British Open 2024: 10 stats that tell the story of Day 1 at Troon

TROON, Scotland — The longest day of the year in major championship golf is nearly over, the unlikely Daniel Brown leads at six under, Shane Lowry is a shot behind at five under and Justin Thomas has solo third two shots behind him. As we prepare for what should be a drier but equally windy Friday, here are 10 stats that tell the story of Day 1 at the British Open.

(These stats were prepared close to the end of play on Thursday, and to the extent that they change, it will be a slight and statistically insignificant change.)

This was a brutal day at Troon, and no stat makes that clearer than the one that tell us the par-5 16th hole was the only one that played under par all day. Near the end of play, the field was averaging 4.851, just ahead of par, while elsewhere it was carnage. Even the other par 5s on the front nine, which was supposed to be the “easy” side, yielded just one eagle between them and finished with over-par averages. The beast of the bunch was No. 12, a par 4 averaging a good .4 strokes over par, while No. 9 was slightly easier, but yielded exactly one birdie.

As of 8 p.m. local time, the cumulative field score was 528 over par and counting. That’s going to demolish tournaments going back to 2008 and Royal Birkdale, a tournament eventually won by Padraig Harrington … who is just five shots off the lead here. Dare to dream!

Playing at 205 yards, the 14th hole maintained a 33 percent green-in-regulation number throughout Thursday’s round, meaning only a third of players actually had a putt for birdie (and only five of them made that putt). Even the Postage Stamp hole was nicer, but still tough, giving up a 51 percent GIR rate.

Scoring average be damned, the Postage Stamp yielded the most double bogeys or worse, with 20, crushing its competition. When it goes bad there, it really goes bad.

MacIntyre, last week’s Scottish Open champ, finished at one over, but that didn’t quite tell the story of his round. Even though he wasn’t far above average in SG/ approach, he was tied for the lead with eight birdie looks of 20 feet or less, and led the field in birdie chances from inside 10 feet, with five. It was his putting that let him down, only converting two of those chances, and in fact he ranked 146th in SG/putting for the field.

Lowry, the leader, finished first in SG/putting, and in his first 12 holes alone, he made nine putts over six feet. He also finished second in putts holed distance (to Guntaek Koh), and only needed 25 putts for the entire round. This is the lowest opening round in 46 career major starts for him.

The Englishman Brown, second behind Lowry, has been spiraling the entire summer; in his last eight tournaments, he has six missed cuts, had a WD and a T-61 at the Scottish Open. He made the Open on the number when he hit a 20-foot putt on the last hole of qualifying, and the fact that he’s near the top of the leaderboard at Troon is a total shock. He did it by hitting literally every fairway and putting beautifully, finishing first and fifth in those SG categories, respectively.

The recently streaky American hasn’t shot 68 or better in an opening round since Southern Hills in 2022, when he won the PGA Championship. He was a killer on the greens (6th in SG) and the approach (20th), which made up for an average day off the tee … and he also managed to avoid bunkers the entire round. He did not, however, avoid bogeys; he made three to slightly offset his field-leading seven birdies.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with finishing at one under, as Scheffler did, but having given himself five birdie looks inside 10 feet, he’s going to feel like he left something on the table. A couple errant drives led to three bogeys compared to his four birdies, and he lost strokes to the field on the greens. He’ll be pleased to finish under par, but this could easily have been a 67 instead of a 70.

Look at the fairways-hit percentage up and down, and the numbers range from 44 percent (13th hole) to 80 percent (18th). Then there’s No. 10, the 450-yard par 4, where just 22 percent of players managed to find the fairway. Stats like this show exactly how Troon showed its teeth on Day 1, and why it might bit even harder on Friday.

Is it the British Open or the Open Championship? The name of the final men’s major of the golf season is a subject of continued discussion. The event’s official name, as explained in this op-ed by former R&A chairman Ian Pattinson, is the Open Championship. But since many United States golf fans continue to refer to it as the British Open, and search news around the event accordingly, Golf Digest continues to utilize both names in its coverage.

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