Masters-stroke for Li at Open

A wayward driver, which saw him miss over half the fairways at Royal Portrush, left him with an uphill battle on Sunday. Following a double bogey on 14, Li responded with a 16-foot birdie on the next hole, before blasting a sublime bunker shot to within two feet for his sixth and final birdie of the day to finish the week on 11-under alongside former US Open champions Wyndham Clark and Matt Fitzpatrick.

"I saw the leaderboard on the last three holes, and I knew I needed a couple more birdies to kind of jump up and to secure my PGA Tour card. I'm sure I'm really close there as well," he said.

"Off the tee, it's just been quite off, and I kind of lost five shots straight away because of the driver, and I think I need to figure that out. Iron play was quite nice; it was actually super calm and he's (Scheffler) such a lovely guy to play with."

Li burst onto the global scene more than a decade ago with multiple wins on the DP World Tour, including a memorable head-to-head triumph over Rory McIlroy in Dubai. However, his journey has been punctuated by dips in form that left him, at one point, contemplating walking away from the sport.

He arrived at Royal Portrush following a missed cut at the Genesis Scottish Open, and admitted his game was far from ideal. "The last couple of weeks, I felt really, really bad, honestly. I came in this week, I hardly got onto the course to play, because I felt like there were so many people, the course being so packed, so I just hit kind of a few balls on the range. It wasn't comfortable. Even our Thursday and Friday morning sessions weren't," he said.