FORMAT: 72-hole stroke play
The early bird certainly caught the worm at St Andrews today where Barclay Brown recorded one of the lowest first-round scores by an amateur at The Open.
The Yorkshireman, who attends Stanford University, shot a four-under 68, which included a sensational birdie at the Road Hole. The lowest score by an amateur in The Open is 65 (-5) – jointly held by Tom Lewis (2011) and Mattias Schmid (2021).
The 21-year-old holed a curling 45-footer at the 17th to get himself four under and then drove the green at 18 before just missing an 11-footer to go one lower.
Brown, who was watched by his mum, dad, brother, girlfriend and a group of friends, was in the second group out, parring the first six holes.
But he was giving himself chances in the early stages and finally took one at the seventh, adding further birdies at the ninth, 12th, 14th plus that rare three at 17. His one blemish came at the 10th, where he drove into a bunker and couldn’t get up and down from 55 yards.
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