Matt Kuchar 1 shot off lead; Rory McIlroy lurking at the Open

And he did it in atrocious conditions for golf.

Johnson and McIlroy were two of the bigger names who failed to make inroads on Thursday, with both only managing one-over-par 71s. That didn’t stop Spieth from making birdie on his opening hole to set the tone for the rest of his round.

The round of the day belonged to Zach Johnson, who shot a four-under 66 with just one bogey.

Handed the honour of hitting the first shot of the tournament, O’Meara sent his drive out of bounds before running up a quadruple-bogey eight and he ended up signing for an ugly round of 81.

“I was watching the coverage [hoping] for even par and I’d still be there right now”.

Moments later, the siren sounded to enforce a temporary suspension of play because of heavy rain.

Canadian debutant Austin Connelly rattled off 10 straight pars before a birdied at the 11th briefly got him to four under only to hand that gain back at the 13th. But of the top five golfers on the leaderboard, two were under 50 percent in fairways hit (Spieth and Kuchar) and one other (Charl Schwartzel) only hit 57 percent.

And much like Spieth, he kept his round together with crucial par saves early on the back nine when the wind was at its worse. Didn’t have much time to look at the leaderboards. That wasn’t almost as bad as the sixth hole, where he tried three times to hammer out of the thick native grass well right of the fairway. He knows his weaknesses and he knows how to play away from them. Poulter was never really in the mix until the final, blustery round, when he closed with a 69 and thought he had a chance to win with a clutch par on the 18th – until Padraig Harrington finished strong with a birdie and eagle to win by four. “I missed two greens”, said the 23-year-old, who won the Masters and US Open in 2015. “You can certainly make up ground, in a round like tomorrow, and we’ll see it happen, but being able to kind of play with shots or play a little more conservatively, you make a bogey, because you don’t try to do too much on a day like tomorrow, that’s nice and very helpful”. And it was the smart shot because it was probably going to come out better than the 3-iron. We got that chance on Friday when foul weather got the measure of most of the field.

“I just got off to such a poor start”.

Matt Fitzpatrick landed 25 feet from the hole with his tee shot on the par-three seventh.

“But I wasn’t proud of my 1st round.I should have played better and I expect better”.

The 2014 champion moved to one under for the tournament after a round of 68 which threatened to be even better after three birdies over the first six holes that had given him so many problems on Thursday.