Australian golfer Ryan Peake to make remarkable Open Championship debut after 5-year prison sentence

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Ryan Peake will tee up at Royal Portrush on Thursday, and how he got this opportunity is unlike anyone else in the field. 

That’s because the Australian golfer won the New Zealand Open five years after he spent half a decade in prison. 

Peake was a talented junior golfer that turned professional when he was 19 years old. But, according to the BBC, Peake was "burnt out" from the game and joined the Rebels, an outlawed motorcycle gang, two years after turning pro. 

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Ryan Peake of Australia celebrates with the New Zealand Open trophy after winning the 2025 New Zealand Open at Millbrook Resort on March 2, 2025 in Queenstown, New Zealand. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

"I was just normalized to it," Peake, now 31, said about joining the biker gang. "It wasn’t abnormal from where I was from to hang out in that sort of scene with my friends. 

"It’s something that I did find love in and I did enjoy it. I was interested in it, and I just found something there that I felt like I hadn’t found anywhere else."

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Peake was a "bikie," but being a part of an outlaw lifestyle means the risk of serving time in prison, which is what happened after assaulting someone he said was "making threats towards us."

"We just went to deal with it, and honestly, it wasn’t meant to happen like that," Peake explained, per the BBC. "We were generally just going there for a chat, and he was probably going to get a couple of punches along the way, and it was left at that."

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