Friday At The 154th Open
62's are posted by Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns on a wild day at Royal Birkdale where Bryson DeChambeau is assessed a two-stroke penalty. His third round status is in question.
Round Two By The Numbers
62: Low second-round score by Lucas Herbert, Sam Burns
28: Open record-tying front nine score of Herbert (six-under)
132: Leading score of Herbert (-8)
2: Stroke penalty assessed to Bryson DeChambeau under Rule 8.1
+1: Cutline ( 78 players)
69: Rounds under par (38 in round one)
136: Leading score of a former Open Champion (Francesco Molinari)
70.348: Round two scoring average (71.436 in Round One)
7,139: Yardage in round two (7,223 max)
211: Yardage of the new par-3 15th (again) (241 max)
377: Yardage of Rory McIlroy’s drive onto the 9th green
9:10 a.m. BST: First tee time Saturday
3:50 p.m. BST: Final tee time Saturday
Behold, Birkdale.
After a workmanlike first round—okay, it was uneventful—day two of The 154th Open gave way to the kind of can’t-make-it-up content gold only these links can muster up every decade or so when the R&A turns up in Merseyside.
In the spirit of positivity, we’ll start with the pair of record-setting 62s. Rubberneckers are free to scroll past the incredible feat of Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns to read about the late-breaking penalty assessed to Bryson DeChambeau.
Herbert, Burns Post 62’s Minutes Apart
Course records stir up strange emotions.
In no other sport would an unprecedented performance lead to questions about the legitimacy of the competition, the venue, whether the Director of Golf is the record holder, or even whether the new should count at all (altitude-influenced marks in other sports, not included).
So let’s get the first “issue” out of the way and stipulate that nothing can ever diminish Branden Grace’s first-ever-62-in-a-major nine years ago here at Royal Birkdale. But with the course sporting an entirely new hole and significant changes to keep up with the modern game because the members demanded the improvements, Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns became the new course record holders with second-round 62s.
Herbert will take a two-stroke lead into the weekend over Jackson Suber, Cameron Young and Ryan Gerard. Burns sits three back after his 73-62 start.
In eerily similar fashion to the pair of 2023 U.S. Open 62s by Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele at L.A. North, Friday’s sixth and seventh all-time lowest major scores landed 22 minutes and two groups apart. But each man finished eight-under-par in perversely different ways.
Herbert and Burns each reached Birkdale’s 18th green with different goals. Self-described “golf nerd” Herbert knew a birdie would give him the first 61 in a major, while Burns had no idea where he stood.
After birdieing the 16th to reach nine-under-par, Herbert narrowly missed a downhiller at the par-5 17th for his tenth birdie of the round. A drive down the left with a light breeze from the left reached the immovable fencing traditionally installed at The Open.
Upon taking relief and drawing a mediocre lie with his drop mere feet from the spectators, Herbert calmly reminded the gallery to “hold really still please” before playing his 173-yard shot. The contact sounded crisp. but Herbert immediately began pleading with the ball to go farther. The approach finished 17 yards short of the flagstick. Herbert pulled his putter, and got it to 5’3” for 61.
“I can at least sleep easy tonight knowing I didn’t hit a bad putt, I just misread it,” Herbert said. “It’s pretty tough when you’ve got to putt for the major championship record to get everything to work and to get everything to sync perfectly still and straight.”
Herbert bent over and stared at the ground for five seconds as the crowd groaned empathetically before giving him a proper salute for still trying the major championship record.
“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. So it’s kind of holding two emotions there at the same time.
Burns arrived at the home hole off of birdies at Nos. 16 and 17 to reach even-under on the round and four-under in the championship.
The U.S. Open runner-up last month wasn’t expecting to play this week until wife, Caroline, gave birth to baby Belle on July 3rd and encouraged him to play this week. He just hoped to get up and down from a seemingly impossible greenside bunker angle to finish with a back nine 31.
“I caught myself by surprise,” Burns said. “I thought coming into the day if I could get it to red numbers for the golf tournament, that would be a pretty good spot. I think the finish there the last three holes was just a bonus.”
More than a bonus. He made history by holing out the 12-yard bunker shot for 62.
“I had no idea until they told me up there,” he said of the record. “I didn’t realize that was the case. Yeah, I’m very pleased with it.”
