Irish Open: Fox trots into one-shot lead but pack are chasing hard in Thomastown

Flashbacks of old. Of bottlenecks on the course, as crowds snaked routes through trees and over the manufactured hillocks. Of actual roars, an appreciation of good shot-making and dialled-in putting. And, on a pet of a day, with just a zephyr to refresh rather than pose questions on club selection, and with receptive greens to boot after overnight rain, the opening round of the Horizon Irish Open at Mount Juliet provided a plethora of low scores.

When the crowd noises abated to be replaced as evening drew by the sound of mowers, New Zealander Ryan Fox – a player who has contended frequently in this tournament without ever managing to lift the trophy – stood alone atop the leader board, his wonderfully crafted bogey-free 64, eight under par, giving him a one-stroke lead over Frenchman Frederic Lacroix, Spaniard Jorge Campilo and Germany’s Marcel Schneider.

And behind them, a logjam of players, only rivalled by the queue that formed at the ice cream van for 99s.

In all, no fewer than 94 players (more than 60 per cent of the field) scribbled their signatures on to cards with under-par rounds. And, of them, six of them were Irish, with Séamus Power and Niall Kearney signing for 68s to lie in tied-24th place, four adrift of the leader. John Murphy and Pádraig Harrington signed for 70s and Shane Lowry and Jonny Caldwell 71s.

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Lowry, the pre-tournament favourite, just about managed to get in their number, with a 71 that featured drama on his homeward run. His play of the par-five eighth, his penultimate hole, had threatened to derail ambitions where a wild drive down the left into the trees led to an unplayable lie. “Is he gone home?” wondered a spectator by the green, with no sight at all of the Offalyman who’d disappeared into the foliage.

What was happening was that Lowry, back in the jungle, was dispatching caddie Bo Martin to see if he could get a line to take an unplayable. “I would have had to drop in the trees and then chip out and then have 280 to the flag for my fourth shot,” explained Lowry of his dilemma. The better option was to retreat to the seventh fairway for a penalty drop, which is what he did, from where he hit six-iron over the trees. “I actually hit it about 30 yards right of where we thought the line was, and it [finished] on the left side of the fairway. I got fortunate,” he later admitted.

The upshot was that Lowry somehow salvaged a bogey six out of a number that had threatened to run much higher, and there was a smile of relief on leaving the green that the damage had been limited. A round of 71, though, has left him with work to do.

“I hit some good shots, I hit some bad shots. So it was only okay, pretty average,” said Lowry of his day’s work. “I obviously need two good scores the next few days to get myself there on Sunday. But I can definitely do it. I know that.”

Power had worked his way around the 18 holes alongside Lowry, the first time the two – colleagues in arms back in their amateur days when playing for Ireland – had played a competitive round.

And the Waterford man, in the form of his life, signed for a 68 that was only blighted by bogeys on two par-fives, the fifth and the eighth, which were statistically two of the easier holes on the course. “Bizarre,” is how he described those bogeys from nowhere, although he responded brilliantly by hitting his approach to 25 feet on the ninth, his closing hole, to close out with a birdie.

Of the spate of low scoring, Power remarked: “I’ve played this course before, and it’s definitely different from what I’ve seen before. Fairways are much narrower. The rough is higher and it’s set up nicely Today, just the wind didn’t blow. There’s so many good players when the wind doesn’t blow. These guys aim at the flags, and you know you are going to make a lot of putts.”

Nobody did it better than Fox, who came home in 30 strokes – highlighted by a run of four successive birdies from the first – to add to the 34 he’d taken on his front, having started on the 10th.

“I feel really comfortable here, where my game’s at, which probably hasn’t happened for a few years now. And it’s obviously a recipe for success. I’ve got close a few times the last few weeks. It’d certainly be nice to get another one over the line.”

