Open Championship diary day four: Matt Cooper reports from Royal Troon

Kiwi comeback

Is there a better story this week than that of New Zealand’s Michael Hendry? He actually qualified for last year’s Open and within a few weeks was in a hospital bed writing a letter to the R&A explaining that due to a diagnosis of leukaemia he would not be able to play.

His treatment was a success, the R&A granted him a medical exemption and incredibly he arrived here this week having won a minor tour event back home and another on the Japan Tour. There were emotional scenes early in his round and he was 4-over through five holes, but the wonderful warmth of feeling from the galleries (a notable contrast with the weather) aided a bounce-back and he ended the day with a 3-over 74.

“It was incredible,” he said afterwards. “Words can’t really describe how grateful I am, not only to the R&A, but to all of the doctors and nurses who have helped me over the last 12 months. This is one thing that really got me through my recovery. To finally be here and teeing it up was extremely special.”

After receiving news of the leukaemia he initially kept it quiet. “But the golfing fraternity is pretty small and word got round pretty quickly,” he said. “The first couple of weeks in hospital, my phone was going berserk with messages from all over the world from both people I knew well and people I’d never met within the golfing world. This week will hopefully will draw a line through that part of my life and I can move on.”

Once the emotional noise of those first few holes was silenced he said: “I played pretty well.” He has a great opportunity to make the weekend.

Early start will help

The R&A’s desire to offer four spots at every Final Qualifying event led to the field being a little bigger than usual this week and when David Duval dropped out it became 158 meaning that one group in the middle of the first round was a two-ball.

Not ideal for Ewen Ferguson and Marcel Siem because it guaranteed that they’d have something of a slow journey around the course, but they are first out on Friday which will somewhat make up for the Thursday inconvenience and neither can be discounted from completing a good finish. The Scot carded a 74 and the German a 73.

“The pace of play was difficult with a lot of waiting about,” admitted Ferguson. “I made a bogey one hole and then had to wait around in the freezing cold for 20 minutes on the next tee.” If that reads like whining on paper it absolutely wasn’t said that way and, in actual fact, the recent winner of the BMW International Open seems in a really good head space.

“It’s all elements of the Open Championship, isn’t it?” the Glaswegian said. “It’s never easy and no one told me it was going to be. I’m prepared to fight. Nice dinner tonight, hopefully wake up to glorious sunshine, flat calm, perfect greens, and everything goes my way.” The galleries were full of his family and friends, and more will turn up if he makes the weekend. He’s hopeful of putting on a show for them.

Player notes

I was keen on the chances of Eric Cole this week, maybe not to win but to finish high up the leaderboard and maybe even contend. Having watched a few holes of his first round, which ended with a bogey for 1-over 72, I’m not entirely dissuaded. He looked comfortable (if a little cold), played plenty of good shots, a few very fine ones and had a couple of putts stay up that went very close to dropping.

His playing partner Kurt Kitayama, in contrast, was utterly listless as he lurched to 8-over through 12 although he did play the next six holes in 2-under thanks to an eagle-3 at 16. He has a very poor record on old-time links courses (five starts, a best of T60) and still has a fight to improve on it.

After four bogeys in four holes from the third, Dean Burmester was digging himself a big hole. But he added two birdies and an eagle-3 at 16 on the way home to card a level-par 71 and the round was a little like his links career in microcosm.

He recorded just one top 25 in his first 13 starts by the British and Irish seaside but has since then had four top 12 finishes in a row including T11 at the 2022 Open. “It took me a good five years before I really started to be comfortable on links courses,” he admitted after his round. “I just had no idea to begin with. Didn’t know what to do into the greens, didn’t know what to around the greens. Those things take time to learn, I learnt them, I’ve now had some good week and I’m hoping to have three more good days here.”

Nick Taylor was asked after his opening round of 74 how he would spend the rest of his day. “I don’t know,” he said. “I might throw my putter in the ocean or go and work for three hours. We’ll see.”

In case you missed it

A tremendous nugget in a profile of Colin Montgomerie in the Times today – his grandfather invented the Penguin biscuit.

And for those of you who recall my TalkSport/Douglas Bader anecdote from earlier in the week, the Times diarist Patrick Kidd contacted me on X to relate that his father, who was a golf pro, gave Bader swing lessons. The Battle of Britain veteran had one prosthetic shorter than the other when playing golf because he preferred playing uphill lies for balance.

There’s a Bader tale that may well be apocryphal but it is terrific. It goes that he was asked to give a talk at a girls school after the war and the headmistress asked him what fighting in the skies was like. Bader said: “There were Fokkers to the right of us, Fokkers to the left of us, and Fokkers on our tails.” The headmistress went pale and quickly explained to her girls that the Fokker was a type of aeroplane used by the Luftwaffe. “That’s as maybe,” said Bader. “But these f***ers were Messerschmitts.”

Be prepared

A little warning if you’re heading to Royal Troon later this week: leave plenty of time for your journey because there have been some large queues on the roads. And maybe don’t panic if the lines outside Glasgow Central railway station look intimidating. They were worryingly long at 7.30am Thursday morning but trains are leaving every 10 minutes and it took around 20 minutes to get from the back end to the front.