{"id":731876,"date":"2026-06-28T23:46:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T23:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/731876\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T23:46:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T23:46:30","slug":"tiger-woods-phil-mickelson-among-9-past-champions-not-playing-2026-british-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/731876\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson among 9 past champions not playing 2026 British Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-ylk=\"elm:icon;slk:USA TODAY;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"USA TODAY\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"795\" height=\"183\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"pr-2.5 max-w-[150px] max-h-[40px] min-[601px]:max-w-[115px]\" style=\"color:transparent;max-width:auto;max-height:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/aol_usatoday_us_articles_590.png\"\/><\/a>Sun, June 28, 2026 at 5:11 PM UTC<img alt=\"\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"4502\" height=\"3274\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img w-full w-full h-auto\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/b2cbf12c-e3b0-4e81-8255-acf4eb474506.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The field of 156 for the <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/golf\/pga\/the-open\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">2026 Open Championship<\/a> will not include nine past champions. It&#8217;s a who&#8217;s who, also some &#8220;whatever happened to that guy,&#8221; but there are also no real surprises.<\/p>\n<p>The golf world has known for some time now that Tiger Woods would miss the Open. <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/golfweek.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/golf\/majors\/british-open\/2025\/07\/18\/tiger-woods-last-competitive-round-golf-2024-british-open\/85263828007\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">His last round in competition<\/a> was at the 2024 Open. <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/golf\/tiger-woods-set-to-miss-all-four-majors-again\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Bob Harig reported in May<\/a> that Woods didn&#8217;t submit an entry to the 2026 Open.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, Phil Mickelson was added to the list. He was originally on the R&amp;A&#8217;s exempt list, <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/golfweek.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/golf\/majors\/british-open\/2026\/06\/23\/british-open-2026-field-qualified-royal-birkdale-open-championship\/90649355007\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">as recently as last Tuesday<\/a>, but Lefty has since slid down into the non-playing section. It was on Friday, June 26, that <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/golfweek.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/golf\/liv\/2026\/06\/26\/phil-mickelson-2-incidents-unwanted-sexual-advances-skratch-report\/90714228007\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Alan Shipnuck dropped a reporting bombshell on Mickelson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Officially, the R&amp;A&#8217;s website describes the list of non-playing past champions as:<\/p>\n<p>The following players were exempt for The 154th Open but either did not enter the championship or have since withdrawn:<\/p>\n<p>Past champions are exempt through the age of 60.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/golfweek.usatoday.com\/staff\/2647266001\/todd-kelly\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Todd Kelly<\/a> is an assistant managing editor at Golfweek.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Golfweek: <a data-ylk=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/golfweek.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/golf\/majors\/british-open\/2026\/06\/28\/british-open-field-2026-past-champions-not-playing\/90731030007\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson past champions not playing British Open<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sun, June 28, 2026 at 5:11 PM UTC The field of 156 for the 2026 Open Championship will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-731876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731876","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=731876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}