Behold the Beef: Andrew Johnston will be your new favorite golfer

Meet Andrew Johnston. He’s from England. After a nice pair of 69s, he’s in the top 10 at the British Open. And he’s about to become your new favorite golfer.

Johnston has all the hallmarks of a 21st-century sports brand: a strong game, a distinctive visage with his barrel-shaped body and shag-carpeting beard, a cheerful quote repertoire, and a killer nickname.

“Beef.”

Here are the facts on Beef, whom you’ll likely be seeing as long as he’s within sight of Phil Mickelson and the top of the leaderboard. A 27-year-old who’s spent most of his time on the European Tour and other smaller international tours, he’s kicked around the English game for a couple decades, turning pro shortly after family tragedy and scrapping and scraping until he started to break through. He’s got one European Tour victory, the Open de España earlier this year.

That victory produced one of the most memorable quotes of the year. When asked what he would do after his victory, Johnston declared, “I can’t wait to get hammered and see my mum.” Solid strategy, that. This year’s Open marks only Beef’s third major; he played in the 2011 British via local qualifying, and tied for 54th at last month’s U.S. Open. If he plays well here, you can count on an even better quote to the biggest audience Beef has ever known.

Johnston’s embraced “Beef,” using it as his Twitter handle—@BeefGolf—and complying with wacky photo shoot requests. Earlier this month, when asked to pose for photos with a hamburger, Beef happily complied:

…and then teed up the burger and smashed it to pieces with his driver:

So where did the nickname “Beef” come from? “When I was a kid, if I grow my hair out, I’m a quarter Jamaican, so it goes quite curly,” he said. “One of my friends said, ‘Look at your head. It looks like a big bit of beef. You’ve got a beef head.’ And it just stuck.” Clearly, it fits:

Beef currently sits just outside the top 100 of the Official World Golf Rankings. A solid performance on the weekend at the British Open ought to help that ranking considerably. The time of Beef is at hand.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.