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1 day ago
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Key events
Bryson DeChambeau looks mildly disgusted with himself for missing a ten-foot birdie putt on 1. Jackson Suber maintains his gameface despite making bogey, the result of that wayward tee shot, which snagged in heavy rough. The 18-hole leader slips back to -5.
Cameron Young birdies 9, as so many do. Not so many cover the front nine in 29 strokes, though. Well, Ryan Fox did it yesterday, and Denis Durnian went one better here in 1983, still the Open record for the front nine. The Players champion is making up for his dreadful back nine yesterday evening: 40 strokes that may prove so painfully costly. But let’s see how it all pans out. If he posts something … and see also Russell Henley, who birdies 14. The two Americans at this rate hunting down another couple of 62s?
-10: Burns
-8: Young (9), Fox, Kim
-7: Henley (17), Scheffler (6), Gerard, Herbert
-6: Matsuyama (3), Fleetwood (1), DeChambeau (1), Åberg
… Tommy Fleetwood drains a 73-footer from the fringe at the front of 1!!! Shoulders UP! Shoulders BACK! One of those putts that looked inevitable halfway along its journey, a left-to-right swinger that disappeared into the hole like a mouse with a piece of cheese. He smiles so wide and hard that his teeth almost outshine the sun. The crowd go bonkers. What a start! The dream is alive! He’s -6.
Speaking of folk heroes: here comes Bryson DeChambeau! He’s certainly not going to die wondering, and puts everything he’s got into his opening drive. A monster that bounds down the fairway before scuttling into the semi-rough on the right. He’ll be going round with the debut sensation Jackson Suber, who toys with OB down the right but stays in. There was a huge roar as he took his shot. And that’s because …
Rory McIlroy’s momentum-free week continues to bumble along apace. Having birdied 10, he immediately hands the shot back at 11, the result of finding a fairway bunker with his tee shot and being forced to take his medicine in it. Meanwhile more news on the status of Tommy Fleetwood’s shoulders: drooped. He’s got a decent enough lie, and cracks an iron towards the green, his ball creeping onto the front, just. But he clearly wanted more, and lets those shoulders fall as he offloads to his caddie. He appears agitated, the weight of carrying the gallery’s hopes and dreams around with him all week perhaps beginning to tell. A local hero is something to be.
The final few games are running late, due to a rules brouhaha in an earlier match. So if you’ve been hammering away at refresh waiting for news of Tommy Fleetwood, here he comes now. The usual hubbub on the tee, then he takes his fairway wood, hits the ball, and twirls the club in satisfaction. Not exactly sure why, because his ball disappears into a thick clump of grass atop a bank to the left of the fairway. Some tension in the shoulders no doubt.
Another birdie for Scottie Scheffler! He crashes his drive at 5 greenside, chips up to four feet, and rolls in the putt. No fuss. The defending champion is now -7, and if he continues like this, posts a number, and the late-starting leaders have to deal with the cranking up of both wind and pressure … well now, we’d have quite the Open. A long way to go yet.
A good couple of minutes for Ireland. Rory McIlroy finally makes a putt, on 10, while Shane Lowry holes out from a bunker at 4. It’s back-to-back birdies for the 2019 champion, who clenches a fist in celebration. At -5, you can be sure he’s not going to admit defeat just yet. Rory is -4. But any faint Scottish hopes of a first title since Paul Lawrie seized the day in 1999 have gone south. Consecutive bogeys for Bob MacIntyre, at 6 and 7, and he’s back to -2.
Russell Henley keeps on keepin’ on! He sends his approach at 11 from 156 yards to 14 feet, and the putt drops for his fifth birdie of the day. The rest of his card is unblemished, so he just needs another three birdies in the last seven holes to join Club 62. And there are scoring opportunities all around Royal Birkdale.
On the subject of Bryson, who reportedly threatened to walk upon being penalised for his fescue shoe shuffle, here’s the story of one player who actually walked it like he talked it. Courtesy of an old Joy of Six on the Open.
The 16th Open Championship was the second to be held on the famous Old Course at St Andrews and the first to descend into total farce. From the outset, there was trouble brewing. The organisers had forgotten – golfers who have been unlucky in the St Andrews ballot will love this – to book the course for the tournament, so competitors had to grab tee times when they could, going out for their rounds while members of the general public hooked and shanked to their hearts’ delight around them. Delightful bedlam.
