'None of us saw any of the tee shots on 18' - Scot deflated after late finish on day one in The Open
Daniel Young and Cameron Adam both finish rounds in near darkness at Royal Portrush
Daniel Young was left feeling “deflated” after dropping four shots late on as he played his final few holes in near darkness along with fellow Scot Cameron Adam in the first round of The 153rd Open.
As play finished at 10.13pm at Royal Portrush after the later groups took six hours to get round, Young had to settle for a four-over-par 75 in the penultimate three-ball.
Playing in the group ahead, Adam carded a 73, matching fellow amateur Connor Graham’s effort earlier in the day on the County Antrim coast, but he, too, felt his score had been hampered by play finishing so late.
“Yeah, very frustrating,” said HotelPlanner Tour professional Young, who was two over after four holes on his major debut before picking up four birdies in seven holes only to then finish bogey-par-double bogey-bogey as the light faded.
“I battled very well to get back and I was pushing to get into the red coming in there. Caught a bunker at 15, so that's a bogey pretty much straight away, which was disappointing. Then I hit a great tee shot into 16, made par.
“Then the hardest part at 17 is getting a tee shot away. Hell of a tee shot and then just hit a terrible, terrible wedge shot, just probably a lapse in concentration more than anything. Just being here for so long, not that that's an excuse.
“But it was pretty dark there coming in, certainly on 18, where none of us saw any of the tee shots. Yeah, pretty disappointed, a bit deflated at the minute, to be honest.
“There was no refs talking to anybody I think about pace of play and stuff, which is disappointing. I think it's one of them where they just want your round.”
Adam, one of nine amateurs in the field, reckoned the daylight had already started to go when he came close to making a hole-in-one at the 13th - one of three birdies on his card.
“I didn’t really realise how long it actually was until we were standing on the 17th tee and I was like, daylight is getting really bad; what's the time?” said the Royal Burgess man. “We're like quarter past 9pm; it's getting late.
“I feel for the guys still out there. We were trying to read putts on the 18th going, this is bad. But it's part of the game, isn't it? You get a late tee time, you've just got to deal with it.”
With the top 70 and ties making the cut, Adam sits right on the projected cut-off mark heading into the second round while Young is joint-114th.
“It was okay,” said Adam, winner of The Open Amateur Series, of his opening effort. “I felt like I played probably better than I shot.
“The frustrating thing for us was I dropped some shots through calculations today where I actually put pretty good swings on it and just the calculation wasn't right and resulted in a dropped shot. But I've got to take a lot of confidence from how I hit the ball. Making the cut is definitely the plan.
“It's been an awesome week. A lot of the guys have been great with me and just been trying to learn as much as I can, but I'm also here to compete. While I'm a little bit frustrated by the score, just got to take the positives from my game and it could be a different story tomorrow.”
Young said he’d “struggled” over the opening few holes before “playing some really good stuff” as he picked up shots at the fifth, seventh, tenth and 12th.
“I know it's there going into tomorrow,” said the Perth man. “We've got another day. Scoring obviously looks relatively good but nothing amazing. I’ve got to take the positives from the middle part of the round and just hopefully get it going a bit and then finish it off a little better than I did today.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.