Updates from the course ahead of Open Championship at Royal St George's

Bad barracking

As mentioned yesterday, the huge dune behind the sixth green is a superb vantage point and it was packed all day. In the morning the galleries were treated to a stunning show from the three-ball of Stewart Cink, Martin Kaymer and Lee Westwood.

Cink went first at the 176-yard par-three and left his ball six feet behind the flag, Kaymer responded with a blow to four feet, and Westwood bested them both, hitting to tap-in range.

Curiously (perhaps folk were still getting used to the old normal) the gallery clapped them onto the green, but it wasn’t especially loud or effusive noise. And when the polite applause turned to quiet an Australian voice shouted out a heckle.

We might have hoped for something reminiscent of the great Yabba, the barracker who sat on The Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Among his best lines were: "I wish you were a statue and I were a pigeon", "Leave our flies alone, Jardine", and, when an English batsman re-arranged his box, "Those are the only balls you’ve touched all day."

Alas, this modern day Yabba shouted "You three should be professionals" and he was even losing heart himself before he’d finished the sentence. Worse, it was met with complete silence, eventually broken by Kaymer’s caddie Craig Connolly who retorted: "And you should be a comedian."

Earwigging 1

Min Woo Lee’s chat to the media went along the lines you’d expect after a four-over-par 74. Last week’s winner of the Scottish Open was making his major championship debut so was understandably keen to emphasise whatever positives he could.

"Hopefully I’ll play well tomorrow," he said. "I've got not too much pressure on my back and it was very nice to get that win. I'm just going to go out there tomorrow and try to make a lot of birdies."

So far, so normal, only for two Australians to ask a couple extra questions, not recorded by the official media service, which maybe revealed his true feelings. "Just mentally exhausted," he said. "I’ll warm down, but I’m not going to the range. I’m so tired after last week."

"So you’re pretty dispirited?" he was asked. His response did not include the words "No sh*t Sherlock", but his body language said as much in as polite a way as he could manage.

With a good chance that he remains a little frazzled, plus the possibility that gunning for birdies leads him in the wrong direction, I’m playing with the idea of taking him on in his second round three-ball. His playing partners Sam Horsfield and Christiaan Bezuidenhout carded level-par and two-under respectively in round one.

Earwigging 2

After hitting just four of 14 fairways Bryson DeChambeau didn’t hold back when talking in the mixed zone.

"The driver sucks," he said. "It's not a good face for me and we're still trying to figure out how to make it good on the mis-hits. I'm living on the razor's edge like I've told people for a long time." He later added: "It's literally the physics and the way that they build heads now. It's not the right design, unfortunately."

Later in the day USA Today quoted Cobra Tour Operations Manager Ben Schomin as responding with: "Everybody is bending over backwards. We’ve got multiple guys in R&D who are CAD’ing (computer-aided design) this and CAD-ing that, trying to get this and that into the pipeline faster. He knows it. He has never really been happy, ever. Like, it’s very rare where he’s happy."

DeChambeau uses a Cobra Radspeed driver, made specifically for him, but maybe not tomorrow. I wasn’t present at the post-round interview, but I was standing near where DeChambeau emerged with his caddie and a helper. The latter split from them, saying: "I’ll go and get the driver heads." Then DeChambeau shouted after him: "And get some LTDs" which is a regular driver designed by Cobra.