Sure enough, this would eventually ruin the Championship. It is said that the best two players of the early 1870s were Young Tom Morris and David Strath. Morris had pipped Strath to the Open in 1870 and 1872, but died of a broken heart on Christmas Day 1875, a few months after his wife and newborn baby had died during a difficult labour. With his main rival tragically out of the picture, it was assumed an Open victory for Strath would come along sooner or later.
With two holes of his second and final round to play, 1876 looked like being Strath’s year. Bob Martin was in the clubhouse having just shot 90 for a total of 176, a mark which meant Strath would win the title if he got home in 10 strokes. Having played his second straight down the middle of the fairway at the Road Hole, the group ahead were faffing around on the green. Strath – his patience worn by two rounds of nonsense on a ludicrously busy course – clipped his third shot into the green the very moment the group ahead finished the hole. But they had not completely vacated the green, and his approach hit one of the players, the ball stopping near the hole instead of bouncing through and on to the road running behind.
Strath still took two putts for a five. He should have sealed the deal with a careful passage up the last, but got caught up in the Valley of Sin and took six. He too signed for a 90, tied on 176 with Martin. A play-off was therefore scheduled for the following Monday, but there had also been complaints about the incident back on 17, and the R&A committee refused to rule until after the deciding round was complete. Understandably, Strath reasoned that there was no point playing if he was only going to be disqualified anyway and demanded a decision before they teed off. None was forthcoming. Strath walked, leaving Martin with the formality of competing in the play-off himself for the right to become Open champion.
Strath competed again the following year at Musselburgh, but only came fifth, six shots behind the winner Jamie Anderson. It was his last Open. Two years later, he left on a boat for Australia, suffering from tuberculosis and seeking a cure in sunnier climes. He had bought a return ticket, but never came back, laryngitis adding to his physical woes, and he succumbed in Melbourne not long after his arrival. Another grim story, but seven top-10 Open finishes in eight attempts, including three second-place finishes, isn’t a bad legacy to be leaving.
Rory McIlroy’s front nine has been his 2026 Open in microcosm. A plethora of birdie chances, a lot of putts steadfastly refusing to drop, momentum a pipe dream. He birdied 2 and 6, bogeyed 7, and on the short par-four 9th – birdie, birdie, eagle on the first three days – he sends a chip long and has to settle for par. Out in 33, and he’ll not be troubling the engraver this week. He’s already etched his name onto this particular Open’s story, to be fair.
Russell Henley finished in the top ten in 2024 and 2025, and the hat-trick isn’t out of the question yet. The 37-year-old from Georgia, who is something of a late bloomer in the majors – he tied for third at this year’s Masters, and for fourth at Augusta in 2023 – started the day at -1, but has made a big move thanks to birdies at 2, 3, 9 and now 10. The latest a dainty chip-in over the bunker at the front of the green, his ball landing gently on the shoulder and rolling into the cup. He’s zoomed up the standings to -5.
-10: Burns
-8: Fox, Kim
-7: Young (6), Gerard, Herbert
-6: Scheffler (3), Åberg, DeChambeau, Suber
-5: Henley (10), Neergaard-Petersen, Fleetwood
It’s fair to say the opening tee shot has got into Jon Rahm’s head. He hoicked it out of bounds down the right yesterday … and now he’s done exactly the same thing today. That leads to double bogey, just as it did yesterday, and he drops back to -2.
So is there a score out there if someone wants to make a charge? Of course there’s a score out there, we’ve had three 62s already this week. A fourth is probably a pipe dream, with the wind picking up in the afternoon as it always does … but then rule nothing out, because these gentlemen are good. There are already three players back in the house with 66s: Matthew Southgate (E), John Parry (-2) and Rickie Fowler, who at -3 is the very early clubhouse leader. But there are a couple of big names only just out who are also illustrating the point. Scottie Scheffler has thrown darts at the flag on both of the opening two holes, and his birdie-birdie start takes him to -6. Cameron Young meanwhile has birdied four of the first five holes to rise to within three of Sam Burns’ overnight lead. How he’ll be ruing his miserable back nine of 40 yesterday evening. But that hour and a half, when the wheels came off, hasn’t cost him yet.
