English Men’s Amateur Championship: Bishop’s Stortford’s Max Hopkins beaten 5&4 by Romford’s Henry Styles in Sunday’s 36-hole final
Bishop’s Stortford’s Max Hopkins’ brilliant bid to win the men’s English Amateur Championship fell at the final hurdle on Sunday (August 3).
The 22-year-old was beaten 5&4 by Romford’s Henry Styles in the 36-hole climax to the centenary championship at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake, which has hosted the Open Championship 13 times.
He was looking to emulate previous champions that include English superstars Tommy Fleetwood, Danny Willett, Paul Casey (twice) and Nick Faldo, while Matt Fitzpatrick was a runner-up in 2013.
Bishop’s Stortford Golf Club member Hopkins, who works shifts behind the bar at The Star in Bridge Street, went into the final full of confidence.
On Tuesday (July 29), as the championship got under way with the first of two qualifying stroke play rounds, he equalled the links course’s record of 63 set by Masters and US Open winner Jon Rahm when the Spaniard finished tied second at the 2023 Open.
Today, the former Hockerill Anglo-European College and Leventhorpe School student was unable to reproduce that form and had to settle for the runners-up spot.
Hopkins got off to a good start and was 1 up after four holes having won the par four 1st with a par to Styles’ bogey.
But Styles established a momentum as Hopkins’ game hit a rough patch, the Essex boy winning five of the six holes between the 5th and the 10th to go 4 up courtesy of two birdies while his Hertfordshire rival carded a no-score on the 6th along with two bogeys.
Hopkins immediately halved the deficit by winning the 11th and 12th with pars as Styles scored a bogey and a no-score of his own.
The pair could not be separated on the last six holes, halving them all with three birdies, two bogeys and a par, and Styles was 2 up at the lunchtime interval.
In the afternoon round, both players put their patchy morning form behind them, enjoying bogey-free outward nines. But Styles’ five birdies to Hopkins’ two put him 5 up at the turn.
The Stortford man capitalised on his Romford rival’s bogey on the 10th to reduce his advantage to 4 up, but Styles restored his five-hole cushion by birdieing the par four 12th, and the match finished on the 14th.
It was a valiant effort by Hopkins over the course of nine rounds of golf in six successive days.
The championship consisted of two days of stroke play qualifying on Tuesday and Wednesday for the 204 men and 84 women, and following a total of 36 holes, the top 64 men and top 32 women progressed to the match play stages from Thursday.
Hopkins was bogey-free as he hit 12 birdies and an eagle over the two qualifying rounds, and his score of 14 under meant he was top seed going into Thursday’s match play, where he won 2&1 against Colchester’s Ollie Baker in their last-64 encounter.
On Friday, after a smooth 7&6 last-32 victory over Cookridge Hall’s Alfie Storer in the morning, Hopkins lost three holes on the bounce during the back nine to Monty Holcombe, of Walton Heath, before rescuing a win on the 18th in their afternoon last-16 contest.
In Saturday morning’s quarter-final match, the Stortford golfer beat Jake Hibbert, of Warrington, 1 up in the only one of the four quarter-finals that went to the last hole.
Then, in his afternoon semi-final, he was an eventually comfortable winner over Milan Reed, of Long Ashton, Bristol, coming back from 2 down after four holes to win 5&3.
Hopkins could have gone on to match or even better his four-day-old course record had his semi gone the full distance – for he was eight under when the match finished on the 15th with three holes left to play, including the par five 16th. After three birdies on the outward nine, he hit an eagle and three birdies in four holes from the 11th.