Vegas’s 76 follows week which felt like ‘horror movie happening’

Jhonattan Vegas’s time in Angus looks like being particularly brief.

The Venezuelan made a frantic dash to the course yesterday and played with borrowed clubs after landing in Scotland just hours before he was due to tee off.

He arrived in Glasgow at 6.35am, just as Sandy Lyle was getting the championship under way, and had barely four hours before his own name was due to be announced.

His arduous journey from the United States was put back several times because of problems acquiring a new visa.

To make matters worse, after a 14-hour trip from Houston via Toronto the 33-year-old’s clubs were lost in transit.

As Vegas flew to the course by helicopter his caddie, who was already there, pieced together a composite set.

To no great surprise, Vegas wasn’t at his best and shot a five-over-par 76.

“To me it seemed like it was a horror movie happening for the past week,” he said. “If someone tried to do it on purpose you couldn’t do it. I just felt somebody was playing a joke on me... My clubs not showing up – I just started laughing. That’s when I said, ‘I’m done. What else can I do?’”

Vegas had planned to arrive at Carnoustie last Friday but his problems began when he realised, having confused the American and British ways of reading dates month or day first, that his visa was due to expire.

“I have been living in America for too long and have got used to seeing the dates flipped,” he said. “But at the end of the day that wasn’t that big a deal because I could have got a visa in 24 hours.

“I was supposed to get it on Friday but for some weird reason the people at the consulate in New York decided not to respond. Then it was the weekend so they responded on Monday morning, saying I applied for the wrong visa.”

The mistake was corrected but there was a delay forwarding the visa from New York.

He added: “It was supposed to be in Houston on Tuesday but something happened with UPS. I literally waited in a car in front of the consulate in Houston for seven hours, hoping it would show up that day. It never did.”

Nobody could accuse Vegas of giving up, and he’ll certainly need a positive mindset if he’s going to make the cut.

“As long as I had a shot of making it I was going to go for it,” he said. “I’m sure if you tell anyone in the world they would have a chance of playing in the Open Championship, even if they showed up two hours before, anyone in the world would take it. I wouldn’t do it every single day but it’s fun playing majors, fun playing the Open.”