BATON ROUGE – Smylie Kaufman‘s tour of the major championships in 2016 continues this week as he is among the 156 players competing at The 145th Open Championship at Royal Troon as he is paired with American Chris Kirk and South African George Coetzee in Thursday’s opening round beginning at 3:58 a.m. CT.
Kaufman is in The Open Championship field for the first time after already making his debut at The Masters Tournament and second career appearance at The U.S. Open Championship this season.
Kaufman was actually in the final group with Jordan Spieth at The Masters in April before finishing in a tie for 29th place in the event. After missing the cut at The U.S. Open nearly one month ago, Kaufman has found his form as he arrives at Royal Troon following his fourth top-10 finish of the season with a tie for 10th at the Quicken Loans National and tie for 27th at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.
The former Tiger standout will tee off this week ranked No. 15 in the FedExCup Standings with 1,181 points to his credit on the season. While making 16 cuts, earning nine top-25 finishes and winning his first PGA TOUR title at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, Kaufman has taken home $2,424,647 in total earnings during the 2015-16 season to rank No. 21 on the official PGA TOUR Money List.
This marks the second-straight season in which an LSU Tiger will play The Open Championship after former All-American Ben Taylor appeared in the 144th edition at the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.
After kicking off The 144th Open Championship with Thursday’s first round, Kaufman will play alongside Kirk and Coetzee in Friday’s second round as they will tee off at 8:59 a.m. CT to start the day. The Top 70 players in the overall standings and ties will make the 36-hole cut and advance to play the third and fourth rounds on the weekend.
American Zach Johnson is the defending Open Champion after defeating Australian Marc Leishman and South African Louis Oosthuizen in a playoff for the Claret Jug at St. Andrews a season ago. Johnson won a second career major championship after tying Leishman and Oosthuizen for the top spot after 72 holes with overall scores of 15-under par.