Jon Rahm Rockets Into Contention With Sensational Course-Record 63

Jon Rahm lit up a gloomy but dry Royal Liverpool with a sensational course-record 63 to rocket up the leaderboard.

The Spaniard was out four hours before the leaders, in a tie for 39th, but he will tee off on Sunday right in among them after a brilliant effort and the best at Hoylake by two shots. 

Previously there had been four 65s in 2006, including Tiger Woods’ second round, and five in 2014 but nobody had managed a 64. Rahm went one better with his lowest Open round having shot a 64 at Royal St George’s two years ago. 

To give us some type of contest of quite how far he’s come from, Rahm was asked after his second-round 70 about the fact that he had made 17 cuts in a row in the Majors?

“Right now I'm just focused on the fact that I'm 12 shots back. That's about it. Happy I made the cut but I would like to see myself in contention.”

Now he is. There was a pitch and a putt at the 5th but the big moves then came around the turn; putts of 22, 14, 4 and 4 feet gave him a quartet of birdies on the trot from the 9th. There was another at the 15th and, when he rolled in a 35-footer at the 16th, he was in a tied for second.

At the 18th he left himself 282 yards in, something he achieved with a bullet fairway wood which finished to the left of the putting surface and, after a weakish chip, he knocked in an 11-footer. 

There wasn’t a five on his card and, come the end of the round, he had holed putts of over 130 feet of putts feet which was good for 3.78 shots gained on the field on the greens alone.

For all the talk of the re-raked bunkers Rahm didn’t find any.

"That's the best round I've played on a links golf course ever. It's pretty obvious. It's my lowest round on a links course and it's an Open Championship, right? Also the lowest round shot on this course. Yeah, it feels really good, but it's a lot of work to do," Rahm explained.

He added that a shift in wind made things easier with there being some help from the 11th onwards as the players turned for home.

"Those early holes that were maybe the scorable holes the first few days because of the wind conditions. Today they were a little bit more difficult and it was starting on  11 when everything became downwind and it became a lot easier. The wind conditions is what made the course change a little bit.

"The 11th through 14 was playing straight in off the left the first few days and it was down off the right so it was a much, much easier stretch of holes."

Rahm will tee off on Sunday with the very real possibility of chalking off the third leg of a career Grand Slam – he is already the only European to have won the US Open and Masters.