Brendon Todd

Finished joint 12th on his first Open appearance at St Andrews in 2015, missing out by only one stroke on the top-10 finish which would have earned him an instant return, but did not play the Championship again until two years ago.

Todd had still to secure his place at Royal Liverpool when he tied for eighth at May’s Wells Fargo Championship. Three places were available there as part of The Open Qualifying Series, but five of those ahead of him were already exempt and when winner Wyndham Clark joined them as part of the game’s top 50 at the end of May Todd was called into the field.

His first PGA Tour victory came at the 2014 HP Byron Nelson Championship and in November 2019 he won on back-to-back starts at the Bermuda Championship and Mayokoba Classic.

The first of those was by four strokes after a closing 62 containing seven successive birdies on the front nine. Yet little more than a year earlier Todd had missed the cut in 37 of his last 40 starts, had dropped outside the world’s top 2,000, failed to survive the second stage of the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School and was planning to retire and move into restaurant franchise ownership.