For 157 years of major championship golf, nobody shot 62. Royal Birkdale has now given up three of them in two days.
Ryan Fox closed out an eight-under 62 in Saturday’s third round of the Open Championship, tying the record for the lowest single round in men’s major history — hours after Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns posted matching 62s within 22 minutes of each other on Friday. Per Bleacher Report and CBC, it is the first time three players have hit the mark in the same major. The New Zealander vaulted from the edge of contention into the final-round conversation, sitting eight under as the last pairings played out a fluid fight at the top between Herbert and Burns, with Scottie Scheffler grinding into the picture behind them.
The venue is the punchline. Branden Grace’s 62 at the 2017 Open — the first in the men’s majors, ending a barrier that had stood since the championships began — happened on this same course. Birkdale alone has now produced four of the lowest rounds ever recorded at a major. Whatever the mix of causes — scoring windows in the weather, modern distance, fields that prepare with data instead of folklore — the wall Johnny Miller’s 63 built in 1973 has been reduced to a speed bump on one stretch of English coastline.
Our take: records don’t fall one at a time anymore — they fall in clusters. The instant Herbert and Burns proved 62 was live on this course, the number stopped being sacred and started being a target. That’s the Bannister effect: the four-minute mile stood forever, then fell twice in six weeks. Performance ceilings are partly social. The practical read for the rest of us: when someone in your field does the “impossible,” the real information isn’t their talent — it’s that the ceiling was never load-bearing. Recalibrate fast, because everyone else will.
What to watch
- Sunday’s final round: a leaderboard packed at the top with a record-chasing chase group — and Scheffler, the game’s best closer, within reach of the leaders.
- The first 61: Herbert lipped out from five feet for it on Friday. Three 62s in one week says the next number is now a matter of when, not if.
- Fox’s ceiling: he has never won a major. A 62 on moving day is how outsiders become champions — if the putter holds for 18 more holes.