SOUTHPORT, England — Jackson Suber got his first taste of links golf — on his first trip to Europe, no less — when he arrived at the host course for the 154th British Open earlier this week.
Three days later, he proved to be a quick study with a superb par save and a six-foot eagle putt late in his round at Royal Birkdale Golf Club, posting a 5-under-par 65 for a one-shot lead Thursday as the final men’s major championship tournament of the year got underway.
Two-time U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau might be getting the hang of this, too, no matter what television analyst Nick Faldo — the retired player is a three-time British Open champion — thinks about the big-hitting American’s strategy.
An opening round lasting some 15 hours included just about everything during a warm and breezy start. Five of the leading 12 players were playing the British Open for the first time. Second-ranked Rory McIlroy missed three four-foot putts in a four-hole span and had six bogeys in his round of 72. Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler opened with four birdies in six holes and didn’t make another the rest of the way for a 68.
Most startling was Suber, a 26-year-old from Tampa, Florida, who has yet to win anywhere since leaving Ole Miss and is playing in only his third major. He made a tough par save on Royal Birkdale’s new par-3 15th, which slopes off severely on both sides of the green. He followed with a six-foot birdie on the 16th, then choked up on a 4-iron from 233 yards and hit it to six feet, setting up his eagle.
Not bad for his seventh round in any major, and first on a links course as tough as this one, which is hosting the British Open for the first time since 2017 — it has undergone significant changes since then — and the 10th time overall.
“Just kind of kept the ball in good spots and didn’t put much pressure on my game to make pars,” Suber said.
Tied for second were England’s Dan Brown and South Korea’s Sungjae Im. The nine players at 67 included four British Open debutants: American players Pierceson Coody, Ryan Gerard and Alex Smalley, along with South Africa’s M.J. Daffue.
And then there was DeChambeau, who missed the cut in all three majors this year so far and has chosen not to speak to the media since Friday at the Masters in April, except for when he’s competing in LIV Golf League tournaments.
Turns out the former PGA Tour star had enough strategy to get in the mix from a 156-player field, often ripping driver to take the fearsome bunkers out of play and doing enough right for a 67 that left him two shots behind.
Strategy became a talking point when Faldo, a 68-year-old Englishman, said on the “Sky Sports Golf Podcast” this week: “DeChambeau has zero clue of strategy. He said last year, ‘I’m going to go out and attack the links’. Well, I’ve never attacked a links. You thread it, don’t you? You feed it down the fairway. … You don’t think, ‘Oh, I’ll just blast it down there.'”
DeChambeau hit only four fairways but missed only three greens, though he was rarely in big trouble when he wasn’t in the short grass.
He twice blasted tee shots over the trouble and close to the green at the par-4 second and the par-4 10th, the latter a blind shot. He made birdies on both. And while fellow LIV player and two-time major winner Jon Rahm of Spain was among those who said going long can lead to trouble at some point, the only two shots DeChambeau dropped came from his putting (the par-5 14th) and chipping (the par-4 18th).
He was tied for the early lead until going from wispy rough over the back of the 18th, chipped weakly to eight feet and missed the putt. He missed three birdie chances from close to 10 feet or less, one of them on the redesigned 321-yard fifth hole, when he drove it just over the green.
DeChambeau agreed to take a few questions from the R&A, which organizes golf’s oldest major, and said: “I feel like I did a really good job today of being incredibly strategic and focused super hard on placing it in the right places. Besides 18, I placed the ball in some good areas. I just need to hit more fairways. Other than that, I feel like my strategy was nice today.”
American player Cameron Young, one of the hottest golfers on the PGA Tour in the spring but quiet the past two months, was also among those tied for fourth at 67, along with Belgium’s Thomas Detry, Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre and Italy’s Francesco Molinari, the 2018 champion at Carnoustie, which also featured a baked links course.
Chattanooga native Keith Mitchell was tied for 85th after a 72, while fellow Baylor School graduate Harris English was another stroke back and tied for 106th. Mitchell is playing the British Open for the fourth time, having missed the cut in 2019, 2021 and 2022; English, who was the runner-up to Scheffler last year at Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush, is making his 11th appearance and has missed the cut three times previously.
Scheffler had few complaints after his 68, despite not carding a birdie over his last 12 holes, playing the two par 5s in 1 over and making a pair of soft bogeys. He also missed a five-foot birdie putt.
Whether the four-time major winner could have gotten more out of his round was of little concern.
“If I continue to strike the ball the way I did today and just keep giving myself looks, that’s part of it,” Scheffler said. “Golf is played over 72 holes, and I definitely liked what I saw today.”
Smalley, who took a two-shot lead into the final round of the year’s second major, the PGA Championship in May, was leading until his drive on the 18th was fading with the wind and then the luck of links golf took over. One wild bounce sent it further right and out of bounds. He finished with a double bogey for his 67.
“Got up to where the ball was supposed to be and was told it hit a spectator fence and kicked another 15 yards right out of bounds. All three of us in our group actually hit it over there, and mine just got an unlucky break,” Smalley said. “Poor tee shot, poor break. Sometimes that’s how it goes.”
Scheffler played in the group with DeChambeau, and they traded birdies early. For six holes, the player who has been No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the past three-plus years had total control of his shots and looked as though he couldn’t miss. He got to 4 under when he gave a leg kick as his 40-foot birdie putt dropped on No. 6.
However, he missed the seventh green — 139 yards, downhill — to the left between a pair of bunkers, and his pitch was so strong it flirted with going in a bunker on the other side. Scheffler also missed a five-foot birdie chance on the 11th, then made a mess of the par-5 17th when his ball was buried so deep in the grass he thought someone might have stepped on it during the search.
“Sometimes you hit it over there and you get a clean lie and you’re able to give yourself a look, and then other times like today, you pay a pretty severe price,” he said. “But I guess don’t hit it off line.”