Erik van Rooyen pulls out of The Open

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 14 July 2022

Erik van Rooyen has withdrawn from The 150th Open with a neck injury. The South African will be replaced by England's Aaron Rai who reportedly drove up from Wolverhampton on Wednesday.

The South African was the second player on the day to withdraw following Justin Rose who was struggling with a lower back injury.

Van Rooyen enjoyed a brilliant second half to his 2021 season when he won the Barracuda Championship by five points over Andrew Putnam – he then went on to get into the FedExCup playoffs where he finished 7th at the Northern Trust, 5th at the BMW Championship before finishing T22 at the Tour Championship.

This year there were some positive signs with a T4 in Dubai and a top 15 at Sawgrass but he has since struggled with form and fitness – the withdrawal signs off a miserable major year for van Rooyen after missing the cuts in the year's first three majors and now not even teeing off in Scotland.

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Mark has worked in golf for over 20 years having started off his journalistic life at the Press Association and BBC Sport before moving to Sky Sports where he became their golf editor on skysports.com. He then worked at National Club Golfer and Lady Golfer where he was the deputy editor and he has interviewed many of the leading names in the game, both male and female, ghosted columns for the likes of Robert Rock, Charley Hull and Dame Laura Davies, as well as playing the vast majority of our Top 100 GB&I courses. He loves links golf with a particular love of Royal Dornoch and Kingsbarns. He is now a freelance, also working for the PGA and Robert Rock. Loves tour golf, both men and women and he remains the long-standing owner of an horrific short game. He plays at Moortown with a handicap of 6.

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