Christo Lamprecht got the full British Open experience Friday.
The amateur, a rising senior at Georgia Tech who earned his way into the field via his victory at last month’s Amateur Championship, held the co-lead after an opening round 5-under 66.
Come the second round, it was the exact opposite from his incredible start. Lamprecht bogeyed five of his first seven holes, going out in 5-over 40, and he didn’t record any birdies in a 8-over 79 at Royal Liverpool, 13 shots worse than his Thursday score.
Lamprecht struggled off the tee Friday, his opening tee shot going nearly 50 yards right. From there, it was a battle for 18 holes as he went from T-1 to making the cut on the number.
However, for his first major start, Lamprecht will get invaluable major experience. And he’ll also get something else: a Silver Medal.
The 6-foot-8 Lamprecht is the only one of the six amateurs in the field who made the cut, so he will earn low amateur honors and the Silver Medal come Sunday evening in Hoylake.
On top of his senior year ahead at Georgia Tech, Lamprecht also has invitations waiting to the 2024 Masters and U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.
We’ll see whether Lamprecht can find recreate some of his first-round magic over the weekend.
Driving irons can be a smart club to use on links courses
Links golf courses like St. Andrews, Carnoustie, Royal St. Georges and Royal Liverpool, the site of this week’s Open Championship, are built on sandy, wind-spect ground that would not be good for agriculture or almost anything other than golf.
The sandy ground allows water to drain quickly, so the fairways tend to be firm and bouncy, and strategically-placed pot bunkers can be extremely challenging to play from, but the main defense for any true links course is wind. Elite golfers are not bothered by playing in rain because it tends to soften the course and make approach shots to the green stop quicker, but wind bedevils them. When it swirls, gusts and shifts, wind adds unpredictability to the game, and that drives control-hungry golfers crazy.
To battle the wind and take advantage of the firm fairway conditions, many golfers take out high-lofted fairway woods before the start of events like the Scottish Open and the British Open, then add a driving iron or two in their place.
Modern fairway woods have a low center of gravity that is typically pulled back, away from the face, to encourage higher-flying shots that maximize carry distance. In windy conditions, hitting a 5-wood or a 7-wood low can be challenging. Even with the same amount of loft, driving irons have a higher center of gravity and it is positioned closer to the face, so they produce lower-flying shots that tend to roll out. Nearly all players also fit their driving irons with graphite shafts, typically designed for hybrids, so they can generate more speed and create the spin rate and launch angle they desire. As a result, fast-swinging golfers can use driving irons can keep the ball below the fiercest winds, adding control off the tee, without sacrificing too much distance.
The players listed below are some of the competitors trying to win the Claret Jug this week at Royal Liverpool who have added driving irons to their bag this week.
HOYLAKE, England — When Brian Harman missed the cut at the Masters in April, he blew off steam over the weekend by hunting for turkeys and pigs. Harman’s prowess with a bow and arrow drew the following question from a reporter on Friday: I take it the sheep and the cows are safe around here at the moment, are they?
“Sheep don’t taste as good as the turkeys do, I would imagine,” he said.
Harman, 36, is hunting for one thing and one thing only this week – a Claret Jug, the prize awarded to the Champion Golfer of the Year – and through 36 holes, the Georgia grad is doing it better than anyone else. On a sunny Friday with the wind blowing gently off the Dee Estuary, Harman carded four straight birdies starting at the second hole and capped off his 6-under 65 at Royal Liverpool with a 15-foot eagle at the last. It gave him a five-stroke lead over England’s Tommy Fleetwood, who shot 71. Harman improved to 10-under 132, matching the lowest 36-hole score in British Open history, a mark previously set by Tiger Woods in 2006 and tied by Rory McIlroy in 2014. Both of those 36-hole leaders posted their record-low figure at Royal Liverpool, too, and went on to victory.
“I’ve had a hot putter the last couple days so try to ride it through the weekend,” said Harman, who used his short stick just 49 times. “Thirty-six holes to go, so try to rest up and get ready.”
