GRACE SCORES FIRST 62 IN MAJORS HISTORY:
WHEN Phil Mickelson missed a 62 by fractions at last year’s Open, with a last-hole lip-out, he claimed to have been denied by malevolent outside forces – a local Troon curse, perhaps, or a hidden greenkeeper’s hand.
South Africa’s Branden Grace, mercifully, had no such thoughts when he stood on Royal Birkdale’s 18th green and stroked in the three-foot knee-trembler that gave him the first 62 witnessed at a men’s major championship.
Until his caddie, Zack Resago, informed him of the significance once the putt dropped, he had no idea that he had recorded a round for posterity.
In this, the 442nd Major staged in golf, the mystifying failure of the game’s greats to notch up a 62 in the grandest setting had been attributed to a curse.
The club includes some pre-eminent names: Greg Norman and Nick Price, both of whom did it twice, not to mention Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tiger Woods, Sir Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy.
A 62 belonged, or so they thought, to a remote realm guarded by the most exacting gatekeeper. Now, with this spectacular flourish, Grace, a reliable European Tour talent but never one with claims upon immortality, has vaulted beyond them all.
He played, as he was not shy of acknowledging, “flawless golf”, missing a mere two fairways and two greens all day. Grace reached the turn in 29, emulating the dazzling outward half achieved by Ian Baker-Finch en route to his 1991 triumph here at Birkdale, but refused to let his intensity dip.
Having holed a monstrously long birdie putt at the 16th, he picked up another shot at the par-five 17th to lay his platform for history.
Crowds distracted by McIlroy teeing off at the same time were drawn en masse to the amphitheatre of the 18th.
A long sigh rustled through the galleries when Grace sent his second shot long, on to the back apron, but from there he did not miss a beat, lagging his putt to what would, in any other circumstances, have been almost tap-in range.
Except the whispers in the stands suggested there were higher stakes at play.
“I didn’t know what was going on, I promise you,” he said, laughing. “I had just been in the zone of playing, hole after hole. I wasn’t even aware that 62 would be the lowest ever until Zack came up and said, ‘You’re in the history books’.”
Golf’s elite has been closing in on the major milestone of 62 for some time. Henrik Stenson’s winning score of 264, 20 under par, at last summer’s Open, was a major championship record, rounded off by a final-round 63.
Just last month, Justin Thomas, a player not exactly a model of raw power, tamed the beastlylong Erin Hills in Wisconsin with the lowest round to par at a US Open, beating even Johnny Miller’s famous closing 63 at Oakmont in 1973.
Grace was nobody’s front-rank choice to go one better but his obliviousness to the scale of the feat helped assuage any nerves.
“My main focus was on trying not to bogey the 18th,” he said. “You feel so bad finishing a brilliant day like that, so that was a big point in the right direction for me. What a special moment. It’s something I’ll remember forever.”
Rasego, the bag-man who had scrupulously kept quiet about the magnitude of what awaited Grace, politely declined to speak afterwards. “I don’t do interviews,” he said. “Players do interviews.”