With a hot start to the opening round of The Open, Nick Taylor looked as if he was going to run the table. He made birdies on the first three holes and appeared as if he was ready to do the same to the next 15.
While that didn’t happen, Taylor did manage an impressive round that concluded with a birdie on the 18th hole, which played as the most difficult of the day. A solid round of two-under 68 left him satisfied at a tournament that hasn’t been good to him in the past.
“It was really nice to birdie the last, to feel like I didn’t almost squander the round or not get a lot out if it, so I’m happy with that,” Taylor told Jon McCarthy of the Toronto Sun. “You’d take par on that hole all day. To miss the fairway, have a decent lie, hit a great shot on there — I thought it was nice to finish the round that way."
The Canadian who has missed the cut in three previous appearances at the Open, traded a bogey on six for a birdie on the eighth to make the turn at 31. He rolled off a series of six pars before making bogey on 15 and 16. He made par on the 17th before the closing birdie made by rolling in a 20-footer.
It was a solid round on a day where the sun continued to bake out the fairways at Royal Birkdale. Taylor got some of the best playing conditions but by the time he turned for the back nine, the wind was up making it tough to hit fairways and greens. For most of the day, he kept the driver in the bag, using it only three times.
“The back nine’s always a bit trickier,” said Taylor. “The wind picked up with that north direction, so there were a lot of crosswinds. Just hitting fairways was kind of tricky coming in. But happy with how I putted it. My iron game was very solid. Just a few driver misses on a couple of par 5s.”
The score leaves him just three shots back of the lead, held by American Jackson Suber.
Suber earned his spot in the tournament through a fourth-place finish at the RBC Canadian Open last month.
The other Canadian in the field, Corey Conners, played a rather mundane round as far as the scorecard goes. He made a bogey on the par-3 fourth hole and made par on the other 17 holes. While it looks boring by the numbers, it was somewhat more adventurous in actuality.
“I didn’t give myself too many great birdie chances, which I’m not thrilled about. However, I did a good job of keeping things pretty simple,” Conners told McCarthy.
The Listowel, Ont., product didn’t have a birdie putt inside 10 feet and averaged just over 25 feet. The longest putt he holed was 11 feet. If there was good news it was that he didn’t have a three-putt on the day, and he remained optimistic.
“I feel like I’m striking the ball well enough that there’ll be some opportunities where I can get a little more aggressive or might get a favourable bounce, and the ball ends up closer to the hole,” he stated.
Conners and Taylor will regroup for the second round with Conners teeing off at 7:52 a.m. and Taylor at 3:26 pm.