Harman made his British Open debut here in 2014, qualifying at the 11th hour by winning his first PGA Tour title at the John Deere Classic the Sunday before the championship.
“Had the 4:45 tee time on Friday, finished at 10:15, made the cut, loved the golf,” he said.
But then he packed his bags early in his next four trips across the pond for the major and couldn’t figure out why his game didn’t translate here. He finished T-19 in 2021 but after a slow start last year, he wondered, “Golly, I love coming over here but I’m getting my teeth kicked in.” He rallied to finish T-6 at St. Andrews and that gave him confidence. He played well the rest of the season, just missing a spot on the U.S. Presidents Cup and had two runner-up finishes in the fall.
“Then I just hit this odd sort of wall at the beginning of the year and I couldn’t claw my way out of it. Just kind of doubled down on my process and started playing some really good golf here of late,” said Harman, who also noted that his putter spent some time on double-secret probation. “There was a time middle of this year to where we were seriously thinking about going to the bullpen and pulling out something different. It’s been a good putter, but she’s been misbehaving a lot this year. Last few weeks I found a little something on the greens that I felt like gave me a little better roll.”
Prodigious.
Brian Harman signs off with an eagle for a superb 65.
Harman, who plays left-handed but does everything else right-handed, has been a top-10 machine – 29 since the start of the 2017-18 PGA Tour season, the most of any player without a win in that span – but hasn’t won since the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship. Asked why he hasn’t won more, Harman said he wasn’t sure.
“I think about it a lot, obviously. I’m around the lead a bunch. It’s been hard to stay patient,” he said. “I felt that after I won the tournament and had the really good chance at the U.S. Open in 2017 that I would probably pop a few more off, and it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been right there, and it just hasn’t happened. I don’t know. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened, but I’m not going to quit.”
His caddie, Scott Tway, the brother of major winner Bob Tway, echoed that sentiment.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe that is going to change.”
Harman had one good chance to win a major, holding the 54-hole lead at Erin Hills in 2017. Brooks Koepka vaulted by him to claim that title and Tway called it “a heartbreaker” for Harman, but said if he learned anything it was that he can do it.
“When I held the 54-hole lead at the U.S. Open, I just probably thought about it too much,” Harman said. “Just didn’t focus on getting sleep and eating right. So that would be my focus this weekend.”
Brian Harman plays a shot from a bunker on the 12th hole on Day Two of The 151st Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club on July 21, 2023 in Hoylake, England. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
Harman’s eagle at the last lifted his lead to five over Fleetwood, six over Austria’s Sepp Straka (67) and seven over a trio of players including former major winner Jason Day.
“I made probably my two best swings of the day,” Harman said of his driver-5-iron to 15 feet.
That lifted him to double digits and the largest lead lead at the British Open since Louis Oosthuizen in 2010. Harman became the ninth player in the last 40 years to hold a 36-hole lead of five strokes or more in a major championship; each of the previous eight went on to win. But Harman is winless the five previous times he’d held the 36-hole lead or co-lead on Tour.
“This could be a serious moment for him,” said three-time British Open champion Nick Faldo, who was commentating on Peacock. “He’s got to live with that. Suddenly, that big of a lead? It puts a lot of expectations on your shoulders.”
And it means the hunter is going to be the hunted. For someone who loves the strategy involved in hunting, Harman likely knows that over the weekend his biggest challenge may not be the forecasted wet weather but rather to stay in the present.
“I have a very active mind,” Harman said. “It’s hard for me. I’ve always struggled with trying to predict the future and trying to forecast what’s going to happen. I’ve just tried to get really comfortable just not knowing.”
View photos of Stewart Cink throughout his 25+ year professional career, including his win at the 2009 Open Championship.
Beloved by many of his peers, Stewart Cink continues to be a factor in some of golf’s biggest tournaments despite being in the back end of his career.
The 2009 British Open champion has had quite the career over the past quarter-century. With 15 worldwide wins since turning pro in 1995, the former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket has earned more than $43 million on the PGA Tour since gaining membership in 1997.
