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Three Just Stop Oil protestors who struck at The 2023 Open Championship have been cleared of causing public nuisance.

The case involving a trio of protestors from the activist group at Hoylake two years ago was thrown out by a judge on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence.

George Birch, 21, Noah Crane, 20, and Lucy Timlin, 46, all denied charges of intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance in golf’s oldest major at Royal Liverpool on 21 July 2023.

They had breached the new par-3 17th green midway through the second round, while the group of Billy Horschel, Corey Conners and Alex Noren were playing through.

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Horschel ended up helping a marshal remove one demonstrator from inside the ropes and the trio were quickly arrested.

However, at Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday, judge Gary Woodhall advised the jury to return not guilty verdicts as their act did not meet the threshold for public nuisance because of the short length for which play had been stopped.

A statement from the defendants read: “The actions taken by Just Stop Oil in 2022 and 2023 moved the issuing of new oil and gas licences from an obscure industry talking point to a major political issue.

“This resulted in the Labour Party ending new oil and gas licensing when it came to power in 2024.”

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Mr Crane later told the BBC that the court had mate the right decision to throw the case out.

“No case to answer is the only sensible result. It was a five plus hour day of golf which we delayed for about three minutes,” said.

“Obviously a delay and obviously it’s something serious people do deserve to watch the things they want to watch, but what they charged us with was public nuisance which is massively overcharging it.

“This is really the only logical decision.”