-10: Burns
-8: Fox, Kim
-7: Young (5), Gerard, Herbert
-6: Scheffler (2), Åberg, DeChambeau, Suber
-5: Neergaard-Petersen, Fleetwood
Preamble
Sam Burns is playing with house money today. Sort of. The 29-year-old from Louisiana was planning to sit this one out, with his wife Caroline slated to give birth earlier this week. But Caroline delivered earlier than expected, then encouraged her husband to give the Open a whirl. And now look!
So it’s a free hit. Kind of. Thing is, once you’re in this position, there’s a hell of a lot to lose. And remember how heartbroken Burns was to come up short at last year’s US Open. He’s been on the verge of the big breakthrough for a couple of years now, and maybe this is his time. But there are other in-form players lurking, dreaming of a maiden major, so expect a lot of nerves to jangle today.
And then there’s Bryson DeChambeau. We’re about 40 hours on from Gardengate™, so let’s try to put that one to bed now. But rightly or wrongly, the two-time US Open champion and social-media behemoth is fuelled by a righteous fury, and plenty in the gallery will be four-square behind him. Plenty more will be pulling for local hero Tommy Fleetwood, though. Ludvig Åberg would be a popular champion as well.
Or will someone come bursting from of the nether regions of the leaderboard, just as Ryan Fox did yesterday, leaping 50 places in benign early conditions to shoot the third 62 of the week? It’s not beyond the realms. So let’s see how this pans out. It promises to be so much fun.
Here’s how the top of the leaderboard looked after the third round …
-10: Sam Burns
-8: Ryan Fox, Kim Si-woo
-7: Ryan Gerard, Lucas Herbert
-6: Ludvig Åberg, Bryson DeChambeau, Jackson Suber
-5: Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, Tommy Fleetwood
-4: Xander Schauffele, Eric Cole, Kazuma Kobori, Hideki Matsuyama, Daniel Brown, Cameron John, Shane Lowry, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler
… and here’s when everyone went out / will go out today (all times BST). It’s on!
7.40 am: Jesper Svenson, Keegan Bradley
7.50 am: Matthew Southgate, Laurie Canter
8 am: Jack McDonald, Ben Griffin
8.10 am: Peter Uihlein, Kazuki Higa
8.20 am: Sepp Straka, John Parry
8.30 am: Andy Sullivan, Aldrich Potgieter
8.40 am: Marcus Plunkett, Ryo Hisatsune
8.50 am: Min Woo Lee, Tyrrell Hatton
9 am: Nick Taylor, MJ Daffue
9.15 am: Eugenio Chacarra, Rickie Fowler
9.25 am: Naoyuki Kataoka, Thomas Detry
9.35 am: JJ Spaun, Victor Perez
9.45 am: Chris Gotterup, Patrick Cantlay
9.55 am: Michael Brennan, Kurt Kitayama
10.05 am: Brooks Koepka, Bud Cauley
10.15 am: Alex Fitzpatrick, Pierceson Coody
10.25 am: Corey Conners, Johnny Keefer
10.40 am: Patrick Reed, Adam Scott
10.50 am: Michael Thorbjornsen, Shaun Norris
11 am: Marco Penge, Alex Noren
11.10 am: Russell Henley, Matt Wallace
11.20 am: Francesco Molinari, Collin Morikawa
11.30 am: Jordan Smith, Rory McIlroy
11.40 am: Hennie Du Plessis, Sahith Theegala
11.50 am: Casey Jarvis, Kristoffer Reitan
12.05 pm: Cameron Young, Robert MacIntyre
12.15 pm: Nico Echavarria, Im Sung-jae
12.25 pm: Jacob Bridgeman, Justin Thomas
12.35 pm: Max Homa, Alex Smalley
12.45 pm: Jose Luis Ballester, Scottie Scheffler
12.55 pm: Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry
1.05 pm: Cameron John, Daniel Brown
1.15 pm: Hideki Matsuyama, Kazuma Kobori
1.30 pm: Eric Cole, Xander Schauffele
1.40 pm: Tommy Fleetwood, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen
1.50 pm: Jackson Suber, Bryson DeChambeau
2 pm: Ludvig Aberg, Lucas Herbert
2.10 pm: Ryan Gerard, Kim Si-woo
2.20 pm: Ryan Fox, Sam Burns
