TROON, Scotland — After dueling for the U.S. Open title last month in the North Carolina Sandhills, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy dueled for the most disappointing start at the 152nd British Open on Thursday.
DeChambeau shot 42 on the front nine at Royal Troon and posted 5-over 76 while McIlroy was even worse, slicing his tee shot on the train tracks at No. 11 and shooting 7-over 78.
“It was a weird day,” DeChambeau said.
“It was definitely tricky,” said McIlroy of the test that was Troon, the seaside links along the west coast of Ayrshire.
Despite a light rain for much of the day, the course played firm with just enough wind to wreak havoc.
“It was brutal out there,” defending champion Brian Harman said.
McIlroy, the world No. 2, said, “if anything, it was more like the conditions got the better of me, those cross-winds.”
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Oh, those fickle winds. McIlroy dropped a shot at the first but got it back with his lone birdie of the day at No. 3 after wedging to inside 4 feet. It all started to go wrong at No. 8, the Postage Stamp par 3, where his tee shot found the right bunker and he needed two tries to extricate himself. Double bogey.
“I missed the green and left it in the bunker and made a 5. Then once we turned on that back nine, it was left-to-right winds. I was sort of struggling to hole the ball in that wind a little bit, and that got me.”
So did his tee shot at No. 11, which sailed right and out of bounds and resulted in another double bogey. McIlroy, who has been stuck on four major titles for nearly a decade, didn’t respond well to conditions that perplexed the field of 157.
“You play your practice rounds, and you try to come up with a strategy that you think is going to get you around the golf course. Then when the wind is like that, you know, other options present themselves, and you start to second guess yourself a little bit,” McIlroy said. “The conditions were tough on that back nine, and I just didn’t do a good enough job.”
Neither did DeChambeau, though his travails were largely on the front nine.
He made bogeys at three of the first four holes, missing par putts of inside 5 feet at the first and just over 3 feet at the fourth. Then he made a double bogey at the sixth, spraying his tee shot right into thick rough and tried to hack a 7-iron out of trouble.
“I didn’t get it high enough,” he said. “I thinned it a little bit and caught the stuff and came out dead, and then I tried to open face a 5-wood and squirted off the left side of my face and just shot left. I’m just glad nobody got hurt. Luckily I found it.”
But it was the wind that proved to be a riddle that DeChambeau failed to solve.
“It was in and off the right and I was trying to draw the ball and the ball was knuckling a little bit,” he said. “It was a really difficult challenge, and I should have just cut the ball.”
DeChambeau finished T-6 at the Masters, second at the PGA Championship and then won the U.S. Open for the second time. But the Open Championship has typically given him fits: a T-8 in 2022 is his only finish better than T-33 in six previous starts, and the change in wind direction created a variable he said he felt unprepared for.
“It’s a completely different test. I didn’t get any practice in it, and I didn’t really play much in the rain,” he explained, calling the conditions “something I’m not familiar with.”
He added: “I never grew up playing it, and not to say that that’s the reason… I can do it when it’s warm and not windy.”
After playing his first eight holes in 6 over, DeChambeau righted the ship. He did have one highlight to remember, holing a 55-foot eagle putt at 16.
An eagle at the 16th for Bryson DeChambeau.
Will this lead to a change in momentum? pic.twitter.com/rVkWXXIdww
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However, the driver was as erratic as it was in the final round of the U.S. Open when he managed to find just five fairways but kept drawing good lies amid the Pinehurst wiregrass and scrub brush. His luck ran out as the Scottish fescue proved more penal. DeChambeau blamed his Krank driver, which he said was designed for around 190 ball speed, for not being built for cooler conditions when the golf ball doesn’t compress as much.
“It’s probably something along those lines,” he said.
Both DeChambeau and McIlroy have dug big holes and will have their work cut out just to make the cut.
“He absolutely gutted,” Golf Channel’s Paul McGinley said of McIlroy. “His race is probably run now at this stage. As they say, you can’t win the Open or a major on the first day, but you can certainly lose it and he may well have lost it there today.”
DeChambeau, for one, wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.
“I’m going to go figure it out,” DeChambeau said.
