SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Royal Birkdale is not anywhere Marcus Plunkett expected to be. Not when he turned down golf scholarships to attend West Point. Not when he was rising to the rank of captain in the U.S. Army. Not even when he touched a golf club again for the first time in nearly four years.
Yet there he was Wednesday on the range, pounding drives with his athletic 6-foot-5 frame on the final day of practice before his debut in the British
Open.
A few spots to his left was Jordan Spieth, a three-time major champion and the last Open champion at Birkdale. Down a ways to his right was two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau with a stationary camera behind him. It was a lot to take in.
“It's awesome,” Plunkett said. “As cool as it gets.”
Plunkett, a 32-year-old from Atlantic Beach, Florida, was among the 20 players who made it through 36-hole qualifying in the U.K. a few weeks ago, holding steady on the last four holes at Dundonald Links to grab the final spot.
He has been all over the world, and not just his Army stops in South Korea and Afghanistan. He made it through Asian Tour Q-school last year and already this year has gone from the Philippines to Malaysia to Singapore and Morocco. He is 20th on the Order of Merit.
Plunkett getting a card anywhere — the Korn Ferry Tour in 2025, the Asian Tour in 2026 — came about when he least expected. All it took was one impromptu round of golf, and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a part.
Plunkett finished his college career at Army by helping the Black Knights to the Patriot Conference title with brother Matt a freshman on the team. That would have seemed to be the end of his golf. He was a logistics officer during his five-year Army stint, specializing primarily in convoy maneuvers, either moving personnel or cargo. His golf clubs stayed home.
But one day after he returned to Fort Carson in Colorado, he decided to play golf with his dad.
“I shot 69 and thought I was the best golfer in the world,” Plunkett said. “And I played the next day and probably shot 95. But I stuck with it. My last few months in the Army, COVID was a thing and the DOD (Department of Defense) took it seriously. We had a lot of limited personnel office hours. I had a lot more free time on my hands and played a lot of golf.”
A career as an Army officer was on his mind until he fell back in love with golf.
“It was either time to re-up or go a different way,” Plunkett said. “I was enjoying golf so much that I decided I wanted to give it a go.”
And so he went. Plunkett qualified for a Korn Ferry Tour event each of the next two years after getting out of the Army in 2021, and at the end of 2024, he did well enough in Q-school to earn a Korn Ferry Tour card that guaranteed him eight tournaments. He didn't come close to keeping his card, and then tried his hand in Asia. The next step might be European tour Q-school.
It's a big world in golf, and Plunkett realized it can also be a small world.
He played a practice round Tuesday with Sahith Theegala, who has played on a Presidents Cup team and reached as high as No. 11 in the world ranking.
They were making small talk when Theegala realized one his high school teammates in California, Dean Sakata, also went to West Point and played with Plunkett.
“I didn't realize that until I asked him on the second hole,” Theegala said. “Dean was a super nice guy. Everyone loved him. And they were pretty close at West Point, so that shows me a lot about Marcus' character.”
It was a good day for Plunkett, who could see how a player of Theegala's pedigree approached a practice round at a major. And there was no small appreciation from Theegala.
Military veterans in golf are not new. Billy Hurley, a Naval Academy graduate, spent a decade on the PGA Tour and won once. Kyle Westmoreland became the first Air Force Academy graduate to make the cut in the U.S. Open in 2021. He currently is on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Plunkett would love to be next in line.
“He's been all over,” Theegala said. “It just awesome that he was serving our country and making such a big sacrifice for everyone and is still able to do what he loves. It shows a lot that you have one life to live, and now he's out here grinding. Hopefully, this will be a good week.”
It will be a long day, for sure. Plunkett is in the penultimate group, meaning his first tee shot in his first major will be about 4:10 p.m. local time. But he's at the British Open, a victory in itself at his stage of his second career. Also in the field is Austen Truslow, another American on the Asian Tour.
Asked what he wanted out of the week, Plunkett kept it simple: "Probably giving my mom and dad a hug when I walk off 18 every day.”
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