The Open 2026: day two golf updates from Royal Birkdale – live

Key events

1h ago

Preamble

Suber wedges his second at 1 to 12 feet, and he’s left with a very makeable putt. A little bit of left-to-right movement. He absolutely rattles it through the break, and leaves himself a testing five footer coming back. That one goes in confidently to save his par. A strange mix of three nerveless strokes and one jittery one. He made 207 feet of putts yesterday; there’s another 22 feet and seven inches to his running total.

If Suber is feeling the nerves this morning, they’ve not been betrayed by his opening tee shot. A confident drive, striped down the middle of the fairway. He’s going around with Sami Valimaki, who became the first Finnish player to win on the PGA Tour last year, with victory at the RSM Classic. It was Valimaki’s 28th birthday yesterday, and the gallery sang Happy Birthday to him on 18. “I thought that was pretty cool,” said Suber.

Suber seems to be enjoying discovering life on this side of the pond. He’d never been to Europe before, but has travelled “pretty much everywhere in Latin American and Canada”. He thinks the UK is “awesome … the golf is really cool, and just the towns, how the train system works.” He went into Liverpool earlier this week with pal Pierceson Coody and partners. “That was really cool to see a European city.” And when he was asked why he’s not going to try driving on the other side of the road, he gave a reply as tinder-dry as the Birkdale rough: “Because I’m trying to make it here for four days.”

Now then, our 18-hole leader Jackson Suber. Or to give him his full name, John Weatherington Suber III. He’s 26 years old, from Tampa, Florida, and is in his second year on the PGA Tour since moving up from the Korn Ferry. His best finish to date is the tie for fourth at this year’s Canadian Open that got him into this championship. He subsequently missed the cut at the US Open, and only played his first round of links golf this Monday. And now he’s bidding to become the 11th player to win the Open on debut. For the record, here are the other ten …

Willie Park Sr (Prestwick) 1860

Tom Kidd (St Andrews) 1873

Mungo Park (Musselburgh) 1874

Jock Hutchison (St Andrews) 1921

Denny Shute (St Andrews) 1933

Ben Hogan (Carnoustie) 1953

Tony Lema (St Andrews) 1964

Tom Watson (Carnoustie) 1975

Ben Curtis (Royal St George’s) 2003

Collin Morikawa (Royal St George’s) 2021

Matt Wallace has never really built on his early promise of the late 2010s, when he won four European Tour events and tied for third at the 2019 PGA Championship. But the Londoner got his career back on track a couple of years ago with a win at the European Masters and a PGA Tour alternate event … so perhaps, now 36, it transpires that he’s going to be a late bloomer after all? A decent opening round of 69 yesterday afternoon, and now he’s birdied the opening hole this morning. He’s -2.

The surprise leader Jackson Suber is out early, at 7.30am BST. Other than that, it’s a nice quiet start to day two. The calm before the storm. Though of course there’ll be no actual storm. On that subject, hats off to Sky Sports for their continued use of …

Preamble

… and we’re back. Just over nine hours ago, the first day of the 154th edition of the Open Championship came to a close. Now we’re up and running again! Friday promises to be another monster trek, and we’ll be blogging about it ♫♪ all day looooooonng♫♪. Here’s how the very top of the leaderboard looked at the end of play last night …

-5: Jackson Suber

-4: Im Sung-jae, Daniel Brown

-3: Thomas Detry, Robert MacIntyre, Francesco Molinari, Alex Smalley, Bryson DeChambeau, Ryan Gerard, MJ Daffue, Pierceson Coody, Cameron Young

… and here are the tee times (BST). Off we go! It’s on!

