– The American Ryan Brehm (-9) is one of the three co-leaders of the Alfred Dunhill Links after the first round. Brehm’s position, at 39 years old and ranked 1,407 in the world, is quite a surprise, as this year he had played thirteen tournaments counting towards the world ranking and missed ten cuts, with a 56th place in the Korn Ferry Tour being his best result…
– The other two co-leaders are Darius Van Driel (-9) and Matthew Jordan (-9). What is not so surprising in this tournament, by the way, is having to sign a card of 63 strokes in the first round just to aspire to the lead.
– And indeed, the Alfred Dunhill Links has proceeded in its first round along the same lines as almost always, or rather the recent editions: you have to go all out because you might find that a card of six under par on the day is outside the top ten of the tournament, with the three courses where the game takes place (Old Course at St. Andrews, Kingsbarns, and Carnoustie) conveniently prepared so that amateurs suffer just enough when they miss the fairway. And even though there have been good downpours here and there, as long as the wind doesn’t blow as it knows how to in these latitudes, the players will break the scorecards.
– So in this edition and in this first round, for example, we find that the cumulative -6 hasn’t even made it into the top 25 of the leaderboard, and the -5 has gone down to the 40th place, something that has never happened before. A real birdie fest. From tomorrow, however, things might change if the weather forecasts are met…
– The wind, indeed, could spice things up because tomorrow, Friday, it will blow hard in the three venues, St. Andrews, Carnoustie, and Kingsbarns, especially in the late hours of play, in the afternoon, with gusts exceeding 50 km/h. Although it will be Saturday when, according to the same forecast, it could be much worse, as we will have sustained winds of at least 40 km/h throughout the day.
– Meanwhile, it’s worth giving credit to Dustin Johnson (-8), positioned just one stroke off the lead, although this year, both in LIV and the Majors, the Carolina native hasn’t managed to round off a whole week. And if we’re talking about credit, we should at least pay attention to Tyrrell Hatton (-6), who has won this tournament three times and consistently posts low rounds at this event.
– David Puig (-7), Alex del Rey (-7), Rafa Cabrera Bello (-6), and Jorge Campillo (-6) have also started with the spark that the event demands and are well positioned at the start, awaiting what the wind dictates.
