Lahiri stumbles late at LIV Golf UK as Rahm holds opening day lead in Rocester

A late bogey dropped India and Crushers star Anirban Lahiri down the leaderboard but at 2 under par 69 for the day he was still inside the top 20 after the opening day of LIV Golf UK at the JCB Golf and Country Club in Rocester on Friday.
Plenty of attention was focussed on the 37-year-old after his final hole meltdown in Valderrama where he missed a two-foot winning putt and lost the individual playoff while the Crushers went down in the team eliminator.

On Friday, Lahiri started well with a birdie on the very first hole but could not build on the momentum for the rest of the front nine. On the way back to the clubhouse though, he reeled off four straight birdies before dropping two shots late in the day to fall six shots behind the day’s leader Jon Rahm.

The burly Spaniard has repeatedly been in contention for much of the season but on Friday, worked himself into the outright lead for the first time with a bogey-free 8 under 63 on the hilly and twisty JCB course in Staffordshire.

The Legion XIII captain led Abraham Ancer and Andy Ogletree by two strokes in the individual event while his team were atop the combined leaderboard by a shot from Brooks Koepka’s Smash GC, Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers GC and Fireballs GC of Sergio Garcia.
 
Since signing up with the league, Rahm has been in contention at each of the nine events he has competed in, good enough for second place in the season-long standings behind Joaquin Neimann of Chile. At Rocester, Rahm will be keen to convert that consistency into a win. 

“Nothing much to say obviously but good things,” said Rahm on the LIV Golf website later. “Played really good golf all day. With days like this, it almost feels effortless.”

His 63, however, came despite failing to make a birdie on any of the three par 5s on the 7,200-yard course and continued a trend in which he tied for seventh at last week’s Open Championship despite being unable to birdie any of the par 5s at Royal Troon.
 
“It's funny,” Rahm admitted afterwards. “I don't mean to be laughing. Recently, I feel like I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not making bad swings. I don't feel like I'm making terrible decisions, but it's just I've got a little streak of bad luck on the par 5s. Didn't birdie of them at The Open. Didn't birdie any of them today. I don't feel like I did anything terribly wrong.”

On Friday he was in the same group as teammate and former Ryder Cup partner Tyrrell Hatton, who was suitably impressed by his captain’s display and added a 5 under 66 of his own to the team score. “We've shared some pretty cool stages over the last few years, and we generally play well when we play together. So, it was nice for both of us to have a good round of golf and have some momentum going into the weekend.”

Added Rahm, who had six birdies in his final nine holes to pull away from the pack, “It was the first time I played with any teammates in LIV Golf,. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go. I was a little curious.”
  
Ancer birdied four of his last five holes to climb up the leaderboard while Ogletree had just one blemish on his card against seven birdies even though he has been carrying a wrist injury for some time now. “I've had a lot of days where I've played 13 and 14 really good holes and then kind of held myself back by a bad stretch,” said the HyFlyers player. 
“Today, I was in it all day and played some solid golf.” 
 
Alongside Hatton in fourth place was Ripper GC captain Cameron Smith while seven players – including Koepka and veterans Paul Casey (Crushers), Louis Oosthuizen (Stingers) and Graeme McDowell (Smash) – were tied for sixth place on 4 under 67.