Lee Westwood and Danny Willett will always be inextricably linked. They were playing partners at the Masters in 2016 when the field was seemingly competing for second place until Jordan Spieth took a quadruple-bogey seven at the short 12th and the older man looked at a scoreboard and said to his mate: “He’s just chucked a big one in there.”
The duo were lodged on five over par overnight on Saturday, early starters and playing for pride if not position, but on this occasion it was Westwood, two games behind, who fared the better, getting round in one over 69 while the winner at Augusta returned a three-over 73.
Willett was in the third grouping and turned in five successive pars, including one at the 5th with the tee moved up effectively giving a shot away to the field as it was playing the second easiest on the course, and then produced bogeys at the 6th, 9th and 13th to limp in on a low-scoring day after using 33 putts.
Westwood had three birdies on the front nine but could not add to them on the back and had an unfortunate five at the exposed 12th, the hole that was built in readiness for the 1965 Open and where Rodger Davis of Australia famously scored 1, 2, 3 and 4 on consecutive days at the 1983 return.
Chris Wood, the Silver Medal winner for the leading amateur when the Open was last here in 2008, got round in a two-under 68 and improved his overall standing to one over, and that after starting with a bogey in the near-perfect conditions.
He made pars on the opening hole on the previous days, the first of them a commendable effort when he was in the opening threeball with Mark O’Meara and, starting in howling wind and rain, the 1998 Open champion hit his ceremonial opening drive out of bounds over the fence to the right.
Wood picked up four birdies thereafter and was annoyed to drop his final shot at the par-five 17th, where his drive plugged and he was not allowed to take relief. “I couldn’t believe it when the referee said, ‘You don’t get that this week.’ It’s one tournament of the year that we don’t get relief, and it was bad enough that I couldn’t move the ball,” Wood said. “I made six and it really killed my round.
“I don’t get how every week of the year we play to one set of rules and then one week out of the 52 is a different set of rules. Either you get relief all year or you don’t get relief all year. To have two sets of rules seems a bit bizarre.”
