So what is this Wood on the leaderboard, no it's not Tiger it's English amateur Chris Wood

Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:10 am (Eastern)

By Sal Johnson

Another amateur comes to the forefront at Birkdale, this time it's Englishman Chris Wood

No it's not Tiger Woods without a s, it's amateur Chris Wood. What a story that could be, an English amateur champion and Wood could be that. First of all let's have a history lessson of amateurs in majors.

Photo: © David Cannon/Getty Images Amateur Chris Wood of England salutes the crowd on the 7th after making a birdie

First of all we have seen 14 amateur winners in the majors, six at the British Open and 8 at the British Open. The last at the British was Bobby Jones in 1930, the last in any major was Johnny Goodman in the 1933 U.S. Open.

Since World War II there has been four players that have been runner-up in six events, Frank Stranahan was runner-up three times. Stranahan was runnerup in the 1947 Masters, '47 British Open and the '53 British Open. The others were Ken Venturi in the 1956 Masters, Jack Nicklaus in the 1960 U.S. Open and Charles Coe in the 1961 Masters.

Since 1970, there have been only two top-ten finishes in majors, Justin Rose T4th in 1998 and Jim Simons T5th in the 1971 U.S. Open.

Now let's learn a bit about Wood, he is a 20 year-old from Bristol, England which is a working class town about 100 miles west of London. Woods won the English Golf Union's order of merit in 2007 and made his debut for England in the Home Internationals in the same year. He won the Russian Amateur title earlier that season and, as a result, was invited to play in the European Tour's Russian Open later in the season. He also shared the 2007 West of England Strokeplay title with David Horsey while, earlier in 2008, he won the Welsh Open Strokeplay championship. A member of the England under-21 squad in 2005/06, part of the A squad in 2006/07 and now a member of the current elite squad. A member at Long Ashton in Bristol since he was nine-years-old, he was a single figure handicapper by the age of 12. A keen footballer - he was a striker for Nailsea United Juniors and went to the Bristol City F.C Academy - a knee injury hampered his career and at 15 he opted to focus on golf. He started out with rounds of 75-70-73 and par the first 2 holes made bogey at 3 then par 4, 5 and 6. Made a good putt at 7 for birdie and then made another birdie at 9 to play the front nine in one under. Unfortunately he just bogeyed the 11th but isn't it a treat to have another Justin Rose story this week.


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