It’s funny how anticipation and arrival juxtapose. In 2019, our anticipation level for Royal Portrush had no meter to contain it. The last Northern Ireland Open championship took place in the 1950s. No matter what happened, no matter who won, the Dunluce course would win the week and the year. Our despair at Rory’s early exit was more than sated when Shane Lowry lifted the claret jug.

Move ahead to 2025, and things have changed. Lowry is still a competitive contender, and the golf course has done little in six years, to change its personality for the worse. And yet, we are a bit more critical. We recognize that it has more dogleg holes than most links courses. We confess that it has two holes added from its original design. We have no historical legacy othen than Lowry, as Max Faulkner’s 1951 win is deep in another century. The bloom is shed and the veil, lifted.

Portrush needs the book of winners that Troon, Birkdale, Hoylake, Carnoustie, and St. Andrews all possess. Portrush craves the connection with the town that other venues boast. Portrush needs an identity, one that will be enjoyed by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as it adds name after name of Champion Golfer of the Year to its legacy. For our generations, we are here at the nascent point of the chronological arc.

With that sobriety written, let’s have a lesson from five notable things that we learned on day one, Thursday, of the 2025 Open Championship.

1. Bunkers and Billy

Billy Horschel has been sidelined with hip issues, and will undergo surgery next week. As the operation gets closer, Horschel becomes more vocal in his opinions on the state of the game. Last week, he took issue with a notion from Padraig Harrington, that the Open Championship might one day be played outside the British isles. This week, he demonstrated displeasure with the absence of trained bunker rakers at Royal Portrush. Without the standard bearers, caddies are compelled to rake bunkers as they do each week of the season.

We’ve not yet heard from Horschel on the size of the teeth of this week’s rakes. According to reliable sources, the teeth dig deeper and space wider, meaning that spin rates out of bunkers are diminished. As if the golfers needed more to adjust to than the vagaries of links golf. Will the rakes and absence of rakers have an impact on the outcome of the Open Championship? Pop the corn and stay tuned.

2. If you don’t have the shots, your long day leads to a short week

The Open championship routinely demands a wider skillset than the other major events. Find yourself high on a dune, and you’ll confront a shoulder-high knuckle ball, with little margin for error. At times, you are unable to merely pitch the ball sideways toward the fairway. Instead, you must hold the clubface open, rotate the shoulders, and hope for the best. On a good day, you make solid contact and the ball shoots toward the distant flag. On a bad day, well, see Bryson below. He finished on seven-over for the day, currently sits tied for 145th, and has work left to make Friday’s cut.

3. Monk

I confess that I thought that a Hayden “Sidd” Finch imitator was afoot, while reading that Sadom Kaewkanjana had taken time away from professional golf, to live life as a monk. This is precisely the case, as the top-fifteen finisher at the 2022 Open at St. Andrews took time away from the game in 2023. He lived as a Buddhist monk and practiced meditation and other ritual tasks. On Thursday, SK rode two birdies, plus a hole-out approach for eagle on five, to the second-best score on the day. His 68 stands him even with world number one Scottie Scheffler and two others, one shot behind the leading quintet. There may be better ways to prepare for the mental demands of championship golf; for the moment, I cannot think of any.

4. The leaders

In alphabetical order, you have Bezuidenhout, English, Fitzpatrick, Li, and Olesen. Of the five, Matt Fitzpatrick is the lone major winner. The other four were, at one point or another in their careers, predicted to be solid bets to win this sort of tournament. Each arrived at the head of the class in his own unique manner. Harris English carved seven birdies out of the course, but he also made the highest number of bogeys among the leaders. Haotong Li had four birdies and zero bogeys. The other three golfers all had at least one bogey.

The ability to minimize mistakes is critical to success at Royal Portrush. Make your way around the Dunluce with one bogey each day, and you’ll be in the thick of the chase come Sunday. English looks to have the best chance at round replication, as he teed off in Thursday’s afternoon wave. He’ll see a fresh set of greens on Friday. Despite his English roots, Fitzpatrick does not show well at The Open. His top finish is a tie for 20th, out of ten attempts.

5. Who looks to do what on Friday?

Scottie Scheffler has two, top-ten finishes in four Open Championship appearances. He did not play at Portrush in 2019, but his opening 68 suggests that he has an idea of what he wants to do, and how to do it. The Texan needs two consecutive rounds of solid, rewarded golf to set the stage for a run at the title. A fall-off on Friday will put him in a defensive mode on moving day. If he sits inside the top four after the cut, he won’t need to do anything spectacular on Saturday. Let’s see what the Schef ha on the menu.

If there’s one thing that Englishmen don’t do, it’s win the Open Championship. Look at the long list of recent, great English players with zero Open titles: Fleetwood, Rose, Westwood, Donald, Poulter, Willett, and Fitzpatrick. For some reason, they cannot find the elixir to clinch victory. Tyrrell Hatton hopes to remove his name from that list. Hatton opened with a clean card, posting four birdies against zero bogeys. Unlike Scheffler, Hatton fights to preserve control over his psyche and game with each breath he takes. He’ll be fun to watch, regardless of the outcome, but contention for the Claret will demand more from him than we’ve ever seen.

As things stand, these are the two I see with the best chance to impact the outcome of the 153rd Open Championship.