Burns did post a final round 62 in the 2022 Open but otherwise has yet to record a top 30 finish in five starts.
“I would say I’m not a huge fan of links golf,” Burns said. “I just haven’t played well on links golf. 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.”
On a day featuring a staggering 69 subpar rounds, there will be questions about why the field was able to overtake Royal Birkdale. The answer is fairly simple: the greens are being kept alive with some moisture. Add on almost complete lack of wind on a day forecast to have winds of 10-15 m.p.h. all afternoon and gusts up to 22 m.p.h., mix in the juiced equipment, and it all leaves Royal Birkdale vulnerable.
“That east wind played a lot easier yesterday morning, and it makes the course play somewhat gettable,” said Shane Lowry of the 62s. “It’s still amazing golf, like it is amazing golf.
“And then when it’s flipped, like it’s going to be hard in there for these guys in the afternoon. It’s not easy. I’ll probably be eating my words, but I can’t imagine a 62 out there this afternoon.”
62 Notes
The 62s by Herbert and Burns did not tie the lowest mark in men’s major history.
Women are eligible to attempt to qualify for The Open.
With that vital delineation out of the way, a few other notes on the history made Friday at Birkdale:
Herbert hit 7/14 fairways, 14/18 greens and took just 24 putts.
Burns hit 7/14 fairways, 11/18 greens, took just 21 putts (34 in round one)
Herbert’s best score in 17 major rounds is 67. This is his fifth Open, with his best appearance a T15 in 2022 to go with three missed cuts.
Herbert’s opening 28 tied the Open record for lowest nine-hole score set by Denis Durnian, also on the front nine at Royal Birkdale in 1983.
Herbert caddie Nick Pugh appeared to violate a model local rule G-5 “Prohibiting Use of Distance-Measuring Devices” when he pulled out a device to see the landing spot of Herbert’s 14th hole tee shot. It seems the bagman and Reverend who married Herbert and Erika last year has vision issues and cleared use of the device minus a battery. This turns it into a “monocular” and keeps him clear of any violation. Ben Parsons wrote Pugh’s story here.
An official and incomplete history of breakthrough 18-hole scores in The Open:
88 - Tom Kidd, 1873 Open, St. Andrews
75 - Mungo Park, 1874 Open, Musselburgh
71 - James Sherlock, 1904 Open, Royal St. George’s
69 - Jack White, 1904 Open, Royal St George’s
68 - Bobby Jones, 1927 Open, St Andrews
67 - Walter Hagen, 1929 Open, Muirfield
65 - Henry Cotton, 1934 Open, Royal St. George’s
63 - Mark Hayes, in the 1977 Open, who lowered the 18-hole scoring record by two strokes after 43 years, then nine more 63s were shot prior to…
62 - Branden Grace, 2017 Open, Royal Birkdale
62 - Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns, 2026 Open, Royal Birkdale
DeChambeau Assessed Two-Stroke Penalty
A surreal scene broke out Friday night after Bryson DeChambeau posted a second-round 66 that turned into a 68 when the R&A assessed the two-time U.S. Open champion a two-stroke for “accidentally” improving the area of his intended swing at the fifth hole.
Video evidence from two angles shows he was at the very least careless and unprofessional when walking around his ball in the tall grass marked as penalty area. DeChambeau could be seen taking aggressive steps around his potential backswing path in the hazard right of the drivable short par-4.
Social media observers noted the problematic look of at least one of DeChambeau’s “accidental” steps from a side view. Later footage shot from the fifth green and shared on the Sky and USA Sports broadcasts revealed multiple aggressive steps taken in the area surrounding his swing path when arriving to the ball. Careful, he was not.
Upon completing his round, DeChambeau was summoned by officials to look at the video. While it’s unclear what prompted a subsequent return to the scene of the violation, DeChambeau, DP World Tour rules official Mark Litton and R&A Executive Director of Governance Grant Moir drove out where DeChambeau pleaded his case. The animated conversation did not dissuade the R&A.
Upon returning to the scoring area just behind Birkdale’s clubhouse, the group was joined by R&A Chief Executive Mark Darbon and Chief of Championships Johnnie Cole-Hamilton.
