Play was incredibly slow on day one of the 2025 Open with rounds taking almost six hours.
Conditions were fairly tricky with gusty winds and spells of rain throughout the day, and pace of play was a big talking point in the mixed area as players eventually finished up their rounds.
The big group of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas teed off at 3.10pm local time and didn't finish until gone 9pm in Northern Ireland, with the final group at 4.10pm finishing up in near-darkness.
Pace of play continues to be a huge issue in professional golf, and we saw slow play at Oakmont in last month's US Open where a full field of 150+ players were grouped in threes while tackling an extremely difficult course with millions on the line.
It's the exact same this week, and it was one particular area of the course that seemed to get the bottlenecks started. The drivable 5th is arguably the signature hole on the Dunluce Links but it seems that it was causing backlogs due to players waiting on the tee for the green to clear.
A par 3 follows, which is never ideal for pace of play before the par-5 7th where players have to wait for the green to clear before hitting their second shots.
Five groups were on the 7th hole at one stage today according to Keegan Bradley, while Marc Leishman said it felt like he was on course for "12 hours" today.
Here's what the players had to say about the slow play on Thursday at The Open...
Marc Leishman:
"Felt like we were on the golf course for about 12 hours. We've been on the course for three hours through eight holes. That was tough to deal with, especially coming from somewhere where we play in under 4 1/2 every week.
"You got to deal with all that sort of stuff, and I felt like I dealt with it decently well. Just got a little frustrated there.
"I thought I was playing really good and not getting anything out of it, but the conditions were tough. Hopefully just get a good one going in the morning."
Tyrrell Hatton:
"Yeah, I think just with the conditions, I know it wasn't super windy. It picked up as the round went on a bit. But it's hard, there's a few bottleneck areas where you're reaching par-5s in two, and that generally slows things down.
"I don't really know what you can do with the field size. Yeah, I don't even know if the guys that are last out will get finished today, which is a shame.
"But yeah, it was very slow, and it kind of felt like you couldn't eat enough, to be honest. I had some sandwiches, sort of a carbohydrate drink, protein boosts, stuff like that.
"I would say the tee shot on 7, that felt quite hard because we waited a very long time there. But for the rest of the round, it didn't feel too bad in terms of getting out of sync. It was only really on the 7th tee that I noticeably felt a bit stiffer for waiting so long."
Robert MacIntyre:
"Aye, I thought six hours in a practice round the other day was a long time. I didn't think six hours in a tournament.
"We couldn't have went any faster with - I was speaking there to the guys, and they're saying pretty much everybody's five hours 55. I guess golf courses are too long."
Aaron Rai:
"I think it's tricky with the style of holes, especially early on. Hole No. 5 is a drivable par-4, so there's naturally a backlog there. Then you've got a par-3 straight after that and a par-5 that comes on hole 7. I think that just kind of stacks the groups.
"Then it kind of backlogs a little bit from there. So it was a little on the slow side. But naturally with the challenging condition, the challenging course, pace of play is going to be a little bit slower than normal.
"I think, again, same as the conditions and the golf course, that you have to be accepting of the things that come with it. Sometimes you're going to get a little bit behind the pace of play.
"You may have a couple of ball searches, a couple of bad holes, and then you just have to try and deal with those things with what comes at you. Yeah, it's just part of it at times."
Keegan Bradley:
"There's a couple long waits. We had about five groups on that par-5 7th to play. Then we had long waits on all the par-5s.
"It gets windy like this, it gets backed up.
"I don't think they can do anything about it. I don't know. You get to the tee, and there's groups on the tee, there's nothing - I mean, what do you do? I don't know what you would do.
"It's tough. Major championships are long, and when you get out here on these blind tee shots with the wind, and you're going to have guys hitting it in the junk. Then it's going to take a while to find it, and you've got to go back. It's just tough."
