SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND | This has not, so far, been a good week for golf’s soothsayers and prophets.
Throughout the Open Championship practice days the talk around Royal Birkdale was that linksland experience would hold sway. The course, it was said, had been toughened up by the architects and roughed up by the weather.
Only the wise and the seasoned would thrive on its burnt-out fairways and contoured greens.
The theory appeared solid – and then Jackson Suber, a 26-year-old American with no more than 27 holes of links golf under his belt, grabbed the first-round lead.
We were also told that scoring would be brutal, that the field would have to grind on every shot, that any kind of red number would be worthy of praise.
Cue two second-round scores of 62 that equalled the lowest 18-hole scores in men’s major championship history.
It didn’t make sense and nor did the manner in which these two scores of 8-under par were constructed.
On the one hand there was Australia’s Lucas Herbert, who has spent the last week playing Royal Lytham & St Annes, Hillside and Royal Birkdale.
Burns has contended in both the Masters and the U.S. Open this year, but his priorities were elsewhere this July with his wife, Caroline, expecting their second child on Tuesday of Open week.
The LIV Golf performer is well aware that his major-championship opportunities are rare. He is equally well aware that the Open is the major that most suits his game. He was, therefore, desperate to make the most of his chance.
On the other hand, there was Louisiana’s Sam Burns, a man who never expected to be playing in the final major championship of the year let alone thriving in it.
Burns has contended in both the Masters and the U.S. Open this year, but his priorities were elsewhere this July with his wife, Caroline, expecting their second child on Tuesday of Open week.
“I thought there was zero chance of playing,” he said, but then baby Belle arrived 11 days early. “Even then, I still wasn’t expecting to play, but I had a bunch of conversations with my wife, and she encouraged me to play, and here we are.”
He’d played precious little recent golf of any kind ahead of Thursday, let alone of the seaside variety. “I don’t know about lower expectations,” he said. “But I was definitely trying to be a little more patient with myself for sure.”
In contrast, Herbert said: “I felt good coming into the week and I felt good on the range warming up.”
In track-and-field parlance, the Aussie then burst from the blocks Friday with birdies at Nos. 1, 2 and 3. He added three more before the turn and two more at 11 and 12.
“Eight-under par through 12 holes – that’s pretty much as good as I’ve ever played,” he said.
“My best shot of the day was the birdie putt at 16. There was a lot of noise going on, but no-one vocalised it. Everyone knew it: the score I had, the opportunity I had. So to make that putt on 16 was pretty crucial.” – Lucas Herbert
The galleries had picked up on his scintillating golf, were well aware that something special was in the offing, and he sensed their excitement.
“My best shot of the day was the birdie putt at 16,” he said. “There was a lot of noise going on, but no-one vocalised it. Everyone knew it: the score I had, the opportunity I had. So to make that putt on 16 was pretty crucial.”
He was 9-under-par for both the round and the tournament playing 17, a par-5 that was reachable in two. Australian voices in the gallery shouted encouragement to “Herby” all the way to the green, but his second shot missed in wild fashion to the left of a large mound.
When his pitch over it left him 10 feet for birdie, members of the gallery commentated on the putt to come for his wife, Erika, whose view was blocked.
Alas, the ball slipped by the hole.
Fifteen minutes later he missed a shorter putt for par at 18 and so missed the chance to card the first 61 in men’s major championship history.
“I’m absolutely disappointed and, at the same time, so proud of today,” he said. “Very, very proud to put my name on that list of guys that have shot 62 in a major championship and it’s a pretty good problem to have – to be disappointed you shot 62.
“One of my earliest golf memories was my dad waking me up to watch Chad Campbell in the first round in the 2009 Masters because it looked like he had a really good chance to shoot 62 and break the record at that time.
“I thought during my round that if one kid gets woken up by their parents to watch me finish this round because that’s the record being broken, that would be so cool, and it would tickle me pink. I hope it happened. I hope some kid’s disappointed that I shot 62 and didn’t hole that putt on the last.
“It felt like a little bit of a full-circle moment there.”
There was a time when Herbert, who has won once on the PGA Tour, once on LIV and three times on the DP World Tour, took a step back from tour golf.
The travelling prompted loneliness and he is one golfer for whom the team element of LIV Golf has had a profoundly beneficial impact.
He has also a strong bond with his caddie, Nick Pugh. “He’s one of my best friends,” Herbert said. “He married my wife and I last year. He was our reverend and that shows you the relationship that we have. I said to him after missing that putt on the last: I love doing this stuff with you, mate.”
Pugh hails from the Wirral, the peninsula near Liverpool, so he counts as a local this week and many of his friends were in the gallery.
“I thought if I could get it to red numbers for the golf tournament, that would be a pretty good spot.” – Sam Burns
Herbert also has his in-laws in his accommodation this week – indeed Herbert is enjoying a newfound love of the board game Catan and his ruthless streak is maybe revealed in his fondness for beating his father-in-law into the ground.
With Friday’s afternoon wave still on the course, the Australian led the tournament on 8-under 132 with Burns three shots adrift of him.
Unlike Herbert, the American had low expectations at the start of Friday.
“I thought if I could get it to red numbers for the golf tournament, that would be a pretty good spot,” he said.
He’d closed his first round with a trio of bogeys and reversed that with a trio of birdies to finish on his second lap, a hat trick completed with a holed bunker shot at the last.
“It was a tricky shot because I had to land it in the fringe and use the slope down to the hole,” he said. “Definitely very lucky for it to go in.”
There was a final contrast between these two hotshots to consider.
Herbert, who has contended in the Scottish Open and on seaside courses in Australia, is a fan of both windy conditions and sweeping linksland.
But what of Burns? “I’m not a huge fan of links golf,” he admitted. “I just haven’t played it well. It’s not something I’m very familiar with. I get to do it maybe once a year. I don’t know what to say.”
At first glance, then, you’d write off Burns.
But if we’ve learned one thing about links golf during this year’s Open, it is to expect the unexpected.