Cink has always had a knack for golf’s biggest stages, tallying top-3 finishes in all four majors with his lone major victory coming against Tom Watson at Turnberry.
Now a member of the PGA Tour Champions, Cink has already made an impact, finishing third at the Senior PGA Championship. The event was his first as a member of the PGA Tour Champions, turning 50 the week before.
With plenty of high level golf left in him, Cink looks to continue to contend at majors, showing that age is just a number.
HOYLAKE, England — Justin Thomas may be struggling with his game, but it hasn’t scared U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson from wanting him on his 12-man team to represent the Stars and Stripes in Rome in late September. Johnson called him “one of the best there is,” among American Ryder Cup players.
“As a friend and roommate, I’m concerned just because he’s my buddy and I know what he’s capable of and that sort of thing,” Johnson said on Friday after his second round at the British Open at Royal Liverpool. “I might be slightly concerned, like I said, as a friend, but I’m not worried about him because I know what he does and I know what he’s capable of.”
Thomas, 30, is mired in the worst slump of his career. He is winless since last year’s PGA Championship and is in danger of failing to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs after missing the cut at the British Open. Thomas shot an opening-round 11-over 82, tying his worst score of his PGA Tour career, and signed for 71 on Friday.
“Making two doubles and a quad, that’s eight year old, nine-year old kind of stuff, not someone who’s trying to win a British Open. You just can’t do stuff like that,” he said. “But I’ll be good.”
That followed an 81 in the second round of the U.S. Open last month, and marks the third of four majors this year that Thomas had the weekend off. Thomas likely will need to play the 3M Open next week and depending on his performance, the Wyndham Championship, which is the final FedEx Cup regular-season event – only the top 70 qualify for the playoffs and he entered the week No. 75.
“I want to make the Ryder Cup more than anything,” Thomas said. “I’m probably honestly trying too hard to do it. It reminds me a lot of my first or second year on Tour. I’ve tried so hard to make that team for the first time. I’m in a very similar position. I’ve been trying to make it easy on Zach and get in the top six, but I seem to not want to do that with my golf. Have a couple events left to try to get in the playoffs and then make a little bit of a run and try to prove a point.”
Nevertheless, Johnson remained resolute that Thomas, who has been a stalwart on the last two Ryder Cup teams and a deadly combo with Jordan Spieth, would be on the team regardless of his recent form. Thomas is 6-2-1 in his two Ryder Cups, the best record of any American golfer to play in at least two, and a combined 6-0-0 in four-ball at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup.
“Bottom line is this game is really hard. There’s going to be peaks. There’s going to be some valleys. Let’s hope whatever sort of non-peak he’s in, it’s short,” Johnson said. “I know he’s got a great team. I love his coaches. I love how he works. He’s a worker. Guys with talent like that that work and aren’t afraid to put their work in the dirt, if you will, not to be cliche, typically find it. It’s just a matter of when, not if. He’s too darned good.”
Johnson and Thomas were sharing a house this week and Johnson saw him ever-so-briefly.
“He was walking, had his head high,” Johnson said. “The kid doesn’t quit…(The Ryder Cup) fuels him. You can tell he wants to be there.”
Johnson has had enough highs and lows during his career that he can relate to what Thomas is going through.
“It stinks, because you’re working and you’re not seeing the fruits of your labour, so to speak. But you’ve got to keep the perspective,” Johnson said. “It’s almost like you’ve got to take two or three steps forward, then you might take a couple steps back, and after that it’s like you’re on an escalator… Yeah, I think it’s a brutal animal, man, and you can’t tame it sometimes, and other times it just feels like it’s sitting right in your lap.”
Asked what he will do to convince Johnson to pick him if he doesn’t make the team, Thomas said, “It’s not like I’m going to write him a love letter or anything. I mean, yeah, I would like to think that my record is my best argument. I love the team events. I thrive in them. I just enjoy it. Playing with a partner could kind of ease me a little bit, relax me.
