The 154th Open Championship first-round leaderboard:
-5 J Suber (US), -4 D Brown (Eng), Im (Kor)
-3 T Detry (Bel), R MacIntyre (Sco), F Molinari (Ita), A Smalley (US), B DeChambeau (US), R Gerard (US), MJ Daffue (SA), P Coody (US), C Young (US)
Full leaderboard
English hopes for a first Open winner for 34 years were boosted with eight players under par after the first round – but Masters champion Rory McIlroy ended the day seven shots off the lead.
McIlroy endured a rollercoaster first round at Royal Birkdale which included six bogeys and four birdies in his two-over round of 72.
American Jackson Suber leads the way on five under par, one shot ahead of England’s Dan Brown and South Korea’s Im Sung-jae.
Sir Nick Faldo was the last English player to win The Open, at Muirfield in 1992. You have to go back to 1969 for the last English winner on English soil – Tony Jacklin at Royal Lytham & St Annes.
When England’s hopes of winning the football World Cup were extinguished on Wednesday, it paved the way for the nation’s top golfers to take centre stage and lift the mood of the Royal Birkdale crowd on Thursday.
Step forward Brown.
The 31-year-old from Yorkshire shot a four-under 66 early on day one of the 154th Open Championship, as he and Suber took advantage of scoreable early conditions on the Merseyside links.
“It’s only Thursday but hopefully I’m in a sort of similar area on the leaderboard come Sunday,” Brown said.
No golfer wins the Open after 18 holes – or any other tournament for that matter – but they sure can put themselves out of contention.
Local hero Tommy Fleetwood, who hails from nearby Southport, did exactly that when Birkdale last hosted the Open in 2017 with an opening round of six over.
This year, Fleetwood was determined to make amends and scrapped to a solid one-under 69 which means he has plenty to build on over the next three days.
