$9 million Rolex Series event<\/a> without his right-hand man.\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s a big part of my team.\u00a0He has been for a long time now,\u00a0and it\u2019s just disappointing that they can\u2019t figure out something.\u201d<\/p>\nLast year, Larson said he didn\u2019t realize until a month before the Open that he required the new visa. When it was denied, the PGA Tour and the R&A wrote letters vouching for Larson, while English also reached out to Warren Stephens, the US Ambassador to the UK. <\/p>\n
This year, attempts to get Larson across the Atlantic were similarly arduous. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe went through the same process, hired a lawyer and went through all the correct things to do\u00a0to try to get approved for his visa,\u00a0and unfortunately it got refused again,\u201d English says. \u201cHe knew what to expect and getting ahead of it a little earlier,\u00a0he paid for it to get expedited.\u00a0It really wasn\u2019t expedited.\u00a0He only found out that he got refused\u00a0maybe a day before he was coming over here.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t know what else to do. He\u2019s tried everything.\u00a0We\u2019ve contacted a lot of people to try to help him out,\u00a0and I don\u2019t understand why.\u00a0He\u2019s been an outstanding citizen of the United States for a long time. He can still travel a lot of countries,\u00a0and he\u2019s not going to bother anybody.\u00a0He\u2019s over here to do the job,\u00a0and that\u2019s helped me a lot in the last nine years.\u00a0I just wish it would be a little easier for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
English\u2019s frustration that he cannot have his longtime friend and looper on the bag for the final major of the season is palpable. The irony last year was that English had his best-ever Open result at Royal Portrush, finishing second behind Scottie Scheffler. Instead, he had his putting coach Ramon Bescansa on the bag in Northern Ireland, with Larson missing out on his share of his boss\u2019s $1.75 million earnings.<\/p>\n
\u201cEric\u2019s been over here a number of times caddying for me\u00a0in the Scottish and The Open,\u201d English, a five-time PGA Tour winner, explains. \u201cI don\u2019t know why all of a sudden he\u2019s not able to come over. He\u2019s put a lot of time and effort into it. He has so much credibility.\u00a0I\u2019ll stand by that man for anything.\u00a0He\u2019s done a lot for my career. We\u2019ve been together for nine years,\u00a0and I hate it that he\u2019s not able to come over here.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems that he\u2019s still being punished\u00a0for something he did a long time ago,\u00a0and to me, he paid his price\u00a0spending 10 years in prison,\u00a0and he\u2019s still being hurt for that,\u00a0and he\u2019s gotten his life turned around.\u00a0He\u2019s an integral part of my team,\u00a0and he\u2019s helped me out tremendously over the last nine years,\u00a0and it\u2019s just disappointing that he can\u2019t come over\u00a0and be on the bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, English had made contingency plans. He reached out to Geno Bonnalie \u2013 the former caddie of Joel Dahmen and star of Netflix\u2019s Full Swing \u2013 to caddie for him this week in North Berwick and then will have his coach Bescansa back on his bag next week at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very optimistic that Eric was going to come over,\u201d English says, \u201cbut you\u2019ve always got to have a Plan B in place\u00a0in case it doesn\u2019t happen because it\u2019s totally out of my hands. I\u2019m happy that Geno\u2019s able to help\u00a0and Ramon\u2019s able to help next week,\u00a0and we\u2019re going to see if we can get in the mix for these tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year\u2019s Open runner-up will be without his right-hand man again at Royal Birkdale. And, as Ben Parsons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-678610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}