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TROON, Scotland – Eight years ago, the last time the British Open was held at Royal Troon, Andrew Johnston was the media darling of the championship.
“You want to pick me up?” Johnston joked to a reporter who asked about his weight during a media session that week.
Of the pizza he pounded after the first round, he said, “It wasn’t like a 20-inch, ‘Win a T-shirt if you finish it’ type of thing.”
Henrik Stenson may have won the Claret Jug but the jovial Johnston, known since childhood as Beef, won the hearts and minds of golf fans everywhere, finishing eighth after a final-round 68 and entered the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time at No. 89.
“The best week of my golfing career,” he said this week.
Reporter Nick Lozito, who interviewed Johnston before the tournament and wrote a piece worth your time on his Substack, shared that Johnston recently stumbled on an Instagram reel from that week at Troon. It showed his entrance under the first-tee grandstands to chants of “Beef! Beef! Beef!”
“That was an amazing experience,” Johnston told Lozito. “I’m still pretty speechless. Everywhere I’ve gone since, all over the world — America, all throughout Europe, Australia, South Africa — the fans and crowds have been amazing.”
This week, the 35-year-old Englishman is a continent and nearly 5,000 miles away from the 152nd Open and trying to resurrect his career. He’s playing his trade in Truckee, California, competing in a co-sanctioned event for the PGA Tour and DP World Tour at the Barracuda Championship. After spending one season on the PGA Tour in 2017-18, he failed to keep his card and then suffered a thumb injury that required multiple surgeries and sidelined him for most of 2021-22. That sent his world ranking plummeting to No. 1,932 late in 2023. “I didn’t know if I’d ever play golf again,” Johnston said late last year. When he finally returned, he withdrew from a tournament in South Africa citing a back injury.
According to Lozito, Johnston played with childhood friend Jess McAvoy, who caddied for him earlier in his career, at North Middlesex, their home course in London, a few months later, and convinced him to leave his job and caddie for him once again.
Johnston returned to the DP World Tour in June and missed his first two cuts. His play improved over the next two events, placing in the top 40 to jump nearly 800 spots in the world rankings, to 1,245, before heading to America. It’s a long way from those peak days of Beef Mania when the golf world couldn’t get enough of him.
Lozito concluded his piece by painting the picture of Johnston sitting in the shade before his Wednesday pro-am round, when his three amateur partners rushed to shake his hand.
“Is it OK if I call you ‘Beef?’ ” one asks.
Beef gives one of his infectious chuckles, Lozito noted.
“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”