Alfred Dunhill Links Championship tied for a four-way lead in the opening round – Golf update
The opening round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Pro-Am concluded with a four-way tie on the leaderboard after some of the top ranking players from around the world wrestled their way up on three adjacent links courses. Former Open Champion, Louis
Oosthuizen, Austrian Markus Brier, Spain’s Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Northern Irishman Michael Hoey are all sharing the lead with their first round scores of six-under, 66.
Hoey and Brier were playing the Kingsbarns, while Oosthuizen and Cabrera-Bello were playing the Carnoustie.
The sturdy South African, who won the Open last year, has had a difficult time following the victory and suffered a ligament injury during a hunting expedition. Oosthuizen, since then has been struggling to regain his lost form until yesterday, where he
pulled in no fewer than seven birdies and dropped just one shot towards the end of his round.
Oosthuizen said, “I couldn't watch this event last year on TV, I was too upset I wasn't there. It's nice to come back and experience everything again. It was good fun playing a practice round at St Andrews yesterday with my brother. I showed him where a
few of my shots ended up and things like that.”
Northern Irishman, Hoey shot a glamorous eagle on the final hole to grab a share of the lead along with six birdies and two bogeys in the day.
Austrian Brier, who opened up his round with blistering birdies on the front nine, fell in for a dreadful double-bogey at 16th to settle for a joint lead, which could easily have been an outright lead for him otherwise. Brier was also the first
Austrian who won a title on the European Tour but subsequently lost his card due to a poor performance. He said, “I'm still looking to make enough money to make my card. It's the last big week for me, so if I can make everything work here.”
The event has a winning prize share of €500,000, which could easily brighten up chances for many players on the field to move up the ranks in the Race to Dubai points table and also earn valuable points for the selection procedure of next year’s Ryder Cup.
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