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Few golfers will tell a better backstory than Peake in Northern Ireland this weekCredit: Getty<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old is competing at Royal Portrush<\/a> having been released from a five-year prison sentence in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n After growing up alongside 2022 Open<\/a> champion Cameron Smith, Peake fell out of love with the game and became a \u2018bikie\u2019, joining a motorcycle gang called The Rebels.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was just normalised to it,\u201d he said. \u201cAll my friends that I grew up with, they were kind of around that scene and it wasn’t abnormal to hang out in that sort of scene.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s something that I did find love in and I did enjoy it. I was interested in it and I just found something there that I felt like I hadn’t found anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the camaraderie and sense of belonging, Peake found himself caught up in a violent world, which boiled over in 2014 and left him with a criminal conviction of grievous bodily harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just basically that’s the life I was living and there was someone else out there that was living the same sort of lifestyle, that was making threats,\u201d Peake recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI’m not saying it’s right that I’ve gone and beat someone up, but I haven’t gone and beat up your dad that’s just doing nothing, mowing his front lawn. He’s a person that was living my lifestyle as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot justifying it. But that’s how we would speak to each other. Meet their character with your character and whatever prevails from there. He was doing some bad things and we had knowledge offered and then he made some pretty heinous threats towards us as well. So we just went to deal with it and honestly, it wasn’t meant to happen like that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were generally just going there for a chat and he was probably going to get a couple punches along the way and it was left at that. It just happened to be that the threats that he threatened us with were true. He was armed and it escalated from there. That’s it.\u201d<\/p>\n Peake was sent to Hakea, which has a reputation for being one of Australia\u2019s most brutal jails.\u00a0<\/p>\n 4<\/p>\n Peake has the frame of a heavyweight boxer after five years in prisonCredit: Getty<\/p>\n The Aussie recalled: \u201cI mean, it is bad. But I remember they always used to have the saying as well, ‘if you don’t like the accommodation, don’t book the reservation’. And I booked that one for myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s pretty appalling. It’s more appalling for the fact there’s limited space. They try to cram so many people in. They’re just way too overpopulated and I think the whole justice system essentially, yeah you’ve done a crime, you go to jail, I don’t argue with that, but going to jail is to try and rehabilitate you to come out as a better person.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd by putting people in I guess places like that where it’s disgusting, you’re treated unfairly, it’s overpopulated, three people in a cell where there’s only meant to be one, it’s disgusting.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s not necessarily rehabilitating you, that’s making you more p***** off and you’re probably going to come out an angry person as well because you’ve just been treated like c**p.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in saying that as well, it was my choices that I made that led me there. So you just deal with it I guess.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite all of that, Peake did plenty of rehabilitation and reconnected with famed golf coach Richie Smith during his time inside.<\/p>\n 4<\/p>\n Peake quit his life as a bikie while he was in prison and turned his attention back to a professional golfing careerCredit: Getty<\/p>\n Smith had not given up on the talented prodigy golfer he saw all those years ago – and convinced Peake to refocus on a golfing career upon his release.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having picked up a club for the first time in six years, Peake immediately realised there was a lot of work to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was pretty s***,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was pretty average, it wasn’t great. I mean, it went forward, but a lot has come since then.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, Peake would go on to stage a remarkable comeback story over the years that followed, winning the New Zealand Open in March this year – on the same week his fiancee said yes – and booking his place at Royal Portrush<\/a>.<\/p>\n He is only permitted entry into the UK thanks to a British passport obtained with the help of his father\u2019s English background.\u00a0<\/p>\n And now, during the biggest week of his life, the irony is not lost on anybody that Peake just wants to be free.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Peake](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ryan-peake-australia-looks-practice-1010097230.jpg\")
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