Who is Christo Lamprecht? 

Find out more about Amateur Champion Christo Lamprecht, who grabbed the early lead at The 151st Open.

He is the current Amateur Champion

Just over a month ago and less than 30 miles from Open venue Royal Liverpool, Lamprecht won The Amateur Championship at Hillside with a 3&2 victory over Ronan Kleu in the 36-hole final.

The South African was two down in the match early on, but fought back with a string of birdies to gain a 2UP lead heading into the final 18 and stayed ahead for the remainder of the contest.

With his win, Lamprecht became the third South African to win the title in the last six years, after Aldrich Potgieter in 2021 at Royal Lytham & St Annes, and Jovan Rebula, who won at Royal Aberdeen in 2018.

Talking to The R&A afterwards he had said “I’m over the moon. I haven’t won something big in a long time and it’s one to definitely win for sure. I’m ecstatic. I cannot kind of comprehend my feelings right now. I’m guessing South Africans like playing links golf. We kind of like being creative so I guessed that flowed over into this Championship. It’s always nice to be part of history with South Africa and enrich it.”

Amateur Success

Lamprecht entered The Amateur Championship at Number Six in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, but with his victory moved up three places into third - behind Gordon Sargent and Michael Thorbjornsen.

That's how he enters this week, and his route there has been underlined by several impressive stand-out moments in his amateur career.

In 2017 he became the youngest ever winner of the South African Amateur Championship, and that same year competed in the Junior Presidents Cup - which he also played in 2019. In addition to six notable amateur titles, Lamprecht has been on several teams, including the Junior Golf World Cup, the Eisenhower Trophy and on the winning team at the Arnold Palmer Cup.

He's currently a college golfer at Georgia Tech

Currently in his third year playing college golf at Georgia Tech and studying business administration, Lamprecht is planning to play one more year before deciding to turn professional.

For Lamprecht it makes sense, given that his win at The Amateur also gets him into the 2024 Masters Tournament at Augusta National and the 2024 U.S. Open Championship at Pinehurst No.2.

"I'm definitely planning on staying in college for the next year and planning on turning pro after that.

"I loved the programme at tech. Having Stewart Cink and guys like that that we can see week in and week out and feeding off of. It's an amazing programme. I love it."

He comes from a very tall family

At six foot eight, Lamprecht is the tallest player in the field at The 151st Open. And it's something that runs in the family.

"My dad is 6'4" and he's the shortest of the last five generations," he said. "On my dad's side the length is there. My grandfather was like 6'8" and great grandfather like 7'.

"It runs in the family, definitely."

For a while, he was growing so fast when he was younger that he was changing clubs every six months - which meant his golf game wasn't as straightforward..

"I guess I started out very competitively, and golf-wise I was a little bit better than everyone 14 at 15 years old and then I kind of hit the growth spurt and everything golf-wise was everywhere," he said. "Probably the start of high school, eighth grade, ninth grade, I was growing so fast and my swing changed every week and it was all over the place for like two years there.

"I didn't know what was going on. I was changing clubs every six months.

"I guess once I kind of finally got to a certain length where I didn't grow that much more and got a little bit more mature, I figured out where to go, and I've just been growing at Tech a lot. No one else wants to use my clubs, so I can't give them to anyone."

He has a mentor in Louis Oosthuizen

Lamprecht played his opening round with Joost Luiten and former Open Champion and fellow South African Louis Oosthuizen, who has been something of a mentor to the young amateur, and he admitted that definitely helped his score on day one.

"I think that helped a lot to my score today," Lamprecht admitted.

"I think having someone hat I know very well and is a ginormous mentor for me that I've played previously with kind of helped me feel a little bit more at home and at ease.

"So yeah, it was kind of a nice draw. I thought they rigged it by some means, but no, I loved it.

"I don't think I've ever beaten him [before]. I've played with him probably four or five times, nothing more than that. A couple of practice rounds and pro events that I got into as a kid. I guess beating him today was really nice.

"But he's an amazing support and he was supporting me the whole way through. He had a bad round today. I guess he was unlucky a lot of times, but he was cheering me on and that means a lot."