gary lemke COLUMN
the divide
CROSSING
As an amateur golfer Stuart Grehan was going nowhere fast, perhaps nowhere at all. Certainly, teeing it up in a Major would have been the stuff of fantasy.
After turning pro at the age of 24, he played in 86 events across the EuroPro Tour, Clutch Tour and HotelPlanner Tour. His best finish on the latter – a feeder circuit to the DP World Tour – was in the 2024 British Challenge where he shared 10th with South Africa's Darren Fichardt. Further down the leaderboard were the likes of Brandon Stone, Wilco Nienaber, Luke Jerling, JJ Senekal, Casey Jarvis and Keenan Davidse.
However, the Irishman struggled as a pro and in October 2024, seven years after being unable to break into the top 1000 on the Official World Ranking, he handed in his pro tour card and re-applied for amateur status.
Six months later, in April 2025, he received confirmation from the governing body, the R&A, that he could again play as an amateur. In June (2026) he won the prestigious British Amateur (where he is pictured above, right, with South African Daniel Bennett), a victory that comes with automatic entry into the 2026 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, the 2027 Masters and the 2027 US Open at Pebble Beach.
Usually, winning the British Amateur leads to the player plotting a professional path. South Africans Aldrich Potgieter (2022) and Christo Lamprecht (2023) followed that traditional route, while 2018 champion Jovan Rebula waited until he had completed his studies to turn pro in 2021. The British Amateur opens the doors.
Which is why Grehan's journey goes against the grain – although R&A Rules allow pros to renounce their status and return to the amateurs. The waiting period varies and depends on what the player achieved as a pro, although the R&A applied the minimum six-month cooling off period in the Irishman's case.
He played some fine golf at Royal Liverpool to see his name etched on the British Amateur trophy at the age of 33, but there will be those who will make an argument that Grehan, who'd finished with one top 10 on the HotelPlanner Tour, should have been made to wait for longer than the minimum cooling off period before regaining his amateur status.
And, in a dizzying set of circumstances, he now finds himself an automatic entrant at three Majors that he would have never, ever thought would be possible.
One can't begrudge a pro from tearing up his card and applying to go back to the amateurs. Trying to earn a living is an arduous task and only a small percentage are able to do that. No cut means no earnings for a week, but the expenses keep mounting. It's a brutal profession.
Perhaps a more pertinent question would be whether or not a former pro should be able to take part in the blue riband amateur events. A Sunshine Tour player, as a hypothetical example, could return to the unpaid ranks and win the South African Amateur, which then gets a slot into the SA Open or open up other pathways to qualify for the Majors.
Or, in this case, the winner of the British Amateur gets to play with Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler at Royal Birkdale, Augusta and Pebble Beach.
A personal opinion is that amateurs should be reinstated and I've got no problem with the R&A's 'cooling off' transition periods. However, I wouldn't allow a former pro to tee it up into an amateur event whereby the winner gets to play in the national open or a Major.
THE TEAM
Publisher: Gary Lemke
Senior copy editor: Tim Whitfield
Designer: Hayley Davis
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Editorial assistant: Mark Lemke
Cover photo: Carl Fourie
Contributors: Brendan Barratt, Ken Borland, Ashleigh Buhai, Mike Green, Gavin Groves, Dale Hayes, Ben Karpinski, Gary Lemke, Simon Osler, Grant Shub, Clinton van der Berg, Michael Vlismas, Tim Whitfield
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