Takumi Kanaya

Makes his fourth successive appearance in the Championship, this time after a joint third-place finish at the GateWay to The Open Mizuno Open in May when four spots at Royal Liverpool were on offer as part of The Open Qualifying Series.

Seven days later he won the BMW Japan Tour Championship Mori Building Cup – a victory he dedicated to his mother as she battled breast cancer – to go top of the circuit’s money list.

Kanaya was still an amateur when he won the Mitsui Sumitomo Visa Taiheiyo Masters in 2019, finishing 63-65, and three weeks later his share of third in the Emirates Australian Open was good enough for one of the three Open places on offer because runner-up Louis Oosthuizen was already exempt.

He topped the amateur world rankings for 55 weeks, then on turning professional in 2020 had to wait a mere month before lifting the Dunlop Phoenix title.

The following April Kanaya added the Token Homemate Cup and qualified for St Andrews by finishing second to Chan Kim on the money list.

Only 20 when he made the halfway cut at the 2019 Masters, he missed it by just one stroke on his Open debut at Royal Portrush three months later. At 17 he nearly qualified for Royal Troon after finishing only one shot behind Yuta Ikeda in the previous season’s Japan Open.