Sam Burns did not arrive at The Open Championship with the tidy, businesslike schedule players usually prefer. He arrived with a story that was far messier, far more human and, frankly, far more revealing: his baby girl Belle was born early on July 3, and only then did he decide to make the trip to England. That is not a normal lead-in to a major championship. It is a reminder that the biggest decisions in sport are sometimes made far away from scoreboards and leaderboards, in the middle of family life that does not care what week the golf calendar says it is.
Burns had originally planned for the U.S. Open to be his last major championship of the year. Then life intervened. The due date for Burns and Caroline’s baby had been set for Tuesday, July 14, but Belle arrived early, and Burns did not swing a club for at least four days afterward. Late last week, he chose to travel to England anyway. It was a late call, and by his own admission, not one he made lightly.
“I was expecting to be at home,” Burns said. “I still wasn’t sure if I could get there mentally.” That is the real story here. The logistics matter, but the mental piece mattered more. Burns called it a “weird dynamic” of having a new baby: you want to be there for your family, but you also know that The Open is one of only four majors a year. “We only get four of these,” he said. “If it was a different event, I probably wouldn’t be here.”
A major championship decision with family at the centre
Burns did not leave chaos behind him. His family remained in Louisiana, and his parents were there to help. That support structure clearly mattered, because it gave him the room to travel without pretending the situation was simple. This was not a player chasing another week on the road because he fancied a change of scenery. This was a player weighing family responsibilities against a championship opportunity and deciding that, somehow, he could manage both.
And the timing makes the choice even more striking. Burns had not played a club for four days after Belle’s birth, then eventually made the journey to Southport. By Monday, he had arrived and started playing nine-hole practice rounds each day. By Wednesday, he was out on the back nine at Royal Birkdale with Scottie Scheffler. In practical terms, that is how you prepare for a major. In emotional terms, it is something else entirely: a man trying to settle into one of golf’s biggest stages after one of life’s biggest personal moments.
From a golf perspective, Burns arrives in much better form than his Open record might suggest. His best finish in 2024 at The Open was a T31, but that number can be misleading if read too narrowly. Last month, he finished runner-up at the U.S. Open, took T12 at the Travelers Championship and nearly played his way into a playoff at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. He also has four straight top-20s, which is hardly the profile of a player stumbling into a major hoping for the best.
Still, form is not the only test here. Burns has to balance the obvious demands of The Open Championship in Southport with the less visible weight of leaving home when his second child is barely a week old. That is why this story lands the way it does. It is not just about whether he can play well at Royal Birkdale. It is about the fact that he chose to be there at all, and the choice itself says plenty about how seriously he views these opportunities.
In a sport that often pretends every decision is purely technical, Burns’s late call cuts through all that nonsense. This was personal, difficult and real. He did not simply opt into another tournament. He stepped into a major championship while carrying the emotional drag of a brand-new family chapter back in Louisiana. That is the tension at the heart of the story, and it is exactly why Sam Burns wife Caroline and baby Belle are part of the Open conversation whether the trophy chasers like it or not.
