Key events

2h agoPreamble

Sam Burns appears quite tense. His tee shot on the par-three 4th lands 15 yards short of the green. The chip is not ideal, and the 15-foot putt misses. That is a bogey, his first since the 9th yesterday, and just his second since Thursday! Meanwhile Ryan Fox saves par from a pot bunker in front of the green ... and on 14, Cameron Young seems ready to post a target score with a birdie that brings him within one shot! We have an exciting Open on our hands!

-10: Burns (4)
-9: Young (14), Fox (4)
-8: Kim (4)
-7: Scheffler (11), Fleetwood (7), Herbert (7), Gerard (4)

Tommy Fleetwood cannot believe his misfortune on the par-three 7th. After missing the green long and left, he wedges back and watches the ball roll toward the hole. Yet it curls around the right edge before stopping right behind the cup. How did that remain out? The ball sits there almost smiling at Tommy. It is nearly endearing. Jellycat should sue. Fleetwood tilts his head back in frustration. He stays at -7.

Two putts for Bryson DeChambeau, and that is five pars in a row. Not damaging to his hopes, but not the quick start he wanted either. He stays at -6. Sam Burns and Ryan Fox both scramble to save pars at 3, though in different styles: Burns splashes out close from sand, but Fox sends his chip 20 feet past the flag ... only to read the downhill snake coming back perfectly. What a putt! And on 16, Rory McIlroy three-putts from eight feet for a double bogey. He is -1.

-11: Burns (3)
-9: Fox (3)
-8: Young (13), Kim (4)
-7: Scheffler (10), Fleetwood (6), Gerard (4)

Realistically, if the chasing pack wants a chance, they will need the final group to stall a bit. And on 3, Sam Burns and Ryan Fox prepare to open the door. Both drive wild and approach inaccurately, Fox short of the green, Burns in a bunker. Big scrambles coming up.

More fun and games for Bryson DeChambeau on 5! No, not over there. He misses the green left, and nearly knocks his pitch into the bunker over the other side. The gallery offers pantomime ooooooohs as the ball toys with the idea of dropping off the green, where it would be taken into the trap by the contours. He will have a 30-footer for birdie.

A couple of players take a step backwards. Ludvig Åberg, who had done well to save par on 2 after racing an excitable birdie effort five feet past, gets wild off the tee on 3 and pays the price with bogey. He is -5. And his playing partner Lucas Herbert also drops a shot at 3, taking two to extricate himself from an awkward position in a greenside bunker. He is -6.

Tommy tidies up for his birdie on 5, and the Southport massive does its thing. Back on 2, Ryan Fox, who had clipped his second pin high to 15 feet, dribbles the downhill birdie putt straight into the cup. Then Burns makes his shorter one. A pair of birdies. Things hotting up real nice!

-11: Burns (2)
-9: Fox (2)
-8: Young (12), Kim (2)
-7: Scheffler (9), Fleetwood (5), Gerard (2)

Tommy Fleetwood drive at 5 finishes in a swale, front left of the green. With soft hands, he bumps a chip up to 18 inches. Meanwhile back on the nearby 2nd green, Sam Burns wedges his second pin high to four feet. A couple of big putts coming up.

Scottie cannot make his birdie on 9. It is a poor effort, swished with great uncertainty, the ball always dying to the low side on the right. His putter has gone cold at exactly the wrong moment: he missed a birdie putt from pretty similar distance on the hole before, too. Meanwhile Sam Burns and Ryan Fox make fairly fuss-free pars at 1. And Russell Henley misses a tiddler on 16 to drop back to -6. There goes that 62 dream.

-10: Burns (1)
-8: Young (12), Kim (2), Fox (1)
-7: Scheffler (9), Herbert (2), Gerard (2)

Scottie Scheffler does not take a shy at the 9th green. Instead he plays the percentages, sending his tee shot to the corner of the dogleg, then knocking a short iron from 160 yards to six. He will have a putt to reach the turn in 30.

The final pairing - Game No39 - takes to the course. Ryan Fox splits the fairway. Sam Burns, looking a little nervous, catches a good lie in the semi-rough down the right. Having to wait all day to tee off last in a major must be arduous enough; an extra 14 minutes is putting a hat on a hat.

Cameron Young second into 11 kicks off to the right of the green and down a swale. He bumps his chip into the bank, up and over, the ball rolling round from right to left to eight inches. So close to a perfectly judged chip-in, wonderful shotmaking with the contours. Links mastery. He is already got a second-place finish on his CV (2022 at St Andrews, behind Cameron Smith) after all. Young remains at -8.

Ludvig Åberg is one dimple away from opening birdie, but his 30-foot putt shaves the right-hand side of the cup. He remains at -6. Par too for one of this week Mr 62s, Lucas Herbert. Behind them, Ryan Gerard and Kim Si-woo get down to business. All of the groups are out now ... apart from one. And they will be teeing off in a couple of minutes.

Bryson DeChambeau looks mildly disgusted with himself for missing a ten-foot birdie putt on 1. Jackson Suber maintains his gameface despite making bogey, the result of that wayward tee shot, which snagged in heavy rough. The 18-hole leader slips back to -5.

Cameron Young birdies 9, as so many do. Not so many cover the front nine in 29 strokes, though. Well, Ryan Fox did it yesterday, and Denis Durnian went one better here in 1983, still the Open record for the front nine. The Players champion is making up for his dreadful back nine yesterday evening: 40 strokes that may prove so painfully costly. But let us see how it all pans out. If he posts something ... and see also Russell Henley, who birdies 14. The two Americans at this rate hunting down another couple of 62s?

