England's Aaron Rai returns to Open Championship to hero's welcome

Jack Nicklaus sent a handwritten letter to him. The British royal family tweeted at him.

"I couldn't quite believe that when I saw it," Aaron Rai said Tuesday, recalling the correspondence he received two months ago after winning the PGA Championship in Pennsylvania in May.

And the return to Europe by the 31-year-old Englishman has shown him just what the victory meant back home. Imagine the reaction he would receive should he win The Open Championship, which begins Thursday at Royal Birkdale in Southport, England.

The Wolverhampton native stayed in the United States to compete on the PGA Tour for six weeks after claiming his first major victory on May 14 at Aronimink Golf Club. He has been back across the pond for just two weeks.

Journalists from Wolverhampton, India -- where his parents and his wife, Guarika, were born -- and elsewhere swooned over him during a pre-tournament news conference on Tuesday at Royal Birkdale.

"People sent me articles and got a feel of how it was received in England, which was great and a lot warmer than what I would have ever expected and more widespread than I would have thought," Rai said. "But in terms of purely the local area, I think because I was so far away with being in Florida and playing a lot of events, I didn't really get a sense of how that felt or the magnitude of it in that respect."

Rai would have no such trouble understanding the magnitude if he were to win the Open.

When he was a teenager, he and his father attended an Open practice round at Muirfield -- but Rai started paying attention to the Open much sooner.

"They used to show highlights on BBC in the evenings," Rai said. "We used to watch it from 5-6 years old. I remember David Duval winning (in 2001 at Royal Lytham and St. Annes). I used to support Tiger Woods a lot. It was great to see David win, but I was supporting Tiger. That's what sticks out, that Tiger didn't win that one...

"Obviously I'm British, and this is a home Open, so very, very special tournament."

As soon as Rai arrived back in England, he took a spin around Royal Birkdale. When he missed the cut last week at the Scottish Open, he returned to The Open course on Saturday to get a jump on this week's preparation.

"It's definitely changed quite a bit in the last two weeks," Rai said. "It was quite green. It was quite lush when I came here and relatively soft as well, fairways and greens. So it was quite a surprise playing a few holes on Sunday, seeing it as brown as what it was in the space of, I think, 10 days. I think it plays phenomenally. It's a great layout. Obviously a huge amount of history at Birkdale. It's a real iconic Open venue."

At some point, though, every conversation about the Open with a talented English golfer turns to the fact that the last Englishman to win the Open was Nick Faldo in 1992. His victory at Muirfield that year was his third Open championship.

Does Rai, regarded by DraftKings as a 70-1 shot to win the Claret Jug, feel any homegrown pressure that seems like it compounds each year the streak goes unbroken?

"Firstly, there's always pressure every single week no matter what tournament it is. I think most of that is self-imposed," Rai said. "Some of it is where you're playing and what event that it is. Obviously this is a major championship. It's a huge event in its own right. So there's always that element of pressure that is there."

--Field Level Media