LAST UPDATE | 22 Jul 2023
JON RAHM SANK one last birdie, drew the acclaim of the grandstands and then marched off to sign for a stunning 63, his lowest-ever round at a major and the best-ever recorded at Hoylake in the Open Championship.
Brian Harman wasn’t deaf to the clamour. He stood next door on the first tee, his five-shot overnight lead already trimmed by Rahm to four on a soggy, generous course. Harman then obediently wobbled, bogeying two of his first four holes, and it was at this point you could convince yourself that the leader would be toppled and the Open Championship would descend into a chaotic grab for power among the many lurking contenders.
Not so. Harman anchored himself, steadied his grip, and then wrung the excitement out of the Open. He played his next 14 holes bogey-free and four-under, getting up and down on the par-five eighteenth to end the day precisely as he started it, with a five shot lead. So much for the putsch. The last guy to lose a lead this big on the final day of the Open was Jean van de Velde. Only those very sensitive to fate’s temptations would argue that this isn’t done.
The lack of energy around Hoylake spoke to that: this was moving day and a combination of overnight rain and a drop in wind presented players with a generous course. Rahm made hay – shredding the back nine in six-under to leave the course at T2 having walked out in T39 – but none of those who could have truly made Harman sweat took advantage.
Most exasperated will be Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy, neither of whom could make a putt between them. Fleetwood was in the final group with Harman but could only manage an even-par 71, meaning he has slipped to T4, seven shots from Harman.
McIlroy, meanwhile, remains nine shots behind Harman and so his major drought will go to at least 10 years, as he won’t be ending 2023 with another win at Hoylake. He skipped his post-round media duties and went straight to the putting green, which will tell you where his challenge foundered. A two-under 69 was his best round of the week but tee-to-green he played well enough to tie Rahm for a 63. Instead, in a familiar tale, the rest of McIlroy’s game was left with reason to sue his putting for a misrepresentation of character.
McIlroy’s early iron play was divine, so much so that his average first putt distance across the first four holes was eight feet. He holed two of them and lolled his head in annoyance at failing to sink the others. The latter proved to be the rule rather than exception. He birdied five and then horribly misread the putt on six, settling for par. The rest became a combination of poor putts and bad misreads. Overall, McIlroy missed six birdie putts inside 15 feet, and, gallingly, missed birdie putts from eight and 10 feet on the two closing par-fives. They were must-make and he made neither. Goodnight.
Harman, by contrast, is enjoying a hot hand on the putter. Remarkably, he hasn’t missed any of his 44 putts inside 10 feet this week.
With McIlroy’s challenge dead and Fleetwood’s needing resuscitation, last year’s runner-up Cameron Young found his best form of the year to card a five-under 66 to spring to second place and nudge Rahm out of tomorrow’s final group. Rahm will instead play with Viktor Hovland, who made the most of the benign conditions to shoot five-under to move to precisely that score for the tournament.
Also profiting from the soft conditions early in the day were Rickie Fowler and Patrick Cantlay (both shot 67) along Xander Schauffele and defending champion Cameron Smith, both of whom signed for a 68.
Not all of the big games found form today, however, with Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka left in a tie for 64th place at +4, each shooting a one-over round of 72.
The Irish challenge winnowed yesterday with Shane Lowry, Seamus Power, and amateur Alex Maguire all missing the cut, but Padraig Harrington did battle through to the weekend. Today he carded a two-over 73, marred by a double-bogey at the 10th hole followed by another bogey at 11 and another at 14.
Harrington is the oldest man to have made the cut this year and while he is going to play the Senior Open, he confirmed after his round he is going to tweak his schedule to play a few tournaments on the DP World Tour in an audacious bid to force his way into the Ryder Cup picture.
Harman was asked after his round if he has pictured himself lifting the Claret Jug.
“You’d be foolish not to envision, and I’ve thought about winning majors for my whole entire life”, he said. “It’s the whole reason I work as hard as I do and why I practise as much as I do and why I sacrifice as much as I do. Tomorrow if that’s going to come to fruition for me, it has to be all about the golf. It has to be execution and just staying in the moment.”
We can all picture it too. Harman has more than one hand clasped on the Jug. Those surrendering hours to this tournament will dig into history and convince ourselves of the fragility of Harman’s lead but the relevant stat is this: the last time Brian Harman had a five-shot lead at the Open was today, and on a day when conditions conspired for low scoring, he didn’t allow anyone get so much as a single shot closer.
1. Brian Harman (-12)
2. Cameron Young (-7)
3. Jon Rahm (-6)
T4. Viktor Hovland (-5)
T4. Antoine Rozner
T4. Jason Day
T4. Sepp Straka
T4. Tommy Fleetwood
T11. Rory McIlroy (-3)
T63. Scottie Scheffler (+4)
T63. Brooks Koepka
T69. Padraig Harrington (+5)
Written by Gavin Cooney and posted on the42.ie
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