​SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Royal Birkdale is not anywhere Marcus Plunkett expected to be. Not when he turned down golf scholarships to attend West Point. Not when he was rising to the rank of captain in the U.S. Army. Not even when he touched a golf club again for the first time in nearly four years.Yet there he was Wednesday on the range, pounding drives with his athletic 6-foot-5 frame on the final day of practice before his debut in the British Open.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA few spots to his left was Jordan Spieth, a three-time major champion and the last Open champion at Birkdale. Down a ways to his right was two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau with a stationary camera behind him. It was a lot to take in.“It’s awesome,” Plunkett said. “As cool as it gets.”Plunkett, a 32-year-old from Atlantic Beach, Florida, was among the 20 players who made it through 36-hole qualifying in the U.K. a few weeks ago, holding steady on the last four holes at Dundonald Links to grab the final spot.He has been all over the world, and not just his Army stops in South Korea and Afghanistan. He made it through Asian Tour Q-school last year and already this year has gone from the Philippines to Malaysia to Singapore and Morocco. He is 20th on the Order of Merit.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPlunkett getting a card anywhere — the Korn Ferry Tour in 2025, the Asian Tour in 2026 — came about when he least expected. All it took was one impromptu round of golf, and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a part.Plunkett finished his college career at Army by helping the Black Knights to the Patriot Conference title with brother Matt a freshman on the team. That would have seemed to be the end of his golf. He was a logistics officer during his five-year Army stint, specializing primarily in convoy maneuvers, either moving personnel or cargo. His golf clubs stayed home.But one day after he returned to Fort Carson in Colorado, he decided to play golf with his dad.“I shot 69 and thought I was the best golfer in the world,” Plunkett said. “And I played the next day and probably shot 95. But I stuck with it. My last few months in the Army, COVID was a thing and the DOD (Department of Defense) took it seriously. We had a lot of limited personnel office hours. I had a lot more free time on my hands and played a lot of golf.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA career as an Army officer was on his mind until he fell back in love with golf.“It was either time to re-up or go a different way,” Plunkett said. “I was enjoying golf so much that I decided I wanted to give it a go.”And so he went. Plunkett qualified for a Korn Ferry Tour event each of the next two years after getting out of the Army in 2021, and at the end of 2024, he did well enough in Q-school to earn a Korn Ferry Tour card that guaranteed him eight tournaments. He didn’t come close to keeping his card, and then tried his hand in Asia. The next step might