Swede Söderberg birdied eight of his first 10 holes over the Old Course at St Andrews to set the pace, signing for a 64 that would be matched by American Uihlein over the same layout.

Dubai-based Spaniard Arnaus was four shots off the lead with five to play at Carnoustie Golf Links but eagled the 14th before finishing birdie-birdie to join them at eight-under with a 64 of his own and make it a three-way tie.

Belgian Nicolas Colsaerts, fresh off his heroics as a vice-captain in last week’s European Ryder Cup victory, was then part of a six-way tie for second at seven-under alongside local favourite Grant Forrest, Dane Marcus Helligkilde, American Billy Horschel and South African duo Zander Lombard and Wilco Nienaber.

On a cold and wet day on Scotland’s east coast, Soderberg turned in 29 and Ross Fisher’s St Andrews course record was looking under threat when he made another birdie on the 10th.

Six consecutive pars ended those hopes, however, and the 33-year-old bogeyed the 17th before a closing birdie ensured he would finish the day on top.

“It was quite easy the first 10 holes or so,” he said. “Then you kind of turn around going into the wind and it rained a little bit more.

“I thought I played pretty good the last eight holes as well. I just didn’t get close enough, didn’t really hole the putts but it felt good to finish with a birdie.

“I’ve had one or two or three really good rounds for a while, I feel like. There’s just always been one or two bad rounds every week. So the weekends, they haven’t been what I wanted in the last two months or so.

“I feel like there’s a lot of good golf in me so I just have to try to clean up the bad golf a little more and try to get around a little better.”

Arnaus has finished in the top 25 at this event for the past two seasons and his bogey-free round represented a stunning start at the course regarded as the most difficult of the three being played this week.

“At times it felt easy but this course definitely can show its teeth and you’ve got to be really careful,” he said.

“We continued to play quite good and then we rolled a few putts. A brilliant start, I would say.

“It actually started quite calm and it came around with wind and rain as well. That’s really what you are going to expect here so you’ve just got to embrace the challenge.”

LIV Golf’s Uihlein was the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year in 2013, the year he lost out in a play-off at this event, while he also achieved a top 10 last season.

“I’ve had good success here,” he said after his bogey-free effort. “I just love it, the golf is pure over here and I like when it gets windy and challenging, it’s just a lot of fun, really. You get to be creative and it’s just something that I enjoy doing.

“I was close here in 2013 when David Howell beat me in a play-off. Looking back on it, it would have been a really special one to win around here.

“I’ve always enjoyed coming back and hopefully I can string together three more good days and see what happens.”

Soderberg’s remarkable start came thanks to some dialled-in iron play, as he put approaches inside 15 feet on seven of his first 10 holes. A three-putt at the Road Hole then brought the only bogey of the day before he holed an 18-footer for birdie on the last.

Arnaus started his round with three gains but had to wait until the par-five 12th for another before he holed from 12 feet for an eagle on the 14th. Another birdie came at the 17th and he put his approach to 12 feet on the last.

Uihlein also put on an excellent display of approach play as he made birdies on the first, third, fourth, fifth, ninth, 10th and 12th before holing from nearly 50 feet on the 14th.

Horschel turned in 29 at Carnoustie en route to his 65, while Colsaerts, Helligkilde, Lombard and Nienaber all played at St Andrews, and Forrest went round Kingsbarns.

There was then a group of 13 players at six-under including defending champion Ryan Fox.

Main image: St Andrews. Dunhill Links Championship

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Al-Rumayyan, 53, will tee-up alongside Peter Uihlein, one of the four LIV Golf players competing at the DP World Tour’s AT&T National Pro-Am-style event. Notable in the same group, R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers will tee-up with his professional partner, England’s Jordan Smith.

Al-Rumayyan’s participation, originally under the pseudonym, was first reported by The Scotsman. Johann Rupert, chairman of Richemont, Dunhill’s parent company was quoted in the article as saying: “Sport is supposed to unite people, not divide. We need to get peace.”

In that respect at least, Rupert and Al-Rumayyan have much in common. The Saudi was involved in brokering the initial framework agreement announced in June between the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF to create a for-profit entity that would allow the groups to share assets. And he is currently a key player in the negotiations to come to a final agreement before the end of the year.

“It was suggested to me a while ago that I should extend an invitation to His Excellency, but I only got confirmation last week to say he would be playing,” Rupert told The Scotsman. “And, if I am asked by anyone what we will discuss, I will be saying it will be support for amateur golf worldwide. What is happening in golf just now is not growing the golf. It’s only making the top 100 players a lot wealthier. We have just launched the African Amateur Championship, for example, and we need support to expand the credibility of that.”

The on-course meeting between Al-Rumayyan and Slumbers is likely not their first encounter. The pair were reported to have chatted during the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in July. Significantly perhaps, Slumbers did not rule out the possibility of accepting money in R&A events.

“If I’m very open, we are and do and continue to do, talk to various potential sponsors,” said Slumbers two months ago. “We have a number of large corporate partners that help us make this thing happen. I think the world has changed in the last year. It’s not just golf. You’re seeing it in football. You’re seeing it in F1. You’re seeing it in cricket. I’m sure tennis won’t be that far behind. The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis. We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.”

For those wondering how Uihlein, Louis Oosthuizen, Talor Gooch and Laurie Canter made their way into a field that does not include the likes of fellow LIV players (and former DP World Tour winners) Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson, Graeme McDowell and Sergio Garcia, a DP World Tour spokesman told The Scotsman: “The players are non-members [apart from Canter] and playing on sponsor’s invites. They also have no outstanding sanctions.”

