Connelly making a name for himself at Open Championship

Bob Weeks

TSN Senior Reporter

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SOUTHPORT, England -- A week ago, Austin Connelly was in Sardinia, Italy, playing in a Challenge Tour event. He shot 73-69 to miss the cut. His two rounds were played in front of a crowd that looks as if it could fit around a dinner table. And players used pull carts to get their clubs around the course.

Flash forward a week and the 20-year-old Canadian is sitting in third spot on the leaderboard of the Open, arguably the biggest tournament in the world. Above him are players ranked third and 18th in the world. Just below him are the first-, second- and eighth-ranked golfers on that list.

Connelly?  He sits 524th.

But that’s all about to change. No matter what happens on Sunday, no matter what he shoots, Connelly has just had his coming out party to the world. If you didn’t know the diminutive ball-striker before, you do now. He’s confident but not cocky and self-assured but not smug.

“I liked the golf course a lot and I knew the way my game was trending,” Connelly stated. “Of course I’m very pleased with where it’s led me so far but I wouldn’t say it’s surprised me the way I’ve played. I’d say more than anything I’m surprised the numbers haven’t been a little bit lower.”

If he isn’t surprised then a lot of other people may be. In the age of the power hitter, he gets it done another way, his way.

Off the tee, he’s giving up some 70 yards to the longest hitters here this week, but he doesn’t seem to worry one bit. Derek Ingram, the coach of Canada’s men’s national team, who worked with Connelly during his tenure on that squad, called him the ultimate precision player. When Ingram first met Connelly, he had the same impression many people do.

“Oh my,” Ingram thought. “He’s tiny.”

But Ingram soon learned that what his young charge can do with a golf club outweighs the number that shows up on the scale.

“He’s one of the best iron players I’ve ever seen,” Ingram recounted. “He almost never misses a fairway. He’s never going to be Bubba but he plays his own way, he plays Austin Connelly golf.”

That’s a fearless game, one where he isn’t afraid to challenge the course or his abilities. His golf IQ is well beyond most players who have just two decades on the planet. He’s prepared, focused and yet still relaxed.

Anyone who expected him to fall apart in the limelight or the grandeur of the stage has been disappointed. He seems to have no care about the size of the stage this week. This could be Sardinia, although he’s playing much better than he did there.

While he trails his pal Jordan Spieth by six shots and raising the Claret Jug may be a long shot, Connelly still has a lot to play for. He is vying for his European Tour card – he currently splits his time between the Euro circuit and the Challenge Tour – and a solo seventh-place-finish or better should likely give him the cash to lock that up.  That would mean fewer rounds where he has to pull his own clubs in a cart.

A top-10 finish would get him back into next year’s Open. A fourth-place finish would earn him a trip to Augusta, Ga., next spring to smell the azaleas.

“I’m very confident about how I’m hitting it so I’m not standing on the tee worried about where it might go,” Connelly said after his round on Saturday. “I’m just hitting it straight and solid and it’s translating into me being very calm.”

Connelly will be in the penultimate group on Sunday, playing alongside Brooks Koepka. There likely won’t be many times when the young dual citizen will be hitting first after the second shot. Koepka is averaging 321 off the tee, Connelly 286. Yet so far, they’ve both hit the same number of shots through 54 holes.

Connelly is experienced at answering that question of his citizenship, happily declaring himself a Canadian and an American. But that Canadian flag beside his name on the leaderboard has created a buzz back in the land of the Maple Leaf where fans have rightly claimed him as one of their own. To that end, Golf Canada extended an invitation to Connelly to come and play the RBC Canadian Open next week. He said he’d love to play and that he loves Glen Abbey, but first things first.

“I would love to play,” he said. “It's going to depend on how [Sunday] goes. I want to make sure I have my European Tour card secured for next year first. But obviously I'd love to go back and play in Toronto. It's really one of my favourite tournaments I've played so far.

 “It would be an honour to go back, and to receive an invitation this morning was very humbling and very nice.”

Connelly has been one of the great stories of this year’s Open. His rise from little-known qualifier to within a few spots of the top of the leaderboard is inspiring and remarkable and entertaining. And it certainly appears there’s a lot more to come.