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How about a left-handed winner this year? History says no. Surprisingly, Bob Charles in 1963 (Royal Lytham) and Phil Mickelson (2013) are the only Southpaws to have their names engraved on the Claret Jug. This isn’t Wimbledon, or indeed Augusta National, where lefties won six of the 12 editions from 2003 to 2014.
There are four lefties in the field this week: Mickelson, local man Robert McIntyre, American Brian Harman and South African Garrick Higo.
All four are now on the course and McIntyre (2) and Harman (1) have made early birdies to sit at -1. Mickelson is even after five straight pars, while Higo is +2 after 6.
Early ranking
Simpson makes a sloppy bogey on the 10th and that means the leaderboard is bunched.
-2: Simpson (10), Brown (9), Herbert (5), Tringale (3) -1: Wu (8), Poulter (6), M Kim (5), Kitayama (5), Hoge (4) , J Kim (4), Smith (3), Young (2), MacIntyre (2), Horschel (1)
Updated at 09.00 BST
John Daly, sporting his now-familiar Santa beard, began playing as the gods.
“Wild Thing” has to have the most curious major record in men’s golf. In 76 starts he has only three top 10s, but two of those were wins! That includes his memorable win at St Andrews in 1995, when he rallied to win a play-off after watching ashen-faced as Constantino Rocca miraculously leveled a long-range strike from Sin Valley. Daley hasn’t made the Open since 2012.
John Daly starts 3rd. Photo: Richard Sellers/Pennsylvania
Updated at 08.59 BST
Cameron Tringale, the first-round leader at last week’s Scottish Open (he finished sixth), made another brilliant start. Birdies on 1 and 3 took the Californian to -2 and a stroke back from Simpson.
Tringale has yet to win on the PGA Tour, so this would seem an unlikely place to grab that elusive first victory. He was 26th at last year’s Open at Royal St George’s and 14th at the US Open last month (his best major finish), so perhaps the 34-year-old can stay near the top of the rankings this week.
Leader Webb Simpson bogeys 8 but bounces back with a birdie on 9 to get back to -3. It’s an outside half of 33 and he’s one shot clear of Australia’s Lucas Herbert, who picked up shots on 2 and 4.
Forget Reid, the frontrunner is English amateur Barkley Brown, who sounds like an English character actor from the Terry-Thomas era. A member of last year’s British and Irish Walker Cup team, Brown made an excellent start: six pars and a birdie at 7 to sit third.
Bryson DeChambeau’s ‘drive a load of par 4s’ strategy hits an early hole as he bogeys one of his target holes, the 2nd. Perhaps the message is sinking in that it’s not that easy as he doesn’t get an iron off the tee until the 3rd.
Meanwhile, the other big winner, Patrick Reed, birdied the 3rd to get to -1. Reed is another one of those signing up for LIV. And in case anyone doesn’t know, he’s wearing a LIV golf hat.
Justin Rose retires
Justin Rose, the 2018 Carnoustie runner-up, has retired. The Englishman was seen warming up but did not appear for his first time since 08.14. It’s a real shame. Rose has shown flashes of good form this season, finishing fourth at the Canadian Open three starts ago. And of course we all remember how he first shot to fame in this event when he finished fourth as a lanky teenage amateur at Royal Birkdale in 1998. Rose was also sixth at the last St Andrews Open in 2015 and finished runner-up to Carnoustie four years ago.
Justin Rose during practice on Wednesday. Photo: David Davis/Pennsylvania
Updated at 08.35 BST
Another birdie for Webb Simpson, this time on 7, and the 36-year-old moves to -3. That’s enough for a two-shot lead.
The American seems to like a fast start in this event. He was third after the first day at Royal Portrush in 2019 and shot a 66 to remain fourth after the first round at Royal St George’s last year.
For all the talk of a low score, the field is collectively +4 over par. These set pins help explain why. It’s also pretty cool.
Some big names start to come out and Bryson DeChambeau almost misses his approach on the 1st for eagle, his ball sucks and he just doesn’t get the cup. A potential eagle becomes par when he pushes his short birdie to the right.
DeChambeau said earlier this week that he thinks he has a chance to drive the par 4s at 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 and 12. Oddly, he didn’t say 18. We’ll see if he can walk and how well he does is a similar strategy.
Not the warmest of welcomes for Ian Poulter at the 1st game earlier. Some boos actually. It’s hard to think the Englishman would be embarrassed, but he almost hooked his tee shot out of bounds, which happens to be the widest fairway in golf.
Polite applause for Phil Mickelson, though, and the six-time major champion/LIV disgrace finds the right side of the fairway. He makes money and so does Poulter.
