PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — It’s perhaps fitting that the Open Championship’s Thursday leaders would be men of a certain vintage.
The Open, after all, is the oldest of golf’s major championships — a tournament so steeped in the sport’s history that it often serves as a proxy for it. For the bright-yellow leaderboards to absorb sepia tint at least for a few minutes on Thursday morning at Royal Portrush? Well, that’d serve as little more than a proper tip o’ the cap to golf’s past.
But was it expected to see the names who surged to the top of the board as the sun rose over the East Coast of the United States on Thursday morning? No, no it was not.
If you opted for sleep instead of a middle-of-the-night wakeup, here’s your recap of what you missed on Open Championship Thursday, starting with the man at the top of board: Phil Mickelson.
5. Phil Mickelson (briefly) took the lead
Yes, that Phil Mickelson, the 55-year-old winner of majors and wearer and shades. After a dispiriting start to his major season — MCs in each of his three major starts — Phil came out hot on Thursday at the Open, making birdies on two of his first seven holes and, for a brief glimmer, surging into the solo opening-round lead.
Mickelson’s game did not seem like a natural fit for Royal Portrush, where the the targets are narrow and the penalty for off-center hits is steep. But he arrived on Thursday in Northern Ireland with a head of steam, taking advantage of the morning’s dry conditions to keep things between the goalposts and scrambling well to evade disaster on the few occasions he did not.
He faded a bit as he turned from the downwind stretch into a middle-six holes playing largely into the gusts, falling from two under back to minus one, but his performance in the early going easily places him in line for his best major finish of 2025.
4. So did Lee Westwood
For a few minutes, the top of the Royal Portrush leaderboard suffered an attack from LIV’s elder statesmen, with Lee Westwood plunging to three under for the tournament and briefly into the solo lead himself.
Westwood’s performance on Open Championship Thursday morning was particularly impressive considering it was also his first major championship appearance in more than three years. Westwood, 52, hadn’t played in a major since his departure for LIV in the summer of 2022, disappearing into the night at the Open at St. Andrews with a T34 finish and not reappearing until the beginning of this week in Northern Ireland. Now his week is off to a hot start.
3. A turbulent start for the hometown kids
Tom McKibbin and Padraig Harrington were two-thirds of the first group off on Open Championship Thursday, serving the somewhat ceremonial honor of hitting the opening tee shots at an Open Championship in Northern Ireland. Neither found himself on many picks to win the tournament, but both carried the hopes of a golfing nation praying to root for one of their own down the stretch on Sunday. The hours that followed gave good and bad in equal parts.
We’ll start with Harrington, who recorded the first birdie of the tournament on his opening hole, but who now finds himself at four over after a handful of bogeys during the middle-six holes, including a back-breaking double on the 10th.
McKibbin, meanwhile, started off slow, recording two bogeys on his first three holes before two birdies and an eagle in his middle-six. A couple more bogeys have brought him down to even par for the week, but Northern Ireland’s youngest entrant in the field still has plenty of reason to hope as he turns for the home stretch at Portrush.
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2. A wicked opening hole
Golf fans are already intimately familiar with the opening hole at Royal Portrush: It was infamously the site of Rory McIlroy’s opening round collapse at the 2019 Open here, leading to a tournament-opening 8 that set his hometown dreams trending in the wrong direction.
Through the first part of play on Thursday, the 1st has already claimed a handful of victims. U.S. Ryder Cup hopeful Ben Griffin pumped his opening tee shot of the final major of the year OB on Thursday morning, leading to a tournament-opening double-bogey, while Collin Morikawa’s double-cross off the opening tee put him quickly one stroke behind his competitors.
1. The reigning champ reloads
Both reigning winners at Portrush are sharing the top billing of the morning wave on Thursday, with 2024 Open Champ Xander Schauffele and 2019 Portrush Open winner Shane Lowry off in consecutive groups to start the action.
Schauffele has earned the reverence of the crowds here at Portrush, and for good reason: He plays a gritty style befitting an Open winner. But make no mistake, Lowry is the center of the gallery’s adoration — a hometown kid who delivered one of Ireland’s great all-time golfing moments when he delivered the Claret Jug in 2019. The crowds were at dizzying decibel-level when he arrived on the 1st tee box, and it’s tempting to think about how they might look come Sunday afternoon if the kid from County Offaly lands in contention again.
