The Irish Amateur With Cystic Fibrosis Playing in The Open
Psychosis, thirty pills a day, and a dream that nearly didn’t happen. David Howard’s road to Birkdale.
David Howard was 13 when he Googled - “what’s the typical life expectancy of people with cystic fibrosis?”
Google told him the answer - mid 20s.
How would you feel if you saw that?
What plans do you make for your life?
That 13 year old David Howard is now a 27 year old playing in The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. Before this year, he had never been to an Open Championship to watch, now he’s playing in one.
I’m certainly not a doctor but from what I’ve read, cystic fibrosis is a disease that affects the body in a few different ways. It causes mucus to build up and clog multiple organs, including the lungs. It also affects the pancreas meaning your body struggles to digest food.
People with cystic fibrosis in the past would often die from things like tuberculosis. The niece of singer Celine Dion died from the disease at 16. (thankfully in the last few years great treatments have emerged meaning this is much less of a problem).
Being a teenager has its challenges for everyone as we try to figure out our place in the world. Being a teenager with a prognosis that you may only live another 10-15 years sent David Howard down a bad road.
He started drinking at the age of 14 - not totally unusual for an Irish teenager but unlike a lot of teenagers who would drink for the fun and the thrill of the risk, David drank to escape. When challenged by his parents on his drinking habits he would say things like, “who cares, I won’t be around much longer anyway”.
Most sports were off the cards for David for insurance reasons but pitch and putt was something he could play. And he got pretty good at it, captaining his home county of Cork at under 16 level before he started to play full golf.
Golf was good for David because it allowed him to breathe in the fresh Irish air along the links courses of the country. He started to get pretty good at golf. He maybe didn’t believe he was quite good enough to have aspirations in the game to make it as a professional but was good enough to win at local level around Cork.
Locked in a room
But off the course his life was a rollercoaster. When Covid hit it affected David more than the average person.
Because of his illness and how it would affect his lungs he became terrified of catching Covid. He locked himself in his room for months on end, living in fear that someone from his family would bring it into the house.
The isolation and fear caused David to have episodes of psychosis. According to an interview he gave recently, at one point, David didn’t eat or sleep for 10 days and became manic. He became convinced at one point that he would become the richest man in the world. He would look up superyachts trying to decide which one to buy.
Apparently he became convinced that he knew the winning lotto numbers so not only did he buy a ticket, he stopped someone on the road to give them the ticket, trying to convince them that the ticket was a winning one.
He spent some time in hospital after this and after a while, broke out of this manic episode and came back to reality.
Around this time, new drugs had come on the market that would help with his cystic fibrosis.
Life changing for David.
He now takes 30 pills a day and can live an almost normal life.
Giving up the day job
As Covid dissipated from all of our lives, David started an apprenticeship to be a mechanic but was taking his golf more seriously.
It was around 2023 that I first became aware of him, a good amateur golfer from Cork, David Howard - I started to see his name appear on leaderboards of Ireland’s best amateur events.
I’m someone who keeps an eye on the Irish amateur circuit to see who’s coming through. There’s a great page I follow - Irish Amateur Golf Info on social media - who documents the Irish amateur scene brilliantly and I would regularly see David’s name pop up.
Playing elite amateur golf in Ireland is treated as a near full time job by a lot of these guys and in 2023 when David reached a handicap of +2 and started to compete in these events, he decided to give up his apprenticeship and focus on golf full time.
He didn’t want to have any regrets.
His first few finishes at these events were solid - making cuts but not contending but then at the East of Ireland in 2025, he got his breakthrough. “The East” is one of the 6 majors of Irish amateur golf held at County Louth every year and he beat players like Stuart Grehan (the current British Amateur champion and Walker Cup player) and Gavin Tiernan (another Irish Walker Cup player).
Earlier this year one of my good mates, Colin Woodroofe was playing in a scratch cup in Rosslare Golf Club. I text into our golf Whatsapp group that evening - “how’d you go in Rosslare today Woody?”
“Lost in a playoff” came Colin’s response.
“Ah hard luck man. Well played getting into a playoff. Who beat you?”
“David Howard” came the response.
A few weeks later, David very nearly won The Irish Amateur Championship - the biggest of Irish amateur majors, shooting -10 for 4 rounds at Seapoint to lose by a shot.
The magic of The Open
One of the things I love about The Open is it’s “open to the world” meaning if you have a handicap of 0 or better, you can try to qualify. Each year around 7,000 people around the world enter regional qualifying for The Open, amateurs and professionals. It’s actually my biggest goal in golf - I’m currently a 4.1 handicap but if I can get to 0.4 I can enter Open qualifying. My dream is to have my Dad on the bag some day as I try my hand at Open qualifying. I wouldn’t care if I shot 85, it would just be a magic day out. A lofty goal but maybe some day…
David entered this qualifying and at The Regional Qualifying at The Island Golf Club in Dublin, he came T8. Not quite good enough to get through to Final Qualifying but good enough to be a reserve.
But when someone dropped out of the field at the final stage of qualifying David got in and a few weeks ago, made his way over to Scotland knowing that if he somehow produced 2 of the best rounds of his life, he would qualify for The Open.
Dundonald
Final stage qualifying for The Open is held across a few different sites but the one David was playing in was at Dundonald Golf Club on Scotland’s west coast.
After a first round of -3 (69) David had a real chance of qualifying for the Open. If he could shoot level par or better in his afternoon round he would likely get in.
He made 5 birdies on that back 9 of this 2nd round and was comfortably in the top 5 who would qualify for the Open before standing up on the 16th tee.
I’ve played Dundonald and the 16th tee shot is a scary one. Trees and out of bounds all up the right and big mounds down the left. David winged his drive right, made a double bogey and his Open dream hung in the balance.
The last 2 holes are not easy either but he got his head down and got into the clubhouse at -1 for that second round, -4 overall.
On that 18th green David’s Dad who was caddying for him all day put the bag on the ground and said “son, you’re going to The Open”.
The Caddie’s Line: Vertex, the drug company behind the cystic fibrosis treatments that changed David's life, brought its breakthrough therapy to market in 2019. Life expectancy for people with CF has roughly doubled in a generation.
The Read: Jordan Spieth relives the 2017 Open Championship and his driving range drop, By Brody Miller on The Athletic
Amazing story, to have the mental strength to overcome what he has in his life, to then play in The Open all at such a young age is beyond inspiring
An inspiring tale! Gotta keep them eyes out for this young lad on the Birkdale course, now. Thanks for sharing 👍🏻