Royal Birkdale Does Not Need to Apologize for Two 62s

Image: The Open / R&A

If two 62s at The Open Championship make you want to start whining that the course got too soft, you are probably confusing suffering with quality.

Royal Birkdale does not owe anybody an over-par cosplay performance just to prove it still has a pulse.

According to Associated Press reporting published Friday, July 17, 2026, and The Open’s official round-two coverage, checked on Saturday, July 18, 2026, Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns both matched the lowest round ever shot in a men’s major, while the official leaderboard still showed a weekend packed with live names, weird pressure, and a late Bryson DeChambeau penalty that changed the whole shape of the chase.

That sounds like a healthy major to me.

This column is based on AP’s July 17, 2026 round-two report and The Open’s official July 17 leaderboard and round-two coverage, all checked on Saturday, July 18, 2026. No pretending I was standing beside the 18th green filing a formal complaint because the scoring happened to be interesting.

For the straight-news version first, read our halfway report on Herbert, Burns, and Bryson’s penalty, our opening-day setup story, and our earlier opinion on why Birkdale making players think is a good thing.

A Great Open Does Not Have to Be Miserable

This is the dumb trap golf people fall into every single time a major leaderboard moves faster than expected.

If the winning score is not heading toward survival-TV levels, some part of the audience starts acting like the course betrayed the genre.

That is nonsense.

A championship course is supposed to test decision-making, execution, patience, and nerve. It is not required to turn every good swing into a museum exhibit about pain.

Friday at Birkdale still did all the right things.

AP reported that Herbert missed a 5-footer on 18 that would have made him the first man to shoot 61 in a major. The official Open recap says he still had to save par at 17, got out of position late, and only barely kept the round together at the finish. Burns, meanwhile, needed a ridiculous closing sequence with birdies on the final three holes and a hole-out from a bunker on 18 to get his own 62.

Those are not autopilot rounds.

Those are great rounds.

Golf should know the difference.

Birkdale Still Asked Better Questions Than Most Courses Do

The useful part of Friday is not just the number.

It is the shape of how those numbers happened.

Herbert did not bludgeon the place into submission with cartoon golf. AP reported he hit only seven fairways in the round. Burns had to make putts and improvise. The official Open report says DeChambeau made 10 birdies in two rounds and still got dragged back by a rules ruling. Fleetwood caught fire late. Suber hung around. Scheffler kept doing world-No.-1 stuff tee to green and still left shots out there with the putter.

That is a strategic championship.

The course was not asking only one question like, “Can you hit it far and pray?” It was asking a bunch of better ones:

• Can you handle firm turf without panicking?
• Can you score when the window opens?
• Can you avoid the one stupid swing that changes your whole day?
• Can you stay calm when the leaderboard starts looking strange?

Those are proper major questions.

The Leaderboard Is Better Because It Stayed Open to Weird

Another reason I am not interested in score-purity complaints is that the weekend board is genuinely excellent.

The official Open recap says Herbert leads at 8-under, with Jackson Suber, Cameron Young, and Ryan Gerard at 6-under. Burns, Si Woo Kim, and DeChambeau are at 5-under. Fleetwood, Robert MacIntyre, and Scottie Scheffler are still close enough to make Saturday nasty. Rory McIlroy is only at 1-under, but he is not fully dead either.

That is not a fake Open.

That is a major with:

• a leader who nearly made history
• a new father who was not sure he would even be in the field
• a surprise name from round one still hanging around
• hometown pressure on Fleetwood
• and the best player in the world lurking instead of sleeping on a three-shot lead

Why exactly should anyone want that to be less interesting?

Difficulty Is Not Measured Only by the Winning Score

This is the larger point golf keeps refusing to learn.

People love using the final number as a shortcut for whether a course was worthy. That shortcut is lazy.

A course can play hard in the sense that it demands thought, punishes a bad miss, and keeps the leaderboard unstable even when a few exceptional rounds sneak through. Royal Birkdale did exactly that. We already saw the field get bent around by the baked-out conditions in our Thursday setup piece, and we saw the first round produce a surprise top page in our Jackson Suber story.

Friday did not erase that.

It just added a new layer:

the course is hard enough to stay interesting without needing to be joyless.

That should be the target more often.

Golf Needs to Stop Treating Good Scoring Like a Moral Failure

This is the weirdest thing about major discourse.

When players produce brilliant golf, some people react like the course must have done something embarrassing.

No.

Sometimes the players are just incredible. Sometimes the weather gives them a lane for a few hours. Sometimes one guy nearly shoots 61 and another closes birdie-birdie-birdie to match him.

That is not a scandal. That is sports.

And if the same day also gives you a late rules penalty, a crowded board, a lurking Scheffler, and a weekend that still feels unstable, then the championship is doing exactly what it should.

Bottom Line

Royal Birkdale does not need to apologize because Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns shot 62 on Friday, July 17, 2026.

According to AP’s July 17 report and The Open’s official round-two coverage checked on Saturday, July 18, 2026, the course still produced a layered, messy, strategically demanding weekend leaderboard.

That is what a great Open Championship is supposed to look like.

For the Sunday version of that same idea, read our news piece on Sam Burns leading the final round by two and the follow-up opinion on why Fleetwood chasing from five back is exactly the right kind of pressure.