Main image: Luke Walker/IMG

The post PIF governor and LIV Golf chair Yasir Al-Rumayyan playing in pro-am of the DP World Tour’s event at St Andrews appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

When, six months ago, France’s Victor Perez won his maiden European Tour title, the Dunhill Links Championship, over the Old Course at St. Andrews, the 27-year old did so only 14 miles from the home he shares with his girlfriend in Dundee, Caledonia’s fourth-biggest city on the other side of the River Tay. Abigail is a dental student in the “city of discovery,” once known worldwide for its “three Js”—jute, jam and journalism.

Soon enough, Perez followed the victory at golf’s most famous venue with a T-4 finish at the WGC-HSBC Champions in China and a pair of second-place finishes in Turkey and Abu Dhabi.

Such a spectacular run early in the qualifying process means that if the team were announced today, Perez would be a member of the next European Ryder Cup side. Not incidentally, he also would have made his Masters debut last week. All in all, a huge positive, but as things have gone coronavirus pandemic-wise, something of a negative, you might think as well.

Not a bit of it, says Perez. Given that he was in Scotland rather than the United States, it could be easy to imagine that he saw the postponement of the year’s first major as a disappointment. But the opposite is true. The former University of New Mexico psychology major actually views a November Masters as potentially something of a bonus for debutants like himself.

“Like everyone else, I was looking forward to the Masters,” Perez says. “But I’m looking at the postponement in a positive way. With the tournament in November, no one is really going to know what the course and the conditions will be like. We are all going to have the sort of questions that are normally reserved for first-timers like me. The crazier it is going to be, the more it will help me, I think. Guys who have been going there for years will lose a bit of their advantage. They will not be able to prepare in the ways that have worked in the past. It will be like a first-time for everyone.”

That level of positivity is a relatively recent addition to the game of a man who has steadily plotted an upward path through professional golf. Upon leaving the amateur ranks in 2015, Perez played first on the developmental Alps Tour, where his fifth place on the 2016 money list earned him promotion to the European Challenge Tour. Two years and two victories later, Perez’s third place on that money list meant a jump to the European Tour.

“I’ve played quite a few rounds with Victor over the last couple of years,” says Bob MacIntyre, who actually is Scotland’s best-ranked golfer at No. 67. “But there has been quite a change the last few months. His game has definitely gone up a notch. Where he used to hit almost every shot from left-to-right, he now has a much more neutral ball flight, especially on his drives. That has made him more consistent. He is one of those guys whose strength is that he has no obvious weakness. He just does a lot of things right.”

Perez is sprayed with a bottle of champagne by Raphael Jacquelin following his victory in the 2019 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. (Mark Runnacles)

Still, like most rookies, Perez thought first of consolidation rather than triumph on the world’s second-biggest circuit. But that soon changed not long after Irishman JP Fitzgerald—formerly Rory McIlroy’s long-time caddie began carrying the Frenchman’s bag in Sweden last August.

“The following week we were in Switzerland,” Perez says. “Halfway through the second round, I was right on the cut line. JP says to me, ‘OK, now we have to hit every pin and really push on.’ In the back of my mind I was thinking there was no real need to press that much. I told him we were fine. But afterwards I realized that where he was looking on the board and where I was looking were very different. He was looking at the lead and what we needed to do to get back in the tournament. I was looking at just playing solid, making the cut and hopefully playing well on the weekend.

“That was my mindset, one that is typical for anyone early in their career on tour,” Perez continues. “For nearly everyone it is about keeping your card and making cuts more than thinking about winning. But JP has changed that for me. He has higher ambitions for me and that has allowed me to play up to my potential more often. We won our fourth event together, all because my mindset changed.”

Perez plays his second shot on the 17th hole at St. Andrews during the final round of 2019 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. (Mark Runnacles)

That wasn’t the first time Perez realized his limitations and acted accordingly. Not long after arriving at college in Albuquerque, N.M., competing in tournaments against the likes of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and many other top-ranked amateurs, he had a similar moment of reflection.

“Playing in the States made a big difference to my game,” says Perez, who represented France in the 2014 World Amateur Team Championship. “The courses were set up so much tougher than I was used to in Europe. Any score around par was nearly always good. That taught me to be patient and to use my mind.

“Jordan and Justin were around, too, as well as a bunch of guys who are now on the PGA Tour. That level of competition on tough courses definitely helped me develop. I certainly knew what I needed to do to get better. Until then, I was basically unaware of what it would take. It was a real eye-opener to play pretty well and finish 20th. That pushed me to get better.”

More recently, Perez has taken advantage of his change of location. A regular at the Ladybank Club in Fife, he has also played the likes of Panmure and Carnoustie “a few times.” The driving ranges at Drumoig and St. Andrews have become perennial haunts, too. Not surprisingly, life in Scotland is good for a golfer.

“The Scottish people have been so welcoming,” he says. “I’ve been able to play so many of the courses in this area and everyone has been so nice. It has been great for my game.”

Proximity to the home of golf has also brought one last benefit. Nearly two weeks, accompanied by his dog, Darcy, and the pin sheet from the Dunhill, Perez enjoyed a nostalgic stroll around the Old Course.

We can’t play, but we can still prepare ?

I had a fun time today reliving my first @EuropeanTour win while getting ready for the next time we tee it up @TheHomeofGolf ? #StaySafe #OneDayAtATime @dunhilllinks pic.twitter.com/7ywHolISGy

— Victor Perez (@v_perez2) April 4, 2020

“It was a way of being active and a nice reminder of some of the shots I hit last year,” he says. “It was interesting to look at the course with a different perspective. It isn’t often you get to be there when it is totally deserted. There were no flags in the holes and definitely no people. I enjoyed walking the last few holes, remembering the shots I had hit. There were so many good memories and key moments to recall.”

OK, so it wasn’t Augusta National during Masters week. But the Old Course to yourself? Definitely the next best thing.

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