SOUTHPORT, England — The opening round of the British Open at Royal Birkdale delivered one of golf’s most unexpected early-storylines, as 26-year-old American rookie Jackson Suber claimed the first-day lead with a blistering 5-under-par 65, capping a stunning debut on traditional links golf just three days after stepping onto European soil for the first time.
A day of warm, swirling breezes stretched first-round play across 15 hours, packed with dramatic swings, surprising breakout performances from debutants and a high-profile rebuttal of a legendary critic from one of the game’s most controversial stars. Half of the top 12 players on the opening-day leaderboard are first-time British Open competitors, proving links golf can be as kind to newcomers as it is to seasoned veterans.
Few could have predicted Suber’s dream start. A former Ole Miss player who has yet to claim a professional win anywhere in the world and is playing just his third major championship, Suber entered the week with zero experience on a championship links course as demanding as Royal Birkdale. He shrugged off the steep learning curve with a clutch par save on the newly redesigned par-3 15th, where severe sloping on both sides of the green makes holding position notoriously difficult. He followed that up with a birdie on the par-4 16th, then produced a masterclass on the 17th: choking up on a 4-iron from 233 yards out, he landed his approach 6 feet from the pin to sink an eagle that catapulted him to the top of the leaderboard.
“Just kind of kept the ball in good spots and didn’t put much pressure on my game to make pars,” Suber said of his steady performance, which marked just his seventh round of play across any major championship.
Suber holds a one-stroke lead over South Korea’s Sungjae Im and England’s home hopeful Dan Brown, with nine players tied at 4-under 67. That group includes four more British Open debutants: Alex Smalley, Ryan Gerard, M.J. Daffue and Pierceson Coody.
One of the most talked-about performances of the day came from Bryson DeChambeau, who silenced three-time Open champion Nick Faldo’s recent criticism of his links strategy. DeChambeau, who has missed the cut in all three majors this year and largely avoided mainstream media since the Masters, fired a 4-under 67 that left him just two shots off Suber’s lead, defying Faldo’s claim earlier this week that “DeChambeau has zero clue of strategy.”
Faldo, speaking on the Sky Sports Golf Podcast, had argued that traditional links golf rewards controlled placement, not brute force: “You thread it, don’t you? You feed it down the fairway. … You don’t think, ‘Oh, I’ll just blast it down there.’” But DeChambeau turned that criticism on its head, using his signature long-drive strategy to carry Royal Birkdale’s fearsome fairway bunkers entirely, landing on 15 of 18 greens despite only hitting four fairways and rarely finding himself in serious trouble. He carded birdies on both the par-4 second and par-4 10th, blasting blind tee shots over hazards to land within striking distance of the green both times. Only a weak chip and missed putt on the 18th kept him from matching Suber’s score.
“I feel like I did a really good job today of being incredibly strategic and focused super hard on placing it in the right places,” DeChambeau told reporters from the R&A after his round. “Besides 18, I placed the ball in some good areas. I just need to hit more fairways. Other than that, I feel like my strategy was nice today.”
The day also brought dramatic ups and downs for some of the game’s top-ranked players. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffer got off to a blistering start, birdying four of his first six holes to jump to 4-under, but failed to card another birdie over his final 12 holes, finishing with a 2-under 68. Scheffler, who played alongside DeChambeau, shrugged off the late cold streak, noting that the Open is a 72-hole tournament.
“If I continue to strike the ball the way I did today and just keep giving myself looks, that’s part of it,” Scheffler said. “Golf is played over 72 holes, and I definitely liked what I saw today.”
Four-time major winner Rory McIlroy suffered a far tougher opening, struggling with a sudden putting slump that saw him miss three 4-foot putts across a four-hole stretch on his way to a 1-over 72, six shots off the lead. One of the day’s unluckiest breaks hit debutant Alex Smalley, who held a share of the lead late until a wild bounce off a spectator fence sent his 18th tee shot out of bounds, resulting in a double bogey that dropped him back into the tie at 67.
“Got up to where the ball was supposed to be and was told it hit a spectator fence and kicked another 15 yards right out of bounds,” Smalley said. “All three of us in our group actually hit it over there, and mine just got an unlucky break. Poor tee shot, poor break. Sometimes that’s how it goes.”
Other notable players in the tie at 67 include 2018 Open champion Francesco Molinari, Cameron Young, Robert MacIntyre and Thomas Detry, all still well within striking distance of the lead heading into Friday’s second round.