Matthias Schwab

Just missed out on a place in the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St Annes – and the following year’s Masters – by losing on the last green of the 36-hole final of the Amateur Championship to Scot Alan Dunbar.

Royal St George’s will instead host his Open debut after a superb 2019 during which he posted six top-eight finishes on the European Tour in the space of nine tournaments.

He was a joint runner-up behind Paul Casey at the Porsche European Open, fourth at both the Italian Open and World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions and then tied for second again in the Turkish Airlines Open, where he took Tyrrell Hatton to the fourth extra hole of what began as a six-man play-off. That performance lifted him into the world’s top 80.

Schwab took part in the 2012 Junior Ryder Cup and, while attending Vanderbilt University in America, he twice represented Europe in the Arnold Palmer Cup and twice finished as the third best individual in the NCAA Championship.

He helped Austria come joint third at the 2016 Eisenhower Trophy World Amateur Team Championships, taking sixth place individually, before turning professional in 2017 and coming through the European Tour Qualifying School the same year.