{"id":31346,"date":"2026-07-04T00:12:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/31346\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T00:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:12:18","slug":"chris-devlin-who-once-gave-up-scholarship-money-so-graeme-mcdowell-could-join-him-at-uab-contends-at-u-s-senior-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/31346\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Devlin, who once gave up scholarship money so Graeme McDowell could join him at UAB, contends at U.S. Senior Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the names floating near the top of the leaderboard at the 2026 U.S. Senior Open<\/a> is Chris Devlin of Northern Ireland. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry. He’s not a known quantity, but he has traveled an interesting path into contention at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Devlin grew up playing Royal Portrush and came to the U.S. on a college golf scholarship to UAB. A friend from back home was a couple years younger and was interested in UAB as well, and Devlin gave up some of his scholarship money so his good buddy Graeme McDowell could attend.<\/p>\n

“Graeme’s a good friend of mine. We kind of grew up playing golf at Royal Portrush,” Devlin said after his 2-under 68 on Friday, which got him into a tie for fourth after he signed his card. “We were both members there growing up, so we were very fortunate to play one of the best courses in the world growing up.”<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

Chris Devlin lines up a putt on the first green during the second round of the 2026 U.S. Senior Open Championship at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Devlin continued: “I had fortunately done really well in college and I was due a raise in my scholarship. The coach came to me and said, ‘I wanted Graeme to come,’ and he had come to me, and I just said, ‘You know, you could just give him my raise so he can afford to come.’ It ended up, he came over and struggled a little bit his first year, but after I left, he went nuts. He acclimatized, put on some weight, and started hitting the ball harder, and it worked out for him.”<\/p>\n

Devlin turned pro after college and played in Europe and on the Korn Ferry Tour. He later decided to regain his amateur status and won the 2024 Trans-Miss Mid-Amateur by 14 strokes. He also qualified for a pair of U.S. Amateurs, including in 2021 at Oakmont when he was 41. A few years later he injured his back, retired from competitive golf and started a health care company.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t really playing much, and then as I got closer and closer to 50 I started playing in a few more USGA Championships and things like that. I was lucky enough to qualify for the U.S. Am a couple of times. I wasn’t playing golf full-time at all,” Devlin said. “I’m still not. I’m still having to run the company, and it’s been a blessing to be able to do that. We manage high-risk patient populations for physician groups all over the nation, and luckily enough, we’ve been growing. So that’s helped me to be able to play golf when I can.<\/p>\n

“Last year, as I turned 50, my goal, I had too many people at home and friends saying, you need to go play golf. I was like, ‘Don’t tempt me,’ but then when I qualified for the U.S. [Senior] Open last year, I decided to just go ahead and turn pro again.”<\/p>\n

And now, here he is at age 51, in the hunt in the U.S. Senior Open. He played in the early wave Friday so now he waits to see what happens on the leaderboard.<\/p>\n

“If this was the old me I’d be out there beating golf balls and putting all day and just beating myself to death, but no longer.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Chris Devlin gave Graeme McDowell scholarship money to attend UAB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the names floating near the top of the leaderboard at the 2026 U.S. Senior Open is Chris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12738,12740,1153,12741,9425,4059,12272,1295,8161,12739],"class_list":["post-31346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-open-championship","tag-chris-devlin","tag-golf-scholarship","tag-graeme-mcdowell","tag-play-golf","tag-playing-golf","tag-royal-portrush","tag-scioto-country-club","tag-the-open-championship","tag-u-s","tag-uab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}