DP World/PGA Tours ; Open Championship
Thursday morning play is well underway beginning at 635am local (135am est) at Royal Birkdale under blue skies and warm sunshine with a slight NW breeze, ideal scoring conditions.
Royal Birkdale is hosting The Open for an 11th time in 2026
At first glance the rough has become burnt down, drives off the fairway are finding playable lies, scoring is low so far this morning.
The clubhouse leaders at 750am est 1250hrs local are Dan Brown and Sungjae Im at -4 66.
Scotland's Robert MacIntyre is finished at -3 67 at this time as the early wave is wrapping up.
EDIT >>> 11am est Morning wave results
With the morning wave complete the leaders Dan Brown (England) Sungjae Im (Korea) took advantage of the early benign conditions and their -4 66 has stood up to several challenges.
Canada's Nick Taylor sensational birdie birdie birdie start led to in outward -3 31. The front nine played easier all morning. He was steady, all pars until dropped shots at par3,15th, and par4 16th. However he split the fairway on 18th which was playing the 2nd most difficult. then a 225 yd approach to 19' ended his day in style with a birdie 3. T10 -2 68..
Corey Conners is playing very steady golf, 11 pars, just 1 bogey +1 thru 12
Notables
Scott Scheffler T10 -2 68, out in 31, back in 37. His fans will rue the putts he missed including a 3' at the par 5 17th where he was lucky to find a wildly sliced 2nd into deep rough resulting in bogey 6. After a week of practice and his fast start in ideal scoring weather 65 or at least 66 went amiss this morning.
Bryson DeChambeau made a bogey at the last, but scrambled to an opening 32 35 -3 67.
Scotland's Bob MacIntyre only had 1 bogey in his 33 34 -3 67.
Hometown hero Tommy Fleetwood went out in 33, had two bogey's (10th, 12th) but battled back to the delight of the sold out crowd with birdies at 15th and 17th for 36 and T19 -1 69..
Rory is out late E thru 3, with the breeze up as the tide comes in, the weather is still sunbaked (some very innovative English headwear !) but the greens are getting faster, so I think those 66's may stand up.
It was a joy to hear the European crew with Sam Torrance on the early broadcast on the Golf Channel, such great stories and descriptions from 4am-10am before the Terry Gannon and the Americans team took over.
For live scoring click on my leaderboard link above.
more to follow..
Bryan Angus
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