Herman Wibe Sekne (+2) is a young 24-year-old Danish player who did not make the cut at the Danish Golf Championship. At first glance, any reader might think right now: if he didn’t make the cut, what on earth is he doing starting this report? Why do we care about this Sekne? Skeptical reader, you will soon see how his prominence is more than justified.
Sekne is the true hero of the first two rounds of the last tournament of the Closing Swing of the DP World Tour. In his resume, he can state that he was the first to achieve a birdie on the monster among monsters at the Fureso Golf Klub in Denmark. We are referring to hole 10, an endless par 4 of 488 metres that was played yesterday with an average score above five and where no birdie was recorded. Rarely, if ever, has something like this been seen in a regular DP World Tour tournament.
Yesterday, a total of 156 players played hole 10, and none were able to score a birdie. The total score for the day was +158. Crazy. With these figures on the table, one of the great attractions of this Friday was to see if anyone would be able to achieve that first birdie. Well, honours and hats off to Herman Wibe Sekne. He was the first. Don’t think it came quickly. In fact, no player from the morning session did it. Sekne played in the first group of the afternoon session that started on the 10th. So, if we add the 156 attempts from yesterday, plus the 78 from this morning and Sekne’s two partners, it turns out that the first birdie on hole 10 came on the 237th attempt. In terms of time, considering that the first group on Thursday started on the 10th at 7:30 and Sekne did so today at 12:30, it turns out that we had to wait 29 hours and 15 minutes (the time it took Sekne’s group to play hole 10) for the first birdie to fall. There won’t be many US Open holes in history with these numbers. Maybe some, but not many.
And how was that birdie, you might ask? Well, of course, by holing out from off the green. He hit a drive to the left semi-rough of just under 260 metres, a second shot of about 230 metres that didn’t catch the green, and from the edge, but on the fairway, he holed out. Sekne officially opened the floodgates, and then four more followed: Penge and Saddier did it in the same group (a feat), Wenyi Ding and Joost Luiten. The most spectacular was Ding’s. He hit a 270-metre drive to the fairway, a second shot of 212 metres, and left it a metre and a half from the hole. Impressive. Luiten hit a stratospheric second shot from 240 metres to three metres from the flag, Penge holed a four-metre putt, and Saddier holed out from the right rough with an approach that seemed impossible. The monster of Fureso.
Precisely Marco Penge (-10), one of the fantastic five on the 10th, was the best of the afternoon session, the one who came closest to Rasmus Hojgaard (-12), the absolute leader. The Englishman is two strokes behind and promises a brilliant head-to-head for the weekend with the Ryder Cup in the background, the Dane seeking automatic qualification and the Brit aiming to impress Luke Donald for one of the invitations. The third place is already at -7, occupied by Canadian Aaron Cockerill (-7), and the top 10 closes at -5, seven strokes behind Rasmus. It’s true that there are still 36 holes to go, but the gap opened by the top two is quite significant.
As for the Spaniards, Rafa Cabrera Bello (-2) made the cut and has the license to aim for the top after delivering a card of 71 strokes, with four pars and four birdies. Once again, he hit very good irons. The Canary Islander joins García Heredia, Sebas García, and Chacarra. Four Spaniards made the cut. From the afternoon, Pablo Ereño (+2) was left out, with a cruel double bogey on hole 6 after hitting the ball out of bounds from the tee, and Santi Tarrio, who lost his chain.
