The Open 2025: Perthshire pair Daniel Young and Phil McKenna team up at Portrush

A debut major appearance in The 153rd Open is the job at hand and, naturally, the Perth man is excited about stepping on to the first tee at Royal Portrush on Thursday, albeit having to wait until 4.05pm in the penultimate group.

“Yeah, it's been a good experience so far,” said Young, who secured his spot in the Claret Jug event through one of the Final Qualifiers at Dundonald Links in Ayrshire a fortnight ago.

“I feel like Monday was a bit of just getting used to everything being a bit bigger than what I'm used to anyway. Then went out yesterday, got our work done and stuff and, yeah, it's been great.”

Tuesday’s practice round was in the company of the three other Scots in the field as he joined world No 14 Bob MacIntyre, as well as amateur duo Cameron Adam and Connor Graham for nine holes.

“Yeah, it was good to see Bob,” said Young of his conqueror in the final of the Scottish Amateur Championship at Muirfield just under nine years ago. “I've obviously not seen him in a wee while, so it was good to catch up with him and play with the younger lads as well. Yeah, everybody was in good spirits and stuff and we just had a good time, to be honest.

“All four of us are obviously rooting for each other to do well being from Scotland, but, at the end of the day, you want to beat all three of them. I asked Bob a couple of questions just from 2019, obviously, when he played well here (finishing joint-sixth), but his memory was lacking a little bit (laughing).

“But we're all trying to do our prep and figure it out and we've all got different games as well. How he sees stuff and how I see stuff and Connor and Cammy as well, we all see stuff differently. So it's just doing our own prep and seeing how I see it.”

Young’s caddie this week is fellow Perthshire man Phil McKenna, who was also on Bradley Neil’s bag when he played in this event at Royal Liverpool in 2014 then for Korean Gunn Yang, the US Amateur champion at the time, at St Andrews the following year.

“Yeah, he’s got more experience than me,” joked Young. “It's great to have him on the bag. We've done a few events now, so he knows my game as well as most people do. But it's nice to just have a friendly face.

“We just have fun. We know when to get serious and when to have a laugh and things like that. And he knows when to say the right things as well, which is important for a caddie, especially in an environment like this. It's nice just to have that sort of calming influence, I suppose.”

Helped by top-three finishes in his last two outings, Young sits tenth in the HotelPlanner Tour’s Road to Mallorca Rankings, with Law up to third after his win in the D+D Real Czech Challenge on Sunday.

“That was fantastic,” said Young of his compatriot’s title triumph, with the top 20 at the end of the season securing DP World Tour cards. “It's looking like it could be a really good season for the Scots, absolutely.

“We're obviously only just after halfway, but Davy winning has certainly put him in a hell of a position now. I'm in a position where he was probably there at the start of last week, so if I can somehow knock off a win between now and the end of the year, then I'll be in a heck of a position to make the jump up as well. So yeah, it's going to be a nice back end of the year for us all, I think.”