-10: Burns
-8: Young (9), Fox, Kim
-7: Henley (14), Scheffler (6), Gerard, Herbert
-6: Matsuyama (3), Fleetwood (1), DeChambeau (1), Åberg

... Tommy Fleetwood drains a 73-footer from the fringe at the front of 1!!! Shoulders UP! Shoulders BACK! One of those putts that looked inevitable halfway along its journey, a left-to-right swinger that disappeared into the hole like a mouse with a piece of cheese. He smiles so wide and hard that his teeth almost outshine the sun. The crowd go bonkers. What a start! The dream is alive! He is -6.

Speaking of folk heroes: here comes Bryson DeChambeau! He is certainly not going to die wondering, and puts everything he has got into his opening drive. A monster that bounds down the fairway before scuttling into the semi-rough on the right. He will be going round with the debut sensation Jackson Suber, who toys with OB down the right but stays in. There was a huge roar as he took his shot. And that is because ...

Rory McIlroy momentum-free week continues to bumble along apace. Having birdied 10, he immediately hands the shot back at 11, the result of finding a fairway bunker with his tee shot and being forced to take his medicine in it. Meanwhile more news on the status of Tommy Fleetwood shoulders: drooped. He has got a decent enough lie, and cracks an iron towards the green, his ball creeping onto the front, just. But he clearly wanted more, and lets those shoulders fall as he offloads to his caddie. He appears agitated, the weight of carrying the gallery hopes and dreams around with him all week perhaps beginning to tell. A local hero is something to be.

The final few games are running late, due to a rules brouhaha in an earlier match. So if you have been hammering away at refresh waiting for news of Tommy Fleetwood, here he comes now. The usual hubbub on the tee, then he takes his fairway wood, hits the ball, and twirls the club in satisfaction. Not exactly sure why, because his ball disappears into a thick clump of grass atop a bank to the left of the fairway. Some tension in the shoulders no doubt.

Another birdie for Scottie Scheffler! He crashes his drive at 5 greenside, chips up to four feet, and rolls in the putt. No fuss. The defending champion is now -7, and if he continues like this, posts a number, and the late-starting leaders have to deal with the cranking up of both wind and pressure ... well now, we would have quite the Open. A long way to go yet.

A good couple of minutes for Ireland. Rory McIlroy finally makes a putt, on 10, while Shane Lowry holes out from a bunker at 4. It is back-to-back birdies for the 2019 champion, who clenches a fist in celebration. At -5, you can be sure he is not going to admit defeat just yet. Rory is -4. But any faint Scottish hopes of a first title since Paul Lawrie seized the day in 1999 have gone south. Consecutive bogeys for Bob MacIntyre, at 6 and 7, and he is back to -2.

Russell Henley keeps on keepin on! He sends his approach at 11 from 156 yards to 14 feet, and the putt drops for his fifth birdie of the day. The rest of his card is unblemished, so he just needs another three birdies in the last seven holes to join Club 62. And there are scoring opportunities all around Royal Birkdale.

On the subject of Bryson, who reportedly threatened to walk upon being penalised for his fescue shoe shuffle, here is the story of one player who actually walked it like he talked it. Courtesy of an old Joy of Six on the Open.

The 16th Open Championship was the second to be held on the famous Old Course at St Andrews and the first to descend into total farce. From the outset, there was trouble brewing. The organisers had forgotten - golfers who have been unlucky in the St Andrews ballot will love this - to book the course for the tournament, so competitors had to grab tee times when they could, going out for their rounds while members of the general public hooked and shanked to their hearts delight around them. Delightful bedlam.

Sure enough, this would eventually ruin the Championship. It is said that the best two players of the early 1870s were Young Tom Morris and David Strath. Morris had pipped Strath to the Open in 1870 and 1872, but died of a broken heart on Christmas Day 1875, a few months after his wife and newborn baby had died during a difficult labour. With his main rival tragically out of the picture, it was assumed an Open victory for Strath would come along sooner or later.

With two holes of his second and final round to play, 1876 looked like being Strath year. Bob Martin was in the clubhouse having just shot 90 for a total of 176, a mark which meant Strath would win the title if he got home in 10 strokes. Having played his second straight down the middle of the fairway at the Road Hole, the group ahead were faffing around on the green. Strath - his patience worn by two rounds of nonsense on a ludicrously busy course - clipped his third shot into the green the very moment the group ahead finished the hole. But they had not completely vacated the green, and his approach hit one of the players, the ball stopping near the hole instead of bouncing through and on to the road running behind.

Strath still took two putts for a five. He should have sealed the deal with a careful passage up the last, but got caught up in the Valley of Sin and took six. He too signed for a 90, tied on 176 with Martin. A play-off was therefore scheduled for the following Monday, but there had also been complaints about the incident back on 17, and the R and A committee refused to rule until after the deciding round was complete. Understandably, Strath reasoned that there was no point playing if he was only going to be disqualified anyway and demanded a decision before they teed off. None was forthcoming. Strath walked, leaving Martin with the formality of competing in the play-off himself for the right to become Open champion.

Strath competed again the following year at Musselburgh, but only came fifth, six shots behind the winner Jamie Anderson. It was his last Open. Two years later, he left on a boat for Australia, suffering from tuberculosis and seeking a cure in sunnier climes. He had bought a return ticket, but never came back, laryngitis adding to his physical woes, and he succumbed in Melbourne not long after his arrival. Another grim story, but seven top-10 Open finishes in eight attempts, including three second-place finishes, is not a bad legacy to be leaving.