Dean Burmester made an eagle-three on the 16th hole on Thursday in the first round of the Open Championship at Royal Troon to be in a share of 18th on a day on which only 17 players managed to break par.
In tough conditions – with the win making the homeward nine a little less intimidating than it usually is – Burmester was out late and soon had racked up four bogeys in a row from the fourth to the seventh.
But he pulled things back with a rare birdie on the notorious eighth, ‘The Postage Stamp’, when he hit a superb tee-shot to within seven feet, drawing it off the infamous ‘Coffin’ bunker, and then made the putt.
“I hit a great shot on the Postage Stamp, and Darren Clarke said to me, come on, go on and roll it in, and I rolled it in, and he waited on the green and he said, wasn’t that nice, walking off there with a two,” laughed Burmester. “Yeah, that kind of changed my mood a little bit. I hit a lot of good shots from there, and some not so good. But that’s links golf. You can get away with it, and sometimes you get punished.”
That galvanised the reigning Investec South African Open champion, and be held firm until he made another birdie on the 12th when he made a 23-footer for birdie.
He unleashed a 358-yard drive on the 16th, but he pushed his approach into a greenside bunker on the right. With superb touch, he holed his shot from the sand from 23 yards.
“On 17 on my second shot, blocking it into the bunker, I wasn’t ecstatic, but that gave me an amazing moment I won’t forget,” said Burmester. “It was really cool to have a full grandstand there, and to hit a shot, have it one-bounce in the hole was cool.
“I was trying to get it out was the first thing I was trying to do. It kind of bounced back on to the downslope and the right-side slope. Years ago Brett Rumford said, if you’re on a right-hand lie, try and draw your bunker shot, so I took that advice and I tried that, and whoop, one bounce in the hole. That’s all.
“But it was really tough firstly to get it out, and to get it in the vicinity of the pin was pretty cool.”
Burmester was joined at level-par and in a share of 18th by Thriston Lawrence, his predecessor as South African Open champion. Lawrence kept things steady throughout the day, and made two birdies and two bogeys on his way to his 71.
Daniel Brown carded a brilliant bogey-free 65 in his first round at a major championship to lead by one after day one of The Open. The Englishman had not played a weekend on the DP World Tour since March before making the cut at last week’s Genesis Scottish Open but found his form in spectacular style at Royal Troon.
His six-under-par effort saw him lead the way from 2019 Open champion Shane Lowry, with two-time major winner Justin Thomas at three under.
English duo Joe Dean and Justin Rose, American pair Russell Henley and Xander Schauffele, Dane Nicolai Højgaard, Swede Alex Noren and Canadian Mackenzie Hughes were then four shots off the lead.
Brown earned his major debut with a 20-footer on the last at Final Qualifying, with the 36-hole contest at West Lancashire coming in the middle of a torrid run of results as he recovered from a knee injury.
World number one Scottie Scheffler, fellow Americans Chris Kirk and Brooks Koepka, English pair Matt Fitzpatrick and Matt Wallace, Austria’s Sepp Straka and Australian Adam Scott were the only other players under par at one-under.
