A year after his memorable Open moment, John Parry arrives to The 154th Open at Royal Birkdale with greater motivation and confidence about where his game sits following a transformative year in his career.
When Parry arrived at last year’s Open, it was just his second appearance in the championship and first since he’d ended a 14-year wait for his second victory on the DP World Tour.
Having made the cut, Parry announced himself during the third round with a memorable hole-in-one at the par-three 13th at Royal Portrush, moving into contention and eventually ending his week with a career-high Major finish of tied 16th.
That is, until last month’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. The culmination of one of the most compelling career resurgences in DP World Tour memory, Parry capped off his first return to the U.S. Open since 2015 with a final round 69 to finish tied 11th.
“It’s been a dream come true,” he said. “It’s quite an iconic course in the U.S. Open schedule, so to play well and put in a good performance… really happy.”
Reflecting now, Parry said what he truly gained from that week was confidence. He’d had two missed cuts beforehand, and after working with his putting coach on site, his U.S. Open finish was both a sense of validation that he wasn’t far away, and motivation to continue on the path he’s on.
“Obviously it's amazing,” he told the DP World Tour.
“I kind of look at it as more for your confidence. I'm off two missed-cuts… and you feel like you’re competitive.
"I know the U.S. Open's really hard, but I felt like I made some really silly mistakes as well. I hit one out of bounds in the second round, and made a couple of silly three-putts, and I know everyone could probably say the same, but you don't feel like you're miles away.
"So I feel like it's a very good thing for my confidence, especially going into The Open. It gives me that little bit of motivation to sort of know I'm doing the right things to hopefully do well in them as well.
“My putting coach came out for the U.S. Open and he sort of just got me on the straight and narrow with that.
"We work a lot on my alignments, and it's one of them things that I don't use a line on the ball, so I'm sort of just using my eyes and it can get a little bit out, but I think you know you end up becoming trying to be too precise with everything and you end up outside.
"It’s getting me more into like visualizing the putt more, like trying to go through a process of how you would be on the course. I felt like I just tidied that up a little bit.”
For much of his career, Parry has been the epitome of a journeyman professional. In his 18 years in the paid ranks, the Englishman has been a three-time Qualifying School graduate, three-time HotelPlanner Tour graduate, four-time HotelPlanner Tour winner and two-time DP World Tour winner.
After earning his way back to the DP World Tour for the 2025 season, Parry wasted little time in making a mark. A first victory in 14 years in Mauritius kick-started an impressive rise, and by the time he walked off the 18th green at The Renaissance Club last summer, he was ranked seventh on the Race to Dubai Rankings presented by DP World, with a runner-up finish in Kenya and a tied fourth at the Soudal Open among the highlights of a steady, confident run.
Coming to The Open, Parry revelled in the challenge of being back competing against the world’s best. From there, he finished tied third at both the Nexo Championship and Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, earning his way back to the season-ending DP World Tour Championship for the first time since 2010. He ended his season 11th on the Race to Dubai, securing one of the top ten dual membership cards with the PGA TOUR.
He then closed out 2025 with back-to-back top tens on the DP World Tour, and has spent most of 2026 playing in America, highlighted by making his first 13 cuts in a row – including a top ten at the Puerto Rico Open – before his T11 at the U.S. Open. Last week’s Genesis Scottish Open was his first DP World Tour start of the season.
“I think one of the things I probably have learned is, without sounding arrogant or anything like that, I'm pretty good at golf," he said.
"Sometimes you've got to give yourself a little bit of praise. I mean, obviously golfers are always looking for the negative, aren't we, or what we can do better. But I think that's been the main thing is like, I'm not a million miles off being really good or winning an event. The U.S. Open was probably the biggest movement in that, it will be the one thing I’ve learned.
“It's like a comfort factor when I played the U.S. Open. Coming from a DP World Tour event and you come to a U.S. Open, you're not used to seeing half the faces, you only see them on TV. They don't really come over to Europe very much. So being around them more becomes the norm, and when I turned up at the U.S. Open, I didn't feel nervous. It felt like a normal event, within reason. It's obviously going to make you feel a bit more comfortable when you're in that environment.”
His general perspective is a good one. His career has done a complete u-turn from when he was ranked outside the top 1000 on the Official World Golf Ranking and playing on the EuroPro Tour in 2021, and he knows better than most continued success isn’t guaranteed.
After all, after a successful amateur career, Parry won the Vivendi Cup in his rookie DP World Tour season, but the next decade would be one of toil as he fought to stay on Tour with those numerous trips to the Qualifying School.
Parry will turn 40 later this year, and while he doesn’t know how long his PGA TOUR career may last, he’s determined not to have any regrets. It’s why he spent a long stint nine weeks there ahead of returning to the UK, and is able to put into perspective being out in the United States.
“Good and bad,” he said of how he’s found being away from home this year, admitting that he's had family or sponsors at 10 out of 16 events.
“The golf courses are amazing over there and the way they look after you and the courses you play. But my wife is still working, so I've not really seen her very much, so that's always tricky.
“I'm pretty good at, you know, being in my own space and doing my own thing. I maybe would have struggled more if I haven't had people come out. I think I've played like 16 events or something. I'll probably have people out for like ten of them, you know what I mean? At the same time, you're in for six to eight hours a day. You've only got a few hours haven't you to kill on your own. It's not the end of the world.
“I can look at it as a positive and from a motivational side. I’m 40 this year. It's not going to go on forever. I'm like, let's make the most of this now. I might be on the PGA TOUR for five years or one, who knows?
"But I don't want to have any regrets when I come out at the end of it. I want to know I've done as good as I could do. I don't want to go, I should have done this or that, or I could have done this and I would have been out there longer. Just do it, you know, do all the preparation and the training you can. For me, it's about trying to drag out if it's two years, five years, as long as I can, and just trying to do everything right.”
His results-focused mindset has slightly shifted, too. At 87th on the PGA TOUR’s FedEx Cup rankings, there is a chance Parry could make the Play-Offs in his first season as a dual member. While earlier in the year he had called this season a ‘free hit’, he now is keen to ‘put his foot down’.
“Now it's going pretty good, and I can sort of see the PlayOffs are coming in as well and you're trying to sort of creep into them. It's now just trying to sort of put my foot down.”
Sharper and more assured, Parry now returns to The Open a year later with a perspective shaped by a transformative spell in his career and a growing belief in where his game truly sits thanks to experience playing week in and week out with the world’s best.
That being said, his preparation hasn’t been quite what he expected coming back thanks to the heatwave in the UK.
“I've bought a house and it's getting done up, but I'm renting somewhere, it’s like a green house,” he laughed about coming back to the U.K. “I did a day and I was like, I can't do this. So I decided to go to a hotel.”
He did however make sure he’s had plenty of links golf experience coming into The Open. Preparing for the final Major of the year, Parry took a trip to Ireland to play both Portrush and Old Head with friends, as well as Ganton Golf Club ahead of the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club. Testing himself at different links venues, despite a missed cut last week, Parry is certainly prepared.
Now at Royal Birkdale, Parry has had a look at the course, and spoke on the range about his year.
“It’s all good new experiences and I’ve loved every minute of it and it’s going well, trying to play my own game and see how it goes here.”
Like many others, he pointed to the likelihood that he wouldn’t be hitting many drivers on the front-nine. With the course firm, fast and demanding precision, that may well prove true. What is assured is that while Parry returns to familiar ground this week, it’s not as the same player he was then.