“Yeah, like I said, I don’t want to put him in this position. I hate even having to hope for a pick. This is the first time since I first qualified that I’ve had to rely on a captain’s pick, and it’s not fun, especially when you’re trending the wrong way when other people are trending toward it.”
Tom Kim opened the 2023 Open championship with a 3-over 74. He was going to need something great Friday to make the weekend at Royal Liverpool.
And that’s exactly what he got.
Thanks to four birdies on his front nine, Kim fired a second-round 3-under 68 and is now even par for the tournament. And he did it playing through an injury.
Kim told the media after his round that he suffered a grade-1 tear in his right ankle last night when he stepped off a patio wrong, a fluke of an injury.
Despite hobbling around, Kim is in position to make a weekend run, although he is 10 strokes behind leader Brian Harman.
Tom Kim shot 68 today with a grade-1 tear in his right ankle. Fluke injury Thursday night after stepping wrong off his patio. His team told him to suck it up and play — and now he’s hobbling and in the hunt at The Open. pic.twitter.com/mUmd42lncy
There was a popular storyline coming into the 2023 Open Championship, the brand new par-3 17th at Royal Liverpool.
It’s short — it played 126 yards on Thursday and 132 yards on Friday — but devilish. If players are off by just a few yards, big scores can come into play. Just ask Lucas Herbert, who made a triple-bogey six during the first round.
Well, the tough shortie wasn’t too difficult for Travis Smyth on Friday as he canned a hole-in-one.
Smyth was coming off a bogey at the par-4 16th and was 3 over for his round.
He walked off the 17th green 1 over and with a memory he’ll have for a lifetime.
HOYLAKE, England — Jon Rahm can do without so many cameramen following his every move.
For the third straight major, he has made them the target of his angst.
Rahm complained in a F-bomb-laden rant, according to members of the press who witnessed it and later was asked in both Spanish and English about what was troubling him.
“I’m trying to walk and there’s way too many people in my way, and I can’t go on my pace because they’re in my way,” he explained.
Rahm, the Masters champion in April and world No. 3, had a disappointing day, which ended with a bogey after his second shot at 18 found a bunker and he had to play out backward. He signed for 3-over 74.
“Then I’m walking off 18 and trying to deal with the unlucky moment on 18, and there’s somebody with a boom light on my ass keeping up with Rory’s pace, and I can’t go at my own pace. That’s kind of the disregard that I (dealt with), that’s all,” he said.
In the third round of the PGA Championship in May, Rahm expressed his frustration with an ESPN cameraman who had gotten too close to him at the eighth hole. “Stop aiming [the camera] at my face when I’m mad, it’s all you guys do,” Rahm could be heard saying on the telecast.
At the U.S. Open, he was a bit more discreet but couldn’t hide is anger with a cameraman, who he claimed was in his face on the par-3 11th at Los Angeles Country Club during the third round.
Rahm plays with his emotions on his sleeve, and contends that when he gets angry it often brings out his best golf. He’s not the only golfer who has complained about cameras being too close to them. Bryson DeChambeau had a similar outburst a few years ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit.
But being shown on TV also goes with the territory when you’re one of the biggest names in the game. It’s why sponsors such as Santander, a new deal announced with Rahm this week, want the company logo on his sleeve and Callaway re-upped on his endorsement deal, too. Rahm likely will just have to come to terms with cameramen being “in his face.”
The first round of the 151st British Open, however, was not that day.
HOYLAKE, England — Rory McIlroy clenched his fist as he saved par at the last hole in his opening round at Royal Liverpool Golf Club.
It’s still early in the 151st British Open but McIlroy wanted to make the putt and avoid shooting an over-par round. He battled back from 2-over through his first 12 holes to post an even-par 71 on Thursday. It wasn’t the round that McIlroy, who won last Sunday at the Genesis Scottish Open and is bidding to end a nine-year winless drought in the majors, was looking for but he didn’t dig himself too big of a hole either.
