As the 2025 Open Championship begins at Royal Portrush this week, few of the players taking to the Dunluce Course will have had as tumultuous a few years as Ryan Peake.
The 32-year-old Australian arrives in Northern Ireland for his first appearance at The Open, after a decade that has involved a conviction, a prison sentence, a return to professional golf and, most recently, a maiden win in the Asian Tour.
When The Open was last held at Royal Portrush in 2019, Peake had just completed a five-year prison sentence for serious assault, for an incident that began with someone making "threats towards us".
“We just went to deal with it, and honestly, it wasn't meant to happen like that," Peake recalled. "It just happened to be that the threats he threatened us with were true. He was armed and it escalated from there,” he explained.
Fast forward to 2025 and Peake landed an eight-foot par putt to win the New Zealand Open in March, a win that also gave him a spot at Royal Portrush this year.
Having originally turned professional in 2012, aged 19, Peake drifted away from the game and eventually joined the Rebels, an outlawed motorcycle gang, at the age of 21.
While in prison, he was contacted by Ritchie Smith, an experienced Australian coach, who believed there was a way back into golf for Peake upon his release.
"I obviously didn't believe it at the start, but like he says, he did," said Peake, reports the BBC. "And, you know, he coaches major winners. He coaches the world's best” he added, explaining his reasons for giving it a go.
“I've had great support networks that have always helped me. And this time I took the advice that they were giving me and followed the path they were trying to pave for me,” he explained.
Peake turned professional again in 2022, and got his maiden tour win in New Zealand before finishing second in the Australasian Tour Order of Merit to guarantee himself DP World Tour membership for 2026.
He’s received plenty of attention in the lead up to the action at Royal Portrush, though he is happy to talk about it all, explaining that “it's my life, it's my story. I've owned it”.
"I'm not trying to be a role model, be someone's superhero, anything like that. "I'm just basically living the best life I can, and whatever people see from that, that's what they see,” he added.
When asked what his hopes are ahead of his first major, Peake said: "Obviously, I want to make the cut. My expectations are basically I just want to be able to get on that first tee and feel myself and just play my golf," he said.
"Just play my game and be within myself and the result will be what it will be. I don't want to get caught up in anything, I just want to play my golf, I just want to be free. If I can do that, I won't have to worry about the result.”
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