The most remarkable stories emerge during the week before The Open but none will be as startling as the one Ryan Peake is about to tell.
Peake is a 32-year-old from Perth, Australia. He was a contemporary of Cameron Smith, the 2022 Champion at St Andrews, and grew up as prodigy with rare gifts; he’s built like a heavyweight boxer and booked his ticket for Portrush by virtue of a fabulous win in the New Zealand Open.
But golf isn’t going to be on the agenda much during the next hour, as we talk in a room adjacent to the 18th fairway. Peake will talk about taking a swing but this one, in 2014, ended with him being sentenced to five years in prison, part of which was spent in Hakea, one of Australia’s toughest jails.
Having fallen out of love with golf, Peake signed up to become a member of The Rebels, a motorcycle group. It became all-consuming, a brotherhood that had their own code of conduct. Differences between rival gangs often get settled with fists but this went too far. Way too far.
‘How did it unfold?’ Peake asks. ‘Basically it was the life I was living. Someone else out there was living the same sort of lifestyle and was making threats. I’m not saying it’s right I’ve gone and beat someone up but I haven’t gone and beat up a dad who’s just doing nothing on his front lawn.
‘He was a person that was living my lifestyle. I’m not justifying it. But that’s how we would speak to each other. I mean, meet their character with your character and whatever prevails from there. He was doing some bad things, we had knowledge then he made some pretty heinous threats.
Ryan Peake is ready for The Open after winning the New Zealand Open – and his path is unique
The former motorbike gang member spent five years behind bars for assault on another biker
He does not claim to be a role model or superhero, but says he is ‘living the best life I can’
‘So we went to deal with it. Honestly, it wasn’t meant to happen like that. We were generally just going there for a chat. He was probably going to get a couple of punches, that’s it. It just happened to be the threats he threatened us with were true. He was armed and it escalated from there.’
One of Peake’s associates was wielding a baseball bat and the victim ended up with a fractured skull and fractured arms. When the police came to arrest him, he held his hands up immediately. Honesty is a value he holds dearly and it leaps out of every word he says.
Jail, clearly, left a mark. You can see it in his eyes as he talks about Hakea, in Perth; the trauma of being in a single occupant cell with another man for company; the sights, the sounds, the smells, the potential to be humiliated by prison officers.
‘It was bad,’ he admits. ‘But I have the saying: if you don’t like the accommodation, don’t book the reservation. I booked that one for myself. So I can’t sit here and say, you know, it’s pretty appalling. It’s more appalling for the fact of there’s limited space. They try and cram so many people in.
‘They’re just way too overpopulated. And I think the whole justice system, essentially, yeah, you’ve done a crime. You go to jail. I don’t argue with that. But going to jail is to try and rehabilitate you to come out as a better person.
‘And by putting people in, I guess, places like that, where it’s disgusting, you’re treated unfairly, it’s overpopulated, three people in a cell where there’s only meant to be one, it’s disgusting. That’s not necessarily rehabilitating you.
‘That’s making you more p****d off. And you’re probably going to come out an angry person as well because you’ve just been treated like c**p. Not all of them, but some of them are. But in saying that as well, it was my choices that I made that led me to there.’
But now he is out and thriving. Golf provided a chink of light in the darkness, a worthwhile cause to pursue. He needed to ask permission, remarkably, from the leaders of The Rebels to be able to concentrate on the sport once again – he couldn’t commit to long national rides, from Perth to Adelaide, if he was playing in a tournament – but they gave him the green light.
Hakea is one of Australia’s toughest prisons and Peake shared a tiny cell with another man
He is not sure how effective the ‘disgusting’ and ‘overpopulated’ prison is at rehabilitating
But he now has the opportunity of a lifetime – or at least ‘the biggest tournament’ of his year
When Peake first picked up a club after six years, the rust was dreadful and the shot he hit was, in his words, ‘****’, but he has persisted. Good people around him have kept him moving forward and now he arrives in the North of Ireland ready for an unforgettable experience.
The journey here has been fraught – he travelled on a British passport, which he obtained thanks to his father, as obtaining a Visa with a conviction on an Australian document would have been unlikely – but the very fact he will tee up on Thursday is another calling point on the road to redemption.
‘I’m not trying to be a role model or be someone’s superhero,’ he says. ‘I’m just basically living the best life I can, and whatever people see from that, that’s what they see. I don’t feel self-conscious. I put in some hard work to try and get to where we are today. I’ve earned being here.
‘I guess it’s going to be the biggest tournament I play for the year. If I didn’t have other big events to play in, I’d probably be a little bit more overwhelmed by it all. But after this week’s done, I’m back to other major tours. This week’s a big opportunity, but it’s not going to determine my future either.’
