Experience tells in Portrush's 'game of acceptance'

Lee Westwood finished in a tie for fourth when Royal Portrush hosted the Open Championship in 2019

Staging the Open Championship for just the second time since 1947, Royal Portrush may be one of the least familiar courses on the R&A's rota but the County Antrim links still underlined the value of familiarity on Thursday.

At the end of a day featuring changeable weather, testing course conditions and marathon rounds, a healthy number of those managing to post under-par totals could boast Open debuts before others in the field took their first steps let alone swings.

Indeed, although occurring before many had made it to the course, at one point during the first round of the championship the co-leaders were Lee Westwood and Phil Mickelson - a pair with a combined age of 107.

Justin Leonard, 53, Zach Johnson, 49, Sergio Garcia, 45, Lucas Glover, 45, and Justin Rose, 44, were all among the 31 players who finished the day under par.

"Links golf, more than any golf, gives you a chance when you're our age, shall I say?" said Westwood after his round of two under.

The former world number one, 52, is playing in his 28th Open Championship, but first in three years.

"It's not a golf course where it's laid out where there's a massive advantage to carrying a trap at, say, 310 yards, which I don't have anymore," he said.

"You've got to use the conditions and hold the ball up well in the side winds and cross-winds and be able to bring your ball flight down when you're going into the wind."

Mickelson, 55, lifted the Claret Jug at Muirfield in 2013 and, after he finished one under, spoke of how knowing when not to "force" things in order to make a score came with links experience.

"When you get conditions like this, you start to fall back on realising that 60, 80 feet in the proper spot is like a good spot, and you start to realise that you can make 20 or 30-footers out here," said the American who played his first Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in 1991.

"You find that going back on past experience, you don't have to press it. You don't have to force it."

Mickelson delighted fans with a chip-in par from the bunker on the third hole

Mickelson talked of how his 2013 victory was the "greatest accomplishment" of his storied career as it was the culmination of learning a style of golf he had not played growing up.

Given its extreme vagaries, links golf perhaps is an even greater test of patience than any other form of the sport.

"The game is a game of acceptance," said 49-year-old Johnson.

"Bottom line is you're going to hit some good shots that don't pan out well, and you have to accept it. That's sports, but specifically golf.

"You hit a bad shot, it turns out bad, so be it. A good shot turns out good, great, but if you hit a bad shot that turns out good, you got lucky.

"What are you going to do on the ones where you hit it good that don't turn out the way you want? That's what golf is."

The American missed the cut at his first three Open Championships but won at St Andrews a decade ago in what was his 12th attempt for a Claret Jug,

"The more you can get your feet on these types of venues, the better off you are," he added.

It certainly seemed so on Thursday.