6.46 am: Eugenio Chacarra, Matt Wallace, Max Greyserman

6.57 am: Michael Brennan, Sahith Theegala, Laurie Canter

7.08 am: Cameron Smith, Keith Mitchell, Stuart Grehan (a)

7.19 am: Sepp Straka, Joaquin Niemann, Kurt Kitayama

7.30 am: Sami Valimaki, Shaun Norris, Jackson Suber

7.41 am: Darren Clarke, Adrien Saddier, Bernd Wiesberger

7.52 am: Keegan Bradley, Corey Conners, Casey Jarvis

8.03 am: Matt McCarty, Harry Hall, Haotong Li

8.14 am: Padraig Harrington, Marco Penge, Michael Hollick

8.25 am: Tom Kim, Billy Horschel, Mason Howell (a)

8.26 am: Johnny Kiefer, Pierceson Coody, Keita Nakajima

8.47 am: Aldrich Potgieter, Jesper Svansson, Jack Buchanan (a)

9.03 am: Bud Cauley, Jayden Schaper, Lucas Herbert

9.14 am: Kristoffer Reitan, Patrick Reed, JT Poston

9.25 am: Chris Gotterup, Sam Burns, Adam Scott

9.36 am: Collin Morikawa, JJ Spaun, Nicolai Hojgaard

9.47 am: Shane Lowry, Aaron Rai, Brooks Koepka

9.58 am: Cameron ⁠Young, Wyndham Clark, Luvig Aberg

10.09 am: Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick

10.20 am: Jacob Bridgeman, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, Tim Wiedemeyer (a)

10.31 am: Patrick Cantlay, Daniel Berger, Nico Echavarria

10.42 am: ​Peter Uihlein, Alistair Docherty, Francesco Laporta

10.53 am: Cameron John, Austen Truslow, Sam Bairstow

11.04 am: Naoyuki ​Kataoka, Marcus Plunkett, Baard Bjoernevik Skogen

11.15 am: Kazuki Higa, Jiho Yang, Nevill Ruiter (a)

11.41 am: Matthew Baldwin, Thomas Detry, James Nicholas

11.52 am: Michael Kim, Daniel Hillier, Andy Sullivan

12.03 pm: Ryan Fox, Andrew Novak, Matthew Jordan

12.14 pm: Henrik Stenson, Max Homa, Joe Dean

12.25 pm: Robert MacIntyre, Rickie ​Fowler, Alex Fitzpatrick

12.36 pm: David Duval, Martin Couvra, Matthew ‌Southgate

12.47 pm: Sungjae Im, Daniel Brown, ​Fifa Laopakdee (a)

12.58 pm: Gary Woodland, Jake Knapp, Jordan Smith

1.09 pm: ​Francesco Molinari, Tom McKibbin, Lev Grinberg (a)

1.20 pm: Hennie Du Plessis, Jose Luis Ballester, Dan Bradbury

1.31 pm: Angel Ayora, Victor Perez, Mateo Pulcini (a)

1.42 pm: Stewart Cink, Scott Vincent, Joakim Lagergren

1.53 pm: Michael Thorbjornsen, Kota Kaneko, Travis Smyth

2.09 pm: Alex Smalley, Sam Stevens, Ryo Hisatsune

2.20 pm: Akshay Bhatia, Harris English, Rasmus Hojgaard

2.31 pm: Ben Griffin, Hideki Matsuyama, Min Woo Lee

2.42 pm: Russell Henley, Justin Rose, Viktor Hovland

2.53 pm: Justin Thomas, Alex Noren, Jason Day

3.04 pm: Scottie Scheffler, Tyrrell Hatton, Bryson DeChambeau

3.15 pm: Jordan Spieth, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm

3.26 pm: Brian Harman, Si Woo Kim, Nick Taylor

3.37 pm: Ryan Gerard, Maverick McNealy, David Puig

3.48 pm: Kazuma Kobori, Tom Sloman, David Howard (a)

3.59 pm: Antoine Rozner, Ren Yonezawa, Caleb Surratt

4.10 pm: MJ Daffue, Frederic Lacroix, Jack McDonald

4.21 pm: Jeongwoo Ham, ‌Ryutaro Nagano, Alejandro De Castro Piera (a)