McIlroy got into red figures with a birdie at the second, but dropped a shot at the fourth and then lipped out a 2-foot par putt at No. 8. He squandered a chance to get it back at the ninth and after another bogey at 12, it was beginning to look as if this might be another missed opportunity at a major.
But McIlroy stayed patient and drained a 40-foot putt at 14 and followed with a birdie at the par-5 15th. The par save at 18 was impressive after he caught one of the steep-faced bunkers protecting the left side of the green and failed to escape on his first attempt trying to play sideways.
“When you hit it into these bunkers you’re riding your luck at that point,” McIlroy said.
On his second attempt, he had a stance with one leg in the bunker and one leg out.
“To get it back to even, I’m pretty pleased with that,” McIlroy said.
He didn’t look nearly as sharp as he did last week in picking up his 24th career PGA Tour title and jumping back to No. 2 in the world. McIlroy won his third of four majors here in 2014.
“Rory made some tactical errors today. Short-sided himself, steep-faced bunkers on the side where the hole was,” said Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee. “If you get too aggressive, sometimes you’re playing too good for your own good…to see a player of his skill short side himself in so many instances, you have to think that perhaps he didn’t have the right strategy out there…on the whole, Rory played OK today but he was a little flat.”
McIlroy, who is grouped with Jon Rahm and Justin Rose, will be off in the morning wave on Friday.
“I’m still right in there,” he said. “Go out in the morning and shoot something in the 60s and I’ll hopefully be right in the mix.”
Taichi Kho was in one of the greenside bunkers on Royal Liverpool’s closing par 5 in two shots Thursday during the first round of the 2023 Open Championship.
It took him eight shots (with a penalty stroke in there) to get the ball in the cup. Nearly pin high in two shots, eight more before he was walking of the green.
The 18th at Royal Liverpool is proving to be one of the more difficult closing holes in recent major championship history, and it looks as if it could provide a huge swing down the stretch on Sunday.
Kho wasn’t spared, carding a 10.
The shot sequence on the 18th hole at Royal Liverpool for Taichi Kho during the first round, when he recorded a 10 on the hole. (Photo: The Open)
Then there was Justin Thomas, a two-time major champion, who had a 9 on the hole. No surprise that those two are bringing up the rear on the leaderboard.
The 18th can be a beast of a par 5, but it is ranked the 12th most difficult hole this week. Still there are opportunities for birdies with two good shots.
Jorge Campillo, in the second-to-last group, carded an 8. Phil Mickelson also added an ocho. Then there was Rickie Fowler, who stepped on the tee at 2 under and walked off the green 1 over with an 8. In the final group, Seungsu Han was 2 over for the day stepping on the 18th tee and made a triple-bogey.
How they fared
Seungsu Han, 76
Phil Mickelson, 77
Justin Thomas, 82
Jorge Campillo, 82
Taichi Kho, 83
But why is it so tough?
First, there’s internal out of bounds lining the entire right side of the fairway, from near the tee box and all the way to the green. The out of bounds only a few feet from the fairway, meaning anything right could be in trouble.
🏖️ ➡️ 🏖️ Bunker to Bunker for Justin Thomas. He would go on to make a 9 on the par-5 18th. Shoots a round of 82 (+11). #TheOpenpic.twitter.com/rVN82yaLzm
At the green, there are five greenside bunkers, three on the left and two right. Those on the left proved disastrous Thursday, perhaps a preview of what’s to come down the stretch.
The first-round scoring average was 5.12. While 28 percent of players made birdie or better, 22 percent made bogey or worse. The percentage of time someone in the sand got it up-and-down? 25 percent.
Kho and Thomas were major victims to the difficult 18th on Thursday. Meanwhile, co-leaders Christo Lamprecht and Emiliano Grillo made birdie on the hole. The fellow leader, Tommy Fleetwood, carded a par. Rory McIlroy closed with a tremendous par after needing two shots to escape a greenside bunker.
Good shots are rewarded, but any golfer who is off just a bit could have a sour taste in their mouth the rest of the day.
