Royal Birkdale, After 36: A Record 62, a Two-Shot Lead, and a Brutal Cut

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THE BOARD · THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

Two rounds into the 154th Open, Royal Birkdale has already given us a slice of history, a rules storm, and a cut line that read like a roll-call of the game’s biggest names heading for the car park. Here is where the last major of 2026 stands at the halfway mark.

Leader	Lucas Herbert (AUS) — 8 under
Tied 2nd	Jackson Suber, Cameron Young, Ryan Gerard — 6 under
Tied 5th	Sam Burns, Bryson DeChambeau, Si Woo Kim — 5 under
Cut line	1 over par
Round of the week	Herbert & Burns — 62 (ties all-time major record)

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A 62 for the ages — twice in one afternoon

Moving day does not usually arrive on Friday, but this one did. Within twenty-five minutes of each other, Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns each signed for an 8-under-par 62 — the lowest single round ever recorded in men’s major championship history, matched not once but twice on the same Lancashire afternoon. For Herbert, the Bendigo man now playing his golf on LIV, it was the round of a career built quietly around the globe, and it carried him to the top of the board at 8 under, two clear of the field. Burns’s 62 was every bit as clean; it simply came from further back. Two players, one number, and a page of the record book rewritten before the weekend had even begun.

Cameron Young, still chasing the one that matters

Among the group at 6 under, tied for second, sits the most familiar face on the leaderboard. Cameron Young arrived at Birkdale as one of the pre-tournament favourites, and through 36 holes he has played like it. Links golf has always seemed to draw the best from him — his breakthrough near-miss came at St Andrews in 2022, where he birdied the last to finish runner-up — and the sense of unfinished business is impossible to ignore. Now a Players champion and a former World No. 3, Young no longer carries the “nearly man” label he wore for so long. A first major would retire it for good.

Alongside him at 6 under are two less-heralded Americans, Jackson Suber and Ryan Gerard, the kind of names an Open loves to elevate. Whether they can hold links nerve over a weekend is the question the golf will answer.

Bryson, and the two shots that got away

The tournament’s controversy belongs to Bryson DeChambeau. Playing the par-4 fifth on Friday, he was assessed a two-stroke penalty for improving his lie under Rule 8.1 — a ruling that turned a 66 into a 68 and dropped him from solo second to a share of fifth. “A player must take the least intrusive course of action,” said the R&A’s Grant Moir, “and is not entitled to a normal stance or swing.” DeChambeau, through his agent, felt he had been unfairly treated, then spent hours on the range until after sunset and declined to speak to the media. At 5 under he remains very much in it — but he begins the weekend two shots lighter than he believes he should be.

The cut that swallowed the favourites

The number was 1 over, and it was merciless. Home hope Tommy Fleetwood, who learned the game a few miles up the coast and had been cast as the sentimental favourite all week, will not see the weekend at his home Open. Nor will Jon Rahm. Nor will Jordan Spieth, whose quadruple bogey at the 17th ended a fourth straight year without a serious major run. Our reigning major men fared no better: 2026 US Open champion Wyndham Clark and PGA champion Aaron Rai both missed by daylight, joined by Cameron Smith, Tom Kim, Matt Fitzpatrick and a visibly seething Justin Rose. An Open cut is the great leveller, and this one levelled some giants.

Scheffler grinds, McIlroy survives

Two of the biggest names did just enough. Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, sits at 4 under and quietly third in the field for tee-to-green play — but a cold putter (126th in the field on the greens) has kept his weekend from becoming a coronation. Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, produced the escape act of the week: a Friday 67 to drag himself from 2 over back to 1 under, complete with the small act of theatre of driving the par-3 ninth green two days running — a hole nobody designed to be driven. He is a long way back. He is also exactly the sort of player links golf can bring roaring up a leaderboard in a single afternoon.

The weekend

So Birkdale gives us a leader in Herbert who has never been near a major before, a favourite in Young who has been near too many, a wounded contender in DeChambeau, and a defending champion in Scheffler waiting for a putt to drop. The wind will decide much of the rest — it always does here. As we wrote before the week began, the Open is the one major that tells the truth. Two rounds in, it is already telling it loudly.