense, this whole week has been an inflexion point for DeChambeau—after Friday’s shocking penalty and ensuing theatrics, in the face of questions about his form this year and on links golf specifically. His career is also at a crossroads. LIV Golf may not exist by the end of next month, and he won’t get a path back to the PGA Tour for years. He’s floated, leaning fully into YouTube golf, because that may be the option left. But win here, and he has leverage he’s never had and may never have again. For a player who wants more than almost anything to control his own brand, this could be the best chance he gets.

And he has reason to like his chances, because the players around him are those whom few expected to see here.

Start with Si Woo Kim. His major record is shockingly thin for a career this good. In 37 major starts before this week, Kim has one top-10. He’s won the Players, but all due respect to that championship’s case for major status, this is a different building. Ask anyone on tour, though, and they’ll tell you Si Woo has every shot in the bag. This week, he’s finally used them in the right order. “I feel pretty comfortable,” Kim said, who is two shots behind despite playing through blisters on his foot. “I’ve been playing a lot in contention this year. So I’m like two shots back, and I don’t have to feel too much pressure.”

Ludvig Aberg isn’t exactly a surprise. Not long ago, he was the wunderkind, making a Ryder Cup team before he’d made a major start. But for as good as he’s been the last three years, he hasn’t returned to the trajectory his ceiling promised. The player who once looked like the sport’s inevitability has instead become something more ordinary. Very good, reliably so, which was never the plan. Sunday, at four shots back, is the chance to get back on it—to remind everyone, himself included, why the inevitability talk started in the first place.

Ryan Gerard is a star still being built. Sharp, funny, easy to like, with the game to match. This time last year, he was grinding through an alternate event, which he went on to win. His rise since has been steady—three runners-up in 2026, a good chance to make the U.S. Presidents Cup team—the kind that sneaks up on casual observers and becomes obvious all at once. This is his first Open. These are the weeks you introduce yourself to the world. “I’ve felt pretty good about the way that we handled business so far,” said Gerard, three behind. “It’s still a lot of golf left to play, and it’s not going to be easy tomorrow.”

A month ago, Jackson Suber was trying to hold onto his card. Good finishes at the RBC Canadian Open and the John Deere took care of that. His pre-week odds here were long for good reason: Until this week, he’d never been to Europe, let alone played links golf. Lucas Herbert tied the championship record with a 62 on Friday. Ryan Fox matched it Saturday morning. Both are steady veterans. Between them, they have four top-20 finishes in majors. They will all have late tee times Sunday afternoon.

And then there’s Burns. He nearly won one three weeks ago, inches from forcing a playoff in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock. The other close call came the year before, at the same championship, undone by a brutal ruling. Unlike the others here, his name on the leaderboard isn’t a total shock. What’s surprising is that he almost didn’t come at all; he’d planned to stay home with his wife and their newborn, and only made the trip after the baby arrived early and his wife pushed him to go. He’s also said, more than once, that he doesn’t love links golf, which showed in a rough start here. We’re guessing it’s growing on him.

“Talked to [wife] Caroline, texted with her, and she basically told me, like, you’re over there, and I’m good at home. Like, we’re good. You need to be where your feet are,” Burns said, regarding his weekend surge. “I think that was really what I needed to hear in that moment. It’s probably what I didn’t want to hear, but I needed to hear it.”

But Burns knows better than most that someone doing something they’ve never done before doesn’t mean it will be something good. Majors don’t just crown people; they take parts of you and leave scars. Someone will eject, hit a shot that finds a lie they’ve never had to reckon with, watch a two-shot lead evaporate on the back nine in the time it takes to read a putt wrong. Someone will get within a swing of what they’ve wanted since they were a kid and lose it, and the losing will be worse for how close it came, because next year is never guaranteed, and for some of these men, this might be the only Sunday like this they ever get.

That’s the cruelty, and the appeal. The margin for what you’re willing to lose gets set impossibly high, and nobody gets to choose the cost after the fact. Most of these players will walk off the 18th green Sunday having surrendered a day or week or season’s worth of good form, maybe more than that, and gotten nothing back for it. But somewhere in that group is the man who finally does the thing he’s never done, and walks away with something that never expires.

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