Scoreboard

Irish and British unless stated, par 72

64 Ryan Fox (Nzl)

65 Jorge Campillo (Esp), Fabrizio Zanotti (Pry), Frederic Lacroix (Fra), Marcel Schneider (Ger)

66 Pablo Larrazabal (Esp), Thriston Lawrence (Rsa), Antoine Rozner (Fra), Jordan Smith, Dale Whitnell, Aaron Rai

67 Ewen Ferguson, Mikko Korhonen (Fin), John Catlin (USA), Alexander Bjoerk (Swe), Adrian Meronk (Pol), Maximilian Kieffer (Ger), Andy Sullivan, David Law, Espen Kofstad (Nor), Oliver Farr, Zander Lombard (Rsa)

68 Sami Valimaki (Fin), Séamus Power, Niall Kearney, Robert MacIntyre, Nino Bertasio (Ita), Callum Shinkwin, Romain Langasque (Fra), Darren Fichardt (Rsa), Nicolai von Dellingshausen (Ger), Marcus Helligkilde (Den), Oliver Bekker (Rsa), Marcel Siem (Ger), Oliver Wilson, Raphael Jacquelin (Fra)

69 Brandon Stone (Rsa), Lucas Herbert (Aus), Dean Burmester (Rsa), Steven Brown, Kazuki Higa (Jpn), Jamie Donaldson, Sean Crocker (USA), James Morrison, Shubhankar Sharma (Ind), Richie Ramsay, Jack Senior, Rikard Karlberg (Swe), Wil Besseling (Ned), Marc Warren, Sebastian Garcia (Esp), Ricardo Gouveia (Por), Niklas Noergaard Moeller (Den), Ashley Chesters, Robert Rock, Alvaro Quiros (Esp), Joel Stalter (Fra)

70 Thorbjoern Olesen (Den), Kalle Samooja (Fin), Ashun Wu (Chn), Nicolai Hoejgaard (Den), Rasmus Hoejgaard (Den), Sebastian Soederberg (Swe), Joachim B Hansen (Den), Kristoffer Broberg (Swe), Pádraig Harrington, Joakim Lagergren (Swe), Matthieu Pavon (Fra), Darius van Driel (Ned), Justin Walters (Rsa), Matthias Schmid (Ger), Richard Sterne (Rsa), Renato Paratore (Ita), Eddie Pepperell, Sebastian Heisele (Ger), Aaron Cockerill (Can), John Murphy

71 Shane Lowry, Adria Arnaus (Esp), Grant Forrest, Jonathan Caldwell, Guido Migliozzi (Ita), Matthew Jordan, Maverick Antcliff (Aus), Matthew Southgate, Alejandro Canizares (Esp), Lucas Bjerregaard (Den), Julien Guerrier (Fra), Chris Paisley, Santiago Tarrio (Esp), Alfredo Garcia-Heredia (Esp), Yannik Paul (Ger), Benjamin Hebert (Fra), Julian Suri (USA)

72 Min-Woo Lee (Aus), Andrea Pavan (Ita), Stephen Gallacher, Scott Hend (Aus), Johannes Veerman (USA), Thomas Detry (Bel), Francesco Laporta (Ita), Masahiro Kawamura (Jpn), Tapio Pulkkanen (Fin), George Coetzee (Rsa), Julien Brun (Fra), Andrew Wilson, Daan Huizing (Ned), Michael Lorenzo-Vera (Fra), Gavin Green (Mal), David Howell, Cormac Sharvin, Paul Dunne, Kurt Kitayama (USA), Mark Power (am)

73 Thomas Pieters (Bel), Tyrrell Hatton, Chris Wood, Marcus Kinhult (Swe), Marcus Armitage, Jason Scrivener (Aus), Kiradech Aphibarnrat (Tha), Jazz Janewattananond (Tha), David Horsey, Connor Syme, Soeren Kjeldsen (Den), Hugo Leon (Chi), Hurly Long (Ger), Craig Howie, Zach Murray (Aus), Ricardo Santos (Por), Richard McEvoy, Paul Waring, Oliver Fisher

74 Victor Dubuisson (Fra), Lukas Nemecz (Aut), Chase Hanna (USA), Robin Roussel (Fra), Troy Merritt (USA)

75 Rafael Cabrera (Esp), Jeff Winther (Den), Edoardo Molinari (Ita), David Drysdale, Lorenzo Gagli (Ita), Niklas Lemke (Swe)

76 Daniel Gavins, Daniel van Tonder (Rsa), Jacques Kruyswijk (Rsa), Alex Fitzpatrick, Greig Hutcheon

77 Ignacio Elvira (Esp), Jack Singh-Brar, Ross Fisher, Colm Campbell (am)

78 David Higgins (am)

79 Haydn Porteous (Rsa)

80 Scott Jamieson