winner and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler <\/a>and one shot behind runner-up Harris English.<\/p>\nHis world ranking, which was 49th entering the week, climbed to No. 27, which puts him in position to play the FedEx Cup playoffs and to have a chance to get to the Tour Championship and \u2014 wait for this \u2014 insert himself into the conversation as a possible U.S. Ryder Cup team member.<\/p>\n
Chris Gotterup of the United States tees off on the first hole during day four of The 153rd Open Championship. Getty Images<\/p>\n
When he was finished with post-round interviews, Gotterup crossed a large footbridge to get to the players clubhouse to meet up with his parents and found fans still in the grandstand yelling out his name and congratulating him. <\/p>\n
A young fan below the bridge asked him for his hat, and he tossed it to him.<\/p>\n
Before Gotterup came to Europe to play the Scottish, none of these people even knew who he was.<\/p>\n
Chris Gotterup of the U.S. shakes hands with Harris English of the U.S. on the 18th green after finishing their final round. REUTERS<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, I would have hoped to be in a position like this, but I don\u2019t know if I would have expected it to come this soon,\u201d Gotterup told The Post. \u201cIt\u2019s really just been a whirlwind two weeks. I feel like my belief levels are improved. I\u2019ve been surprised with how comfortable I\u2019ve been in these scenarios, and that\u2019s a nice feeling to know that I can step up to the plate and deliver when needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
English, Sunday\u2019s runner-up and a PGA Tour veteran with multiple wins, was paired with Gotterup on Sunday for the first time and said he was \u201cawesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he did last week was awesome to see, going toe-to-toe with Rory at the Scottish Open, and I think this is his first time playing links golf,\u201d English said. \u201cIt\u2019s his first Open Championship. His ball flight suits this place. He can flight it, and he can smash it.<\/p>\n
Chris Gotterup putts on the 6th green on day four of the 153rd Open Championship. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve played in nine or 10 of these, and my best finish was 14th. So for him in his first one, [to] finish third is pretty incredible. He\u2019s got a heck of a game, and I know the best is in front of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gotterup\u2019s caddie, Brady Stockton, talked about how \u201cthis has all happened really fast\u201d and how impressed he is with the way Gotterup has handled it all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like he\u2019s just in a really good place mentally, and I know he\u2019s put in a lot of hard work with that, and it\u2019s paying off,\u201d Stockton told The Post. \u201cI had been saying to a bunch of people going into last week that if we can just get a top 10, I feel like he\u2019ll be off and running. He just kind of had to crack through and get a little better result. He kept saying to me, \u2018I\u2019m playing well, and I feel like I should be getting better results.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just patience. So when last week came, he was ready when the opportunity presented itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland \u2014 Chris Gotterup gave himself one hell of a 26th birthday present Sunday: a third-place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[7697,427,99],"class_list":["post-26296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-british-open","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}