Ryan Gerard enters the final round of The Open three shots behind leader Sam Burns. The former Tar Heel will tee it up on Sunday alongside Si Woo Kim in the penultimate pairing. It’s been an impressive Open Championship debut at Royal Birkdale for the confident 26-year-old, but it hasn’t been entirely smooth.
In Round 2, Gerard hit a dreaded shank with a wedge into a sandy area well right of the 8th green. He blasted his third shot onto the green and buried a 20-footer to save par, punctuating the incredible escape with a fiery fist pump. He’s become an expert at navigating the uncertain.
A year ago, Gerard was in a very different place, faced with a career-changing decision: wait around for a spot in his first Open Championship as an alternate, or travel to an opposite field event where he had a spot in the field.
Gerard had just teed it up at the Scottish Open, making the cut and finishing T-74. As the fifth alternate for the Open at Royal Portrush, he thought about hanging around, but Gerard knew he had a spot in the Barracuda Championship in Reno. So a week after flying from the John Deere to Scotland, he hopped on a plane back to the States.
By the time he landed at JFK, he was second alternate for the Open. He was halfway between Reno and Scotland and deciding which direction to go.
“I was deciding if I needed to get off, get the clubs and get back over there, or do I just keep going?” Gerard said on the Any Given Monday podcast last year about his decision. “The R&A basically has someone on it. (They say) this is who we know might not be feeling great. Here’s who’s on site, here’s who’s not, here’s who’s committed. They’ll pull you off the alternate list if you say you’re not gonna go.”
Gerard and his team talked to people on the ground. What they heard wasn’t encouraging. Most players had registered and no one had heard of any significant injuries. Injured players are more likely to push themselves to the first tee in a major championship than withdraw. Sam Stevens was first alternate and healthy. He’d be there waiting.
Sensing it wasn’t likely anyone else would withdraw, Gerard’s friend Ben Griffin encouraged him to continue to Reno. It turned out to be sage advice.
Gerard loved Old Greenwood, the host course for the ‘Cuda. In 2023, he finished T-4 at the Honda Classic after Monday qualifying, earned special temporary membership on the PGA Tour and finished fifth at the ‘Cuda. Gerard ended that season outside the top 125 but would have maintained conditional status had he been a full PGA Tour member. But the special temporary membership designation left him in a gray area with minimal status — he wasn’t eligible to be a conditional PGA Tour member and was relegated to a worse category on the Korn Ferry Tour than every other player outside the top 125. With only four guaranteed KFT starts, he barely had a place to play in 2024.
“It’s obviously frustrating because you feel like you played good enough to get your PGA Tour card and keep your PGA Tour card,” Gerard said. “But in the category I was in, that didn’t apply to me. I have a lot of good people around me that were being positive about the situation and were saying, ‘If you play good golf, you’ll get where you want to be, sooner rather than later.’”
Gerard didn’t complain. He refocused and got back to work.
Midway through the following season, Gerard won the Korn Ferry Tour’s BMW Charity Pro-Am by six shots. He went on to finish 12th on the season-long points race by year’s end, earning his way back on the PGA Tour. It took him a full year, but good golf prevailed.
He arrived in Reno for the 2025 Barracuda Championship in the darkest hours of a Tuesday morning. The people leaving the casinos at that hour could have been cast as extras in The Walking Dead. Exhausted, Gerard decided that even if he got into the Open last minute, he wasn’t going to try to make it back. His focus would be entirely on the ‘Cuda. It paid off.
Through three rounds, he held a one-point lead in the Stableford format event over 2021 champion Erik Van Rooyen. The par-birdie-eagle start in the final round gave him breathing room. After pouring in a 30-footer for another eagle at the par-5 11th, the tournament became Gerard’s to lose. He held on to complete his comeback story. The win gave Gerard a two-year PGA Tour exemption and spots in The Players Championship and PGA Championship.
Just to be in contention in his first Open Championship, Gerard has beaten the odds. Data Golf gives Gerard a six percent chance of winning.
A year ago, Gerard stood in JFK trying to decide whether to chase a dream across the Atlantic or trust the opportunity waiting in Reno.
Trusting the opportunity sent him in the right direction.
On Sunday at Royal Birkdale, he’ll tee off with a chance to win The Open Championship — exactly where that decision was supposed to lead.
Comments
...