The 17th green on the Old Course, St Andrews, 2007.
Adrian Meronk closed with a 68 at the Old Course on Sunday to win the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at 20 under, finishing two shots clear of Niklas Norgaard and Casey Jarvis. The Pole's final tally, 71-66-63-68 for 268, capped a week that started with Michael Stewart's opening 65 at Carnoustie and ended with Meronk running down the 54-hole leader on the back nine of golf's most famous course.
Casey Jarvis took a two-shot cushion into the final round off rounds of 66-67-65, good for 18 under and the outright 54-hole lead. Matthew Jordan sat alongside Meronk in a tie for second at 16 under, with Thomas Detry fourth at 15 under and Niklas Norgaard and Jacob Skov Olesen tied fifth at 14 under. The Dunhill Links rotates three courses with different pars across the week, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns, and the Old Course, so those gaps aren't read off the raw scorecards, they're read off the to-par column.
The lead held until Jarvis bogeyed the par-3 11th. Meronk answered on the next hole, rolling in an 8-foot (2.4m) birdie putt at the 12th to take the lead, then stretched it to three clear with a pitch-and-run to 2 feet (0.6m) at the par-5 14th. Both players bogeyed the Road Hole, the par-4 17th that's tripped up better rounds than this one; it's the same hole our St Andrews Old Course review singles out as the toughest closing stretch in the sport. Meronk parred the 18th to seal it, and Jarvis's closing eagle try stayed out of the hole.
"I never usually cry, but this one feels really special," Meronk said afterward.
Meronk's four rounds, 71, 66, 63, and 68, add up to 268. Norgaard and Jarvis both finished at 270, a two-shot margin. The win is a significant one for Meronk's status: he moves from 141st to 38th in the Race to Dubai standings and secures his card for the 2027 DP World Tour season, a result that's worth more to his schedule than the trophy itself given where he sat in the rankings before the week started.
Per the DP World Tour's release list, Meronk's playing this season on a conditional release as a LIV Golf player, which is why a Race to Dubai card carries extra weight for him compared with a full-time Tour member.
Meronk's setup for the week ran a Titleist Pro V1, the ball our own Titleist Pro V1 review rates as a top performer for players who want tour-level short-game control. The rest of the bag: a Ping G440 Max driver (not the G440 K model in our drivers guide, a different head in the same line), a Ping prototype mini-driver, a Ping G425 hybrid, Ping iBlade irons, Vokey SM11 wedges, and a Ping Vault 2.0 Ketsch putter.
The margin undersells how tight this was for three hours. I've covered enough Sunday closes at the Old Course to know a two-shot cushion means nothing once the wind picks up off the Eden Estuary, and Jarvis's eagle look on the final green was a near miss, not a formality. For the Race to Dubai itself, Meronk's jump to 38th puts him back in range of the top tier with events still to play, while Jarvis and Norgaard leave St Andrews with their own case for climbing the standings after a week that started with Stewart's 65 and ended two shots short of the trophy.
Photo: Dannie Calder / Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0
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