The first major Ukrainian player got a lesson from Brooks Koepka. Then, he gave his

Lev Grinberg saw Brooks Koepka walking down the 10th fairway at Royal Birkdale earlier this week and took it. The 18-year-old amateur who became the first Ukrainian-born player to qualify for a major on Thursday wanted a tip from one of golf's greatest winners about what he's up against.

“He said, 'If you're in trouble, just get out as fast as you can and make a bogey. A bogey doesn't hurt you but it does twice,'” Grinberg said Thursday after one shot.

Grinberg grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, and took up golf by happy accident. He said he and his father used to ride bikes around town, and one day they ran into two boys hitting golf balls. His father suggested they give it a try, and six-year-old Lev took to the sport immediately as he hit the balls at Kozyn Golf & Country Club, a nine-hole course 15 miles outside Kyiv. Grinberg's father, a former international badminton player, saw his son's talent. Grinberg moved to Belgium at the age of 11 to have a better place to train. He later moved to France and joined the French Golf Federation at Le Golf National. He will play under the French flag this week at Birkdale, but some of his family, including his grandfather, still live in Ukraine, which is in its fourth year of war with Russia after Russian troops invaded in 2022.

Grinberg said he still talks to his grandfather every day and called him Monday after his first visit to Royal Birkdale to introduce him to the historic event.

“I just explained to him how amazing everything is here,” Grinberg told the Golf Channel on Wednesday. “And how I wish he was here. But I would really like to see him in one of my next majors.”

Ukraine does not have a rich golf history. When it was under Soviet control, the game was banned, considered a form of entertainment for some Westerners. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, and the Ukrainian Golf Federation was established in 1997, the game finally began to flourish in this country. According to the Ukrainian Golf Federation, there will be only 2,589 golfers in the country as of 2025. Before the war started, only six golf courses were built in Ukraine. Grinberg's home course, Kozyn, continues to operate and is part of the “Unite for Golf” program, launched by the Ukrainian Golf Federation to help wounded Ukrainian war veterans physically and mentally rehabilitate. While Kozyn is still open, Golf Stream, a 36-hole course northwest of Kyiv, was destroyed when Russia invaded and is now a bomb site.

Compared to that, Grinberg's golf swing is pretty good. He made his first cut on the DP World Tour at age 14 and qualified for The Open by winning the Open Amateur Series, the final two rounds of which were played on the Old Course in St. Andrews. He will travel to Arkansas in the fall as he looks to carve out a path to the PGA Tour.

But before that march began, Lev Grinberg was supposed to make history Thursday at Royal Birkdale. The 18-year-old came out in the morning alongside Francesco Molinari and Tom McKibbin, knowing that the first ball he sent into the air at Southport would go down in the history of the tournament. Grinberg's pre-round session was his draw, and he enjoyed the emotional rush that accompanied him on the first peak of what he plans to be a long-time champion.

“When I hit the range, I was hitting it well and I knew exactly what I was doing, so I was really confident that I was going to hit the first shot,” Grinberg said. “Yeah, when I went up to hit the first shot, I was nervous and unsure. But I love the feeling. It's great. That's what you come back with. It's just natural adrenaline. Yeah, after that I was wide awake.”

Grinberg's opening shot found a fairway bunker. He went out and back and forth from 100 yards to open up space. Leaning on Koepka's advice, he made six straight pars before a double bogey on the par-3 seventh sent him down. But he closed with pars eight and nine to convert two. Missing a six-footer on the par 11 meant he dropped to three over, but Grinberg didn't feel his score reflected his swing.

“I told myself at 14, like, How can I combine all three?” Grinberg said. “I hit it well and I play very well.”

He then rolled in an 18-footer for birdie on the 16th and made another round on the par-5 17th to get within one, where he finished after 18 holes.

“I'm very happy with the way it went. I hit the ball very well,” said Grinberg. “Yeah, golf doesn't always go the way you want it to, and it's not always going to be perfect or the best round. I'm really happy. I felt really good on the golf course. I was more stressed than I thought. I'm really happy. I learned a lot today. That will definitely help me in the future. I'm excited for the future.”

As of this writing, Grinberg is just five shots off the lead held by Daniel Brown, Sungjae Im and Collin Morikawa. If he puts together another good round on Friday, he'll have a good chance to play on the weekend.

Strong, optimistic and full of confidence, Lev Grinberg, who made history for himself and Ukraine on Thursday in Southport, looked at Friday not as an opportunity to play another 36 holes in the 2026 Open Championship but as the start of something much bigger for him, his family and, by extension, his country. It is not something guided by the hard, sometimes brutal realities of the world. But there is something for you, which may be exactly what you want to do with it. The thing is that you don't have to be defined by things that are outside of your control, that you have the power to make your own way if you know where to look.

“We don't think about the fight that much,” Grinberg told the Golf Channel on Wednesday. “We're just trying to enjoy life and think about the good things. [My grandpa’s] doing OK. He is in good health. You are in good hands. He lives in the apartment where I grew up. I call him every day, if we get a chance to see him, we will hug him.”

For Lev Grinberg, that direction is looking forward to a future he can already see happening.

“It's my first major, and I'm sure if everything goes well for me and my body, I'll be back for other majors,” Grinberg said Thursday. “I'm going to have fun tomorrow and learn how everything will turn out.”

There's a lesson for all of us in that, even if Lev Grinberg didn't intend to give it.