Lewis aims to rekindle his Open love affair
Englishman back on big stage after seven years Career stalled after 2011 heroics as an amateur
It was with a certain grim prescience that Tom Lewis admitted, in his breakthrough year of 2011: “If golf doesn’t turn out to be my life, I’m going to struggle.”
Back then, there were few grounds for fear. He had bolted into the first-round lead of the Open at Sandwich – alongside Thomas Bjorn – acquired a high-profile coach in Pete Cowen, and signed with management giants IMG. All the pieces were in place for Lewis to announce himself as English golf ’s next superstar. The fact that he belonged to Welwyn Garden City, the same club as Sir Nick Faldo, merely enriched the poetry.
Fast-forward seven years, and the arc has not been quite so seamless. Lewis has toiled forlornly on the outer reaches of the European circuit, losing his main tour card in 2015 and drifting ever further into obscurity. After his stunning Open debut in 2011, when he shot the lowest score by an amateur in 151 years of the event, he has played in just two majors since, the US Opens at Pinehurst and Shinnecock Hills, missing the cut. Overwhelmed by the hype at his dramatic entrance, he has found it almost impossible to script an encore.
And yet here he is at Carnoustie, back in the Open after securing one of the last available spots through final qualifying at Prince’s Golf Club in Kent. The thrill, it would seem, has yet to wear off.
“I have been thinking about the Open for the last seven years,” Lewis said. “I haven’t played in it since St George’s, and that’s why I went to qualify at Prince’s – that part of the world has been good to me. I plan to enjoy it at Carnoustie, just like I did in 2011.”
He relished his practice pairing yesterday with Phil Mickelson, and sounded sanguine about the stumbling blocks that have brought him to this point. As he put it: “If things happen fast, then sometimes they end fast. I’m happier in myself now.”
Growing pains in golf can be a painful, isolating process. Just ask Justin Rose, who missed his first 21 cuts as a professional. Or Gordon Sherry, the Scot who won the Amateur Championship in 1995, played at the Masters the following year, and was never heard from again. The trouble is that Lewis has never known quite what to pursue in his life instead.
Having grown up with dyslexia, he found that school held little interest, with his thoughts focused on the name he could create for himself as a golfer. Even he struggled to imagine, though, the splash he would make on that sunlit Thursday on the Kentish coast, where he shot a record 65. His family, while beaming with pride, could not disguise the toll that Lewis’s dedication had taken on his personal life.
“I couldn’t name five people Tom could call friends,” said Jack, his younger brother, that evening. Lewis later reflected ruefully that three level-par rounds could have taken him into a play-off with Darren Clarke. In the barren years that he has endured since, those high standards have had to ease. Should he somehow rekindle the magic here, there would be few more popular tales.