A sense of how wide Poulter’s putt is left on the first. Photo: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images
Updated at 08.22 BST
Preamble
Links golf is all about dealing with bad breaks. But imagine being Rory McIlroy after his third-place finish at the 2010 Open at St. Andrews and being told you won’t be competing for another Claret Jug at the Home of Golf until 2022 because of leg exhaustion from playing soccer and global a pandemic.
But here we are 12 years later and Rory is finally getting another chance to make history and do what so many of the greats have done: win the Open at St Andrews.
This is the 150th edition of the world’s oldest major and the 30th at St Andrews. Tom Kidd pocketed £11 for winning the first held here in 1873, while this year’s champion has $2.5 million.
Scroll down in memory of St. Andrews and it shows a timeline of great champions: Bobby Jones 1927, Sam Snead 1946, Peter Thomson 1955, Bobby Locke 1957, Jack Nicklaus 1970 and 1978, Seve Ballesteros 1984, Nick Faldo 1990, Tiger Woods 2000 and 2005 and, uh, Zach Johnson in 2015.
Bookies reckon ‘Rory McIlroy 2022’ is the next entry, but there is a star-studded line-up with other ideas bidding to be named ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’ on Sunday.
Here are the start times for round one – all times BST
06.35 Paul Lawrie, Webb Simpson, Min Woo Lee06.46 Sadom Kaewkanjana, Ben Campbell, Barclay Brown06.57 Dean Burmester, Chan Kim, Brandon Wu07.08 Ian Poulter, Jamie Donaldson, Guido Migliozzi07.19 Garrick Higgo, MinKyu Kim, Ashley Chesters07 .30 Phil Mickelson, Lucas Herbert, Kurt Kitayama07.41 Patrick Reed, Tom Hodge, Joo Hyung Kim07.52 John Daly, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Tringale08.03 Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Seamus Power08.14 Francesco Molinari, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose08.25 Cameron Young, Kyong Hoon Lee, Robert McIntyre08.36 Zach Johnson, Billy Horschel, Corey Connors08.47 Brian Harman, Pablo Larazabal, Danny Willett09.03 Stephen Dodd, JT Poston, Lee Westwood09.14 Sep Straka, Luke List . Justin Thomas, Victor Hovland10.20 Will Zalatoris, Hidek i Matsuyama, Tony Finau10 .31 Kevin Kisner, Chris Kirk, Takumi Kanaya10.42 Dylan Fritelli, Trey Mullinax, Matthew Jordan10.53 Anthony Quayle, Xander Lombard, John Parry11.04 Thomas Detry, Richard Mansell, Marco Penge11.15 Alexander Bjork, Oliver Farr, Matt Ford11 .36 Mark Calcavecchia, Ryan Fox, Jediah Morgan11.47 Christian Bezuidenhout, Bernd Wisberger, Sam Bairstow11.58 Adrian Meronk, Haotong Li, Marcus Armitage12.09 Triston Lawrence, Fabrizio Zanotti, Alex Wrigley12.20 Aaron Wise, Si Woo Kim, Sam Horsfield12.31 Talor Gooch, Shaun Norris, Wyndham Clark12.42 Henrik Stenson, Russell Henley, Aldrich Potgieter12.53 Stewart Cink, Sergio Garcia, Aaron Jarvis13.04 Sungjae Im, Paul Casey, Gary Woodland13.15 Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Mark Leishman13.26 Scotty Scheffler, Joaquin Niemann, Tyrell Hatton13.37 Darren Clarke, Richard Bland, Filippo Celli13.48 Kevin Na, Kazuki Higa, Eric van Rooyen14.04 David Duvall, Justin Harding, Jordan Smith14.15 Shugo Imahira, Jason Scrivener, David Lowe14. 26 Abraham Unser, Yuto Katsuragawa, Emiliano Grillo14.37 Louis Oosthuizen, Harris English, Keita Nakajima14.48 Padraig Harrington, Thomas Peters, Keith Mitchell14.49 Tiger Woods, Matt Fitzpatrick, Max Homa15.10 Jordan Spieth, John Rahm, Harold Varner III15 .21 Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Mito Pereira15.32 Keegan Bradley, Sebastian Munoz, Sahit Tigala15.43 Laurie Kanter, Dimitrios Papadatos, Matthew Griffin15.54 John Catlin, Jamie Rutherford, David Carey16.05 Mingyu Cho, Jorge Fernandez Valdes, Robert Dinwiddie16.16 Lars Van Meigel, Jack Floyd, Ronan Mulreney
It’s just under 90 minutes since 1999 Open champion Paul Lowry – using a yellow ball! – hit the tee shot at this 150th Open Championship.
Very few birdies so far with the pins tucked in, although Lowry’s partner, 2012 US Open champion Webb Simpson, managed reds at 1 and 5 to lead at -2. Lawrie got caught in the rough on the 4th to drop to +3, but bounced back with a birdie on the 5th.
Your early ranking:
-2: Simpson (5) -4: Burmester (3), M Kim (2)
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