The world number 34 believes he has the game to challenge for the claret jug at Royal Birkdale this week.

Leishman has produced his best major results at the British Open, finishing tied for second after a playoff in 2016 and fifth the previous year.

“It’s one of my favourites and the one I have performed the best in for sure,” he said.

“I just enjoy the type of golf. It’s different, it’s more like what I grew up on in Warrnambool.

“You need a lot of imagination around the whole course with how strong the wind gets.

“You need to control your ball, not just in the air but when it hits the ground you can lose control of it, so you need to really pick the right shot shape and work it into the wind.

“Because it’s so firm, it needs to be landing softly and to do that, you need to work it into the wind.”

Leishman is grouped with 2016 runner-up Phil Mickelson and Italian Francesco Molinari for the opening two days’ play. He believes the tournament is wide open.

“Dustin Johnson is playing great and is the number one player in the world, Rickie Fowler is always good at the links and there’s John Rahm,” he said.

“Phil is a great player and got very close to winning it last year. By the end of Sunday, the guys you expect to be up there will be up there but early in the week, there’s always a few surprises in there and you don’t know how long they can keep going.”

Leishman takes consistent form into the penultimate major of 2017.

He won his second PGA Tour event, the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, and placed fifth in the Quicken Loans National in June.

“It’s been a good year, obviously the win was a highlight but I had quite a few chances to win before that which was good,” Leishman said.

“Not winning was frustrating but I’ve been really consistent and I got myself in a position to win a lot of times and that’s what you need to do to get that confidence to eventually win.”