​A professional golf career doesn’t always follow a path from Point A to Point B and beyond. In fact, the trip from tee to green is rarely a straight line.Austen Truslow’s current route is quite a series of doglegs.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe’s done pretty well on the Asian Tour, but it was a February win in New Zealand that helped cement a successful effort to play in this week’s British Open. That’s three continents, none of them close to his new home base of Huntsville, Alabama.Yep, Huntsville, where the 30-year-old will spend plenty of time while the Asian Tour is on its summer break due to the rainy season.“Great town. I have nothing bad to say about Huntsville, except I’m a Floridian and I’m used to being near the water,” says Truslow, who grew up in New Smyrna Beach, was part of Spruce Creek High’s 2010 state championship, and now piles up frequent-flier miles by the boatload.Austen Truslow gets a taste of the Royal Birkdale rough during a practice round this week ahead of the 154th Open Championship.This week, he has a tee time in England, north of Liverpool, near Southport on the northwest coast, where the 154th Open Championship is now underway at a sunburned Royal Birkdale, considered the best of England’s championship offerings.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“The course is baked out, but it’s fantastic,” Truslow said by phone Tuesday from a United Kingdom dealing with a rare 1-2 punch of summer — both dry and, by their standards, hot (low-80s! Can you imagine?).His first-round tee time is 11 a.m. Eastern, and he’s paired with Aussie Cameron John and Englishman Sam Bairstow.For a guy rather far away from the big-league spotlight, Truslow is playing his third major in the past three years — he qualified for the U.S. Open in 2023 and 2025. He earned his current major championship start through a qualifier down the British coast in Somerset, at Burnham and Berrow Golf Club, where he finished fourth in a field of 72, from which five advanced to the Open.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe got that opportunity in rather humble fashion — by getting inside the top 800 in the official world golf rankings, which exempted him from going through a pre-qualifier. He’s well inside that now — No. 389 — thanks in large part to his first professional win on a “legitimate” tour.Austen Truslow, shown here at last year’s U.S. Open, is making his third major championship start this week at the Open Championship.In February, in New Zealand, he won the NZ PGA Championship, which is part of the PGA Tour of Australasia. And he won it on a true links course on the New Zealand coast.“It’s very much a true links golf course,” Truslow says of the old course with a funny name: Paraparaumu. “It was blowing 30 to 40 the entire week. I had success there and played well at Burnham and Berrow, so I think it suits me. I do like hitting it low, I like flighting irons, like hitting a lot of