Hoylake, England – The first round of the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club saw a little bit of everything. Thursday began with 27-year-old Matthew Jordan hitting the opening shot at the track he grew up playing and ended with Rory McIlroy rising from an impossible dugout on the 18th to stay 5 shots back.
Only 31 players managed to chart their way through the tough links with a score below par. One of them was a 6-foot-8 amateur from South Africa playing at Georgia Tech named Christo Lamprecht. Another was Stewart Sink, 50, a former Open Open winner who did not take the course until Tuesday.
The selective leaderboard was the product of an idyllic day in Hoylake, where neither weather nor wind was a real factor. That will change on Friday, which is expected to bring hail and rain that could turn this year’s championship into a mental battle against both the track and the elements.
Here are the highlights heading into the second round at Royal Liverpool FC.
hometown child
As Tommy Fleetwood walked down the 18th aisle on Thursday, the crowd carried on the chorus of cheers he’d been hearing all day. They weren’t just cheering for one of them. They were cheering for the leader of The Open.
“Glad I gave them some good golf to watch,” Fleetwood said after his round.
Having grown up 30 miles north of Royal Liverpool at Southport and played countless times for Royal Liverpool, Fleetwood’s match felt distinctly comfortable as he shot a first-innings 66 to retain a share of the lead at 5 under the title on Friday.
The 32-year-old Englishman is vying to become the first Englishman to win The Open Championship since Nick Faldo in 1992 and the first Englishman to win an Open Championship on English soil since Tony Jacklin in 1969.
Fleetwood has led or co-led after just one round in his major career (110 rounds entering today) — that was by 36 holes at the 2017 US Open — but even though he’s headed in the right direction this season (six top-10s on the PGA Tour), he’s yet to get off to strong starts in the majors.
“It hasn’t been my strength lately,” Fleetwood said. “The tournaments started very slowly, so starting something today was really good.”
Despite starting with four consecutive pars on Thursday, Fleetwood went on to birdie six of his next 14 holes, including three consecutive on the back nine with only one bogey in the process. So far, he’s got more than seven hits left in the rest of the field, and he’s set himself up to cap off his solid year with a win that’s almost too good to be true: his first-ever big win to happen in his home country, a Clarets pitcher to play near his home in the Northwest.
“All I want to do is keep working hard, keep playing, keep putting myself in my position,” Fleetwood said. “It is clear that my turn will come soon.”
Clark goes for a rare double
There have only been three US Open winners since 1970 who won the Open Championship in the same year: Lee Trevino in 1971, Tom Watson in 1982, and Tiger Woods in 2000.
Windham Clarke, who won his first major tournament at the US Open last month at Los Angeles Country Club, is off to a great start in his bid to join them. He served a 3-under 68 in the first innings and looked straight home at Liverpool FC.
After he spun at the par 35, Clark caught birdies on the 10th and 11th. Then he had trouble on the par 4 14. He pushed his tee wide to the right, and his ball bounced off the fan’s iPad. Clark said he ended up with a terrible lie and hit the next shot about two feet away. His third shot landed near the green, and he was able to get up and down for bogey.
“It’s a little unfortunate,” Clark said. “Hitting the guy is obviously never good, but he hit a really bad spot. If I hadn’t hit the guy, I probably would have been on the soft grass and would have been able to hit him closer to the green.
“Yeah, going up and doing about 20 feet is really a circuit saver because you’re doubling down there, you’re probably still another bird, maybe, maybe not. But it seems to take away momentum, and it makes me feel like I’ve got momentum back.”
Asked if the fan’s iPad was okay, Clark said, “Well, I don’t care now. You screwed me up.”
Hoylake’s fiery finish is going to get tougher
The most convincing shots at this year’s Open may be the final two shots. During a day at Royal Liverpool, the 17th and 18th holes have already become the subject of much drama and fanfare. Lucas Herbert was leading the tournament for a moment during the morning flurry before bogeying the 17th hole and bogeying the ball from bunker to bunker for a triple bogey.
“I think if you hit an improper putt and you miss the fairway, you miss the green by yards, you’re in the back of the dugout, you’re going to double, you lose The Open, you’re going behind. There’s no question about that,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who made a birdie on Thursday with a light wind. “But at the same time, it’s the same for everyone. It’s going to require a good shot there. It’s maybe a little too much penalty on the right side, but it’s the same for everyone.”
If Thursday was a very nice showing for the freshman hole in Hoylake, most players can expect it to get tougher as winds and weather pick up throughout the week.
“It can become a massacre,” said Jordan Spieth, who equalized on the 17th Thursday.
For both Adam Scott and Ricky Fowler, the 18th hole was the carnage for their first-round scorecards.
Fowler was two out heading into the final hole of his par and had just chipped a par 300 yards down center fairway. His first approach broke right and straight into the inside out-of-bounds area that ran alongside the right-hand side of the fairway.
After he was awarded a dropped penalty, Fowler tried it again and threw it into a similar spot. By the time he was out, Fowler had to card out a triple bogey 8 that dropped him back to 1. It was only the second time Fowler had tripled the final hole of any round in his major career.
Scott’s drive on the 18th spun off his line and into the out-of-bounds area. Overcorrecting on his next shot, the Australian pulled his second drive to left instead and over the fan fence. The ball actually hit a fan on the head, causing Scott to take off his glove, catch it and give it to the fan before finally making a double bogey, ending up, like Fowler, at one point.
Both craters will be great to watch all week. On 17, any player who vaults it will have to pray for a good lie. As many players like Tony Finau showed on Thursday, a ball that finds sand-filled pits can end up right next to the bunker face, making for some creative play and a volley, if not two.
More cellar pot fun pic.twitter.com/mtXS8mbmrt
Fried eggs (the_fried_egg) July 20, 2023
“You stand on every shortstop and almost every dugout that plays,” said Shane Lowry. “You’re kind of trying to figure out what to do because if you lie in the back, you’re just playing for the pars. If you run it and you take a bad shot and you end up in the bunker, it’s basically a penalty shot.”
As far as 18s go, watching more players hit it out of bounds might force anyone stepping into the tee box on a weekend with the lead to think more about the worst-case scenario or not, especially if the wind and rain pick up. As Spieth said Thursday, it’s the crosswinds on the course, however light or strong, and the bunkers below, that give a golf course its teeth.
“I think the hardest part of the course is the crosswinds from the tee and how important it is to get to the fairways,” said Speth. “It’s amazing how much the wind and the heaviness of the wind can affect the ball here at Crosswinds.”
Unlike the 18 at Los Angeles Country Club during the US Open, this one will take a good shot down the stretch. If 17 doesn’t cost someone at The Open, maybe 18 will.