Tam arte quam marte, indeed. Royal Troon’s old Latin motto, ‘as much by skill as by strength’, gets trotted out a lot during Open Championship week, whether it’s to illuminate the qualities needed to master the noble links, or the attributes required by droothy golf writers trying to negotiate their way to the front of the queue in Girvan’s Bar after a hard shift.
You needed a fair bit of skill, strength and everything else to thrive in this neck of the golfing woods yesterday.
The 152nd championship was up and running. Not everybody got cracking, of course. Some fell flat on their faces.
On a driech, pitiless day, with the wind departing its prevailing direction and tossing all that practice into chaos, Rory McIlroy’s shattering 78 was his worst score in a major since a 79 in The Open across the water at Portrush in 2019.
Dressed in all black, he looked as sombre as an ageing priest shuffling to deliver some mournful news. The last rites were already being murmured to McIlroy’s Open ambitions as he finished a whopping 13 shots behind the surprise leader Daniel Brown.
The 29-year-old Brown cosied home a birdie putt on the last at 9.34pm to pinch the lead from Shane Lowry with a six-under 65 and leave those golf writers hastily rehashing their copy. Girvan’s Bar would have to wait.
Bryson DeChambeau, the reigning US Open champion, had suggested earlier in the week that Royal Troon “has some teeth.” It was hardly a revelatory observation.
Those gnashers were on show yesterday and they took a good chomp out of DeChambeau’s confidence and aspirations as he huffed and puffed to a 76.
For many, it was a day of carnage and calamity that could’ve ended with them being wheeled down the Craigend Road on a hospital gurney. A pained Tiger Woods probably would’ve welcomed the lie down.
The dour, damp conditions were the worst kind for his creaking frame and a wretched day ended with a 79. Cameron Smith, a brilliant Open winner just two years ago, fared even worse with an 80 while Henrik Stenson, the heroic champion at Troon in 2016, returned with a 77.
“You can't reach any of the par-5s on the front nine,” bleated Tyrrell Hatton after a 73. Diddums. “Brutal,” added the defending champion Brian Harman with a succinct summing up of affairs. His own 73 wasn’t too bad in the circumstances.
Brown’s 65, in contrast, was terrific. In the gathering gloom, with grandstands sparsely populated by the hardcore getting their money’s worth, it wasn’t the most rousing march up the 18th for the English Open debutant.
It was still a moment to savour, though, for a man who had missed six cuts in his last eight events on tour. “It was very dark,” said Brown. “I am very excited, but I have got to keep my feet on the ground.”
Lowry’s 66 was a cracker too. The 2019 Claret Jug winner polished off his bogey-free round at the back of 8pm with a birdie putt of six feet.
“It’s dinner time, lads,” smiled Lowry, who was well aware that the golf scribblers were missing out on their usual foie gras and filet mignon. When Brown emerged well over an hour later, we’d given up on getting pudding too.
This was Lowry’s lowest opening round in a major, but the canny 37-year-old is not one to get carried away. There’s plenty of golf to be played yet.
“Look, it's good, it's great, but there are three rounds left,” he said. “If I don't play well the next three rounds, it doesn't matter what I shot today. I'd give anything to win this tournament again.
“The walk down 18 was pretty cool. It’s the greatest walk in golf, and I got to do it on a Sunday afternoon with a full house (in 2019). That's the plan, to try to get to do that again.”
A purposeful, profitable performance with the putter certainly aided Lowry’s assault. A productive reconnaissance mission to Troon a couple of weeks ago helped too.
“In all the practice rounds this week, we played the front nine down wind and the back nine into the wind,” he said. “But fortunately, I came here two weeks ago, and I played in this wind that I played here. I saw the golf course in every wind possible.”
The early standard has been set by Justin Thomas. It was something of a redemptive moment for the American. A year ago, in the first round of The Open at Hoylake, a troubled Thomas sagged to an 82.
Here at Troon, a three-under 68 had him riding high. It wasn’t plain sailing. Nothing is on this formidable patch of terrain.
Having reached the four-under mark through 10 holes, the 31-year-old, who has missed the cut in five of his last seven majors, stumbled to a double-bogey on the 12th and a bogey on 13.
A brace of birdies to finish, highlighted by a putt of 25-feet on the last, raised his morale and his position.
“I know things are continuing to work in the right direction,” said Thomas, who led last week’s Scottish Open after a first round 62 but slithered out of the running.
At the end of a long, long Open day, it was Brown who had assumed command. Carpe diem, and all that.
