The Los Angeles Lakers spent Saturday operating on two very different stages.
In Las Vegas, the Summer League roster prepared for an evening semifinal with a championship berth on the line, and roughly 5,000 miles away in England, the franchise player turned up somewhere nobody had him scheduled — the 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.
Luka Doncic appeared at golf’s oldest major during Saturday’s third round and sat down with longtime Golf Channel host Rich Lerner, discussing how he caught the golf bug and the work he has been putting into his swing. The conversation aired as part of Golf Channel’s “Live From” coverage at Birkdale.
Luka Doncic at The Open Championship 🏀🤝⛳️
The @Lakers star joined our @RichLernerGC to chat about catching the golf bug, improving his swing and plenty more.
Full @lukadoncic interview ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/UrvoD4hOcC
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) July 18, 2026
What Luka Was Doing at Royal Birkdale
The appearance came on a marquee day at the Open, with the third round unfolding at the famed links course on England’s northwest coast. Doncic was there as a fan and a student of the game rather than a celebrity participant, and Lerner framed the visit as part of a larger trend, describing Doncic as “the latest NBA great to jump into the game.”
That framing tracks. Basketball’s offseason golf pipeline has been growing for years, and Lerner noted in his post from Birkdale that LeBron James is among the stars who love the sport. The full interview gives Lakers fans something rare for mid-July — extended, unscripted time with Doncic in an offseason that has otherwise kept him almost entirely out of public view.
The Golf Thread in the Lakers Locker Room
Doncic would not have to look far for a playing partner once he gets home. Austin Reaves — Doncic’s backcourt running mate and the guard the franchise committed to alongside him this summer — plays to a scratch handicap, a level of golf skill that puts him in genuinely elite amateur territory.
If Doncic is serious about the swing work he described, the Lakers employ an in-house instructor who happens to also be their starting shooting guard.
A Small Appearance That Says Plenty
None of this changes a roster projection, and it is worth being direct that a golf interview is not basketball news in any hard sense. What it offers instead is a data point about where Doncic is this summer — relaxed, visible on his own terms and picking up a hobby that tends to signal a player settling into the long arc of a career rather than grinding through an uncertain one.
The timing adds a little poetry to it. While Doncic took in links golf in England, the roster being built for him kept working in the desert, with the summer league team carrying an undefeated record into Saturday night’s semifinal against the Warriors and the front office continuing to shape the group around its centerpiece.
The Lakers’ offseason has been defined by patience and long-term thinking, and on Saturday, at least, the man at the center of all of it looked like someone perfectly comfortable with the timeline.
