From being penniless to being a professional golfer, it’s the story of Marcus Armitage. He has been a professional golfer for over a decade now and has won the 2021 Porsche European Open, having shot 8 under par. In 2013, before he won the Kingspan Concra Wood Open on the PGA EuroPro Tour, he, and his father were sleeping in tents.

“My dad woke up one morning and he had a frog in his part of the tent,” Armitage told the No Laying Up a few years ago. “I was like, ‘What have you been doing with that frog?’ The frog was lifeless. I think he’d rolled over on him in the night.” His friend left £40 stuffed in the box of his rangefinder in his golf bag, which he used to buy quilts at that time.

The 37-year-old professional golfer was born on July 15, 1987, in Salford, England. He lost his mother, Jean Armitage to cancer in 2001. This was a huge setback for him.

How did losing his mother impact Marcus Armitage?

Armitage left school after the loss and never went back. “The only place I could go and focus was on the practice ground. In a classroom, I was just sitting, thinking about my mum dying. On the practice ground, all I was focused on was hitting a golf ball. Golf was an escape for me,” he told the European Tour’s blog.

When he was 13 years old, he also got addicted to drugs. “A lot of people can judge me for it, for the path that I went down, but it moulded who I am today. I went off track, eventually I got addicted to drugs but at the end of the day, I think it was grieving later on in my career, I think golf had put the grieving off for my mum for so long and then when I stopped the golf (because of an injury) it all of a sudden hit me and I went down a path,” said the English golfer.

“I mean, they were only light drugs that I got addicted to, it weren’t anything heavy. I think I lost my driving licence through it, I got a DUI in 2013 and at that point my dad said to me, ‘right, this is it, we’re back to square one’. He started taking me to the golf club again, eight o’clock in the morning until six at night. I had no car or nothing, I just practised my way out of it. In 2013, I came back out on the mini-tours and started burning it up again,” shared Armitage. Clearly, it’s his father who got him back into the game.

The golfer got married to Lucy Armitage back in 2015. She is one of the biggest support systems in his professional career. He even dedicated his 2020 third finish at the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club to her. “She’s working; we’ve got a house, and we just don’t get the quality time. This one’s for Lucy. I can tell Lucy that she doesn’t have to do any nails that week; she can book it off, and we can go and enjoy The Open”, he said.

Armitage has played 9 events on the PGA Tour and made cut in 5 of them. His earnings on the American Tour are $172,690. His European Tour journey has not been anything short of that.

Marcus Armitage’s professional journey

Marcus Armitage earned the 2013 Rookie of the Year Award. In 2015, he won two events on the PGA EuroPro Tour, the Grenke Championship, and the Tree of Life Championship, securing a spot on the 2016 Challenge Tour. That year, Armitage finished as the runner-up in the Volopa Irish Challenge and ranked 5th in the standings, boosting his earnings and helping him secure his 2017 European Tour card. He also captured victory at the Foshan Open on the Challenge Tour in 2016.

Despite facing challenges on the European Tour and losing his Tour card, Armitage bounced back strong in 2018, finishing as the runner-up at the Road Colorful Yunnan Open, proving his resilience and skill. In 2020, he posted his best finish on the DP World Tour with a third-place result at the South African Open. This was followed by an exceptional shot at the Porsche European Open, and that meant everything to him.

“It means everything. It’s what you dream about as a kid. It’s funny; I had a 20-footer down the hill on the last, and I stood over it and thought about the number of times you’ve stood on the putting green as a kid and said two putts to win a Tour event’, said Marcus after winning the Porsche European Open.

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