BACK in yonder times of yesteryear, nobody batted an eyelid at a 62 in an Open Championship.
Willie Park Snr, for instance, won the very first Open at Prestwick in 1860 with rounds of 55, 59 and 60.
Tom Morris Jnr, meanwhile, zipped round in 47 blows during the 1870 event. Of course, in those times of yore the combatants were battering away over 12 holes.
Here in 2017, the full 18 got the kind of blitz that you tend to get in the opening salvos of a large scale artillery bombardment.
Amazing Grace, Grace and favour? Those clichés are as old as the Open itself but they were getting trotted out in frenzied abundance yesterday as Branden Grace signed for an eight-under 62 and scribbled his name into men’s Major history.
The good ladies may have been saying, ‘anything you can do, we can do better’, mind you. Kim Hyo-Joo had a 61 in the 2014 Evian Championship, an event which had been elevated to Major status the previous year.
There had been 31 rounds of 63 in the four male grand slam events down the years but nobody had ever dipped below that.
Grace broke down that barrier with a superbly assembled round which propelled the South African up the leaderboard. Having made the cut on Friday with just a shot to spare, this put the move into the phrase Moving Day.
In this game, there’s never such a thing as absolute perfection. As he mulled over the endless quest for some kind of golfing nirvana, the great Bobby Jones once said: “No one will ever have golf under his thumb.”
Grace’s eight birdie round was pretty darned good and even he stated in the aftermath that he had “played flawless golf.”
As Jones said, though, there’s no such thing as a round without blemishes. “I definitely felt I did leave a couple out there,” conceded Grace of the ones that got away.
Let’s not split hairs, though. It may have been benign and receptive but to conjure a card like this in the Major championship arena is a terrific effort deserving of back slapping acclaim.
The 29-year-old confessed to being “in the zone.” He seemed to be so deep into that place, he didn’t actually realise he was striding towards the history books.
“I didn’t know what was going on, on the 18th, I promise you,” he said with a smile after two-putting from the back of the green to salvage his par and claim the record.
His trusty caddie, Zack Rasego, the veteran bagman who helped Louis Oosthuizen to Open glory at St Andrews in 2010, was switched on to affairs, though.
“I had no idea that 62 was the lowest ever,” said Grace, the seven-time European Tour winner who shot a 60 at Kingsbarns during the 2012 Dunhill Links Championship.
“On 18, I was just trying not to make a bogey. And Zack came up and said, ‘you’re in the history books’. I was like, ‘what are you talking about?’.”
Grace certainly enjoyed his day on the links. He may have been par-busting but perspective about golf’s place in the grand scheme of life was in his mind too.
Last month, he donated almost £1 million to aid the relief effort in his homeland after deadly wild fires raged through the town of Knysna.
“There was actually a spectator out there today who said, ‘do it for Knysna’,” he said. “You start thinking about things like that. It is really tragic what happened back there. But knowing that I was in the position to help, you don’t even think twice about doing that.
“Hopefully a lot of lives can be changed and can be kind of restored. If it puts a smile on those people’s faces then maybe there’s a light tomorrow for them.”
This amazing Grace certainly illuminated Birkdale yesterday.
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