Catch me if you can? When Shane Lowry was asked if he was a good frontrunner after easing his way to the top of The Open leaderboard yesterday, the jovial Irishman responded with a self-deprecating quip.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a good runner,” smiled Lowry with a chortling acknowledgment that such a rigorous athletic endeavour wouldn’t really be his forte.
Setting the pace at a major championship is much more his style. On a boisterous, bewildering day of blustery buffetings on the lively Ayrshire coast, Lowry battled his way into a fortified position of authority with an eventful two-under 69 which hoisted him on to a seven-under aggregate and left him two shots clear of the English duo, Justin Rose and Daniel Brown, at the halfway stage.
It was quite a second round of action in this neck of the golfing woods. The wind whipped up to such an extent, even the Beaufort Scale itself was rent asunder.
Some of the scores that were scribbled down on cards, meanwhile, could’ve been accompanied by a storm-force warning on the Shipping Forecast.
Spare a thought for poor old Aguri Iwasaki from Japan, who had a brace of eye-watering nines at the 13th and 14th on his way to a torrid 91 that was strewn with various other splatterings of debris.
You could say his inward half of 52 was a solid run of scoring that was sullied by four pars. It’s an unforgiving business, this links golf lark.
Plenty would suffer. Rory McIlroy waved goodbye to another major year as he missed the cut by a country mile on 11-over. Tiger Woods slinked away on 14-over while the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith and Ludvig Aberg joined a high-profile casualty list. Royal Troon had caused more carnage than the global IT outage.
Lowry may have assumed command as he continues to hunt down his second Claret Jug but the 2019 champion certainly didn’t have it all his own way.
Jollying along at two-under after 10 holes, things began to veer off track at the treacherous 11th. Known as Railway, this magnificently exacting par-4 can generate more cursing, muttering anguish than a reduced ScotRail timetable.
A good drive found a decent lie in the rough but as he was about to clatter his second shot, he got distracted by the movements of a nearby cameraman.
The result? His ball fizzed off into a gorse bush and Lowry hissed a few expletives in the direction of said cameraman. We don’t need to print them here.
After gazing to the heavens in exasperation and taking a long, deep breath to compose himself, Lowry took a penalty drop and smacked his fourth shot to inside 10 feet to give himself a chance of salvaging a bogey.
Unfortunately for Lowry, a spectator rummaging about in the bushes found his original ball.
That meant it was still in play and, after taking a drop following a lengthy ruling, Lowry hit another approach just short of the green and eventually completed a double-bogey six. It was quite a palaver.
Lowry rallied, though, and a birdie on the 16th provided the catalyst for a late flurry and the Ryder Cup man rolled in a 20-footer for another birdie on the 18th to finish with a flourish. In the end, there was no damage done.
“To be honest, I was happy enough leaving there with a six, it wasn’t a disaster,” admitted Lowry. “I have felt quite calm and composed the last couple of days. I’ve felt really in my comfort zone.
“Sometimes you are in a frame of mind where you get on with it better than other times. Anything that’s thrown at me, I feel like I’m ready to take it on the chin and move on.”
Behind Lowry, Open debutant Brown kept himself in the thick of it with a 72 for his five-under total. “I prefer being called Dan,” the 29-year-old informed the media. “Daniel is usually when I'm getting told off by my mum and dad.”
When he came in at 9:35pm on Thursday night with the outright lead, Brown was being called a few other things by the cheesed off golf scribblers. That he maintained his lofty position on the order yesterday attracted praise, not profanities.
“I’m a bit of a realist,” he added. “I’m not going to start getting ahead of myself and think, ‘oh my God, I’m second in the Open’. There are still 36-holes left.”
Like Brown, Rose is looking to become the first Englishman to lift the Claret Jug in 32 years and a steely 68 left him lurking with intent.
The former US Open champion had to go through the pre-qualifying rigmarole for this week’s showpiece and he’s making the most of his opportunity. A canny, composed Rose has made just one bogey in 36-holes. So far, so good.
“Round one was plain sailing, with 16 greens (hit) and lot of tap-in pars,” he said. "What was good about it today was that I had to grind. It was the perfect mix. Playing well and fighting well.”
Billy Horschel matched Rose’s 68 to share fourth on two-under with Dean Burmester. The presence of the world No1, Scottie Scheffler, on that same mark was an ominous sign.
Xander Schauffele and Jason Day are hovering on one-under while major winners Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm are all in the mix at one-over.
It’s shaping up nicely.
