A 48-year-old Englishman is contending at Torrey Pines, but it may not be the one you expected. Lee Westwood finished third in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and has had a recent resurgence, highlighted by runners-up at THE PLAYERS and Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. RELATED: Full U.S. Open leaderboard | Bland’s breakthrough win on European Tour Westwood’s countryman, Richard Bland, was the one making waves Friday morning, however. He recently went viral, thanks to his emotional interview after winning his first European Tour title. The underdogs are one of the big stories at every U.S. Open, and especially here, where Rocco Mediate took Tiger Woods the distance 13 years ago. Now Bland is beautifully filling that role. Here are five things to know about the U.S. Open’s surprise contender: 1. Bland’s first European Tour win was a long time coming. His win at last month’s British Masters made him the oldest first-time winner in that circuit’s history. It came in his 478th start. Only Malcolm Mackenzie (509) had made more starts before winning his maiden European Tour title. Bland holed a 25-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole, then beat Italy’s Guido Migliozzi in a playoff. In a video call with his parents, Bland asked his mother if she was OK. “No!” she said through tears of joy. “I’ve waited for this so long. We’re absolutely proud of you.” Bland won the Challenge Tour Grand Final in 2001 to earn his European Tour card. He lost a playoff in the Irish Open in 2002, then had to wait 15 years for his next runner-up finish. He also finished second in last year’s Alfred Dunhill Championship. 2. He arrives at Torrey Pines on a bit of a hot streak. Bland was ranked 218th in the world entering the British Masters. He’s jumped more than 100 spots since. He followed his win with a third-place finish at the European Tour’s Made in HimmerLand. Those were his last two starts before arriving at Torrey Pines. He’s now 115th in the world ranking. He’s never ranked inside the world’s top 100 in his career, reaching a career best of 102nd in 2016. 3. This is just Richard Bland’s second PGA TOUR start in the United States. He missed the cut after shooting 77-70 in the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. This is just the fourth major of Bland’s career, as well. He’s also played in two Open Championships, finishing T22 in 2017 and missing the cut in 1998. He was two shots off the lead after the opening round of the 2017 Open. 4. Bland had to return to the Challenge Tour, Europe’s version of the Korn Ferry Tour, as recently as 2019. “I said to my coach Tim Barter what am I going to do the next three or four years,” he wrote in a blog on EuropeanTour.com. “It was definitely a low point, but I always had that belief that I could still compete, and win, on the European Tour.” It was the fourth time that Bland graduated from the Challenge Tour. 5. Bland’s brother, Heath, was hospitalized in late 2017 with what he believed to be the flu. His heart stopped for a few seconds and he spent several weeks in a a medically-induced coma. “I would never, ever put what happened to my brother as the excuse for losing my card, but I wasn’t at the races for the first six months of that year. He was the priority, and rightly so, because his health would always be more important than whatever I achieved in golf,” Richard Bland wrote.
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