It took nine years for someone to shoot the second 62 in Open Championship history … and about 15 minutes for someone to shoot the third.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because the story of what Sam Burns did at Royal Birkdale on Friday has an angle that’s even better than that gaudy number. You often hear that the best way to approach a major, from a mental perspective, is to treat it like any regular tournament. This year, Burns has taken it a step further—he treated it like a tournament he wasn’t even attending.

With the pending birth of his second child, Burns had decided he wasn’t going to play the Open Championship. His past history at the event had nothing to do with the process, but from the outside, it seemed like the best major for him to skip—he’s never finished better than T-31 at an Open, and as he said on Friday, he doesn’t particularly like links golf. His agent signed him up just in case, but Burns didn’t know why.

Then, the twist: his daughter Belle, who was due July 14, came July 3 instead. That opened up the possibility, but Burns was still content to stay in Louisiana.

“Even then, I still wasn’t expecting to play by any means,” he said. “Had a bunch of conversations with my wife, and she encouraged me to come over here and play, and here we are.”

The biggest obstacle, he said earlier in the week, was the mental shift—could he feel OK about leaving the family? Ultimately, his wife’s encouragement—he called her a “superhero”—made it easier. A week ago, on Friday, he made the choice to come.

The week started without much fanfare. He played a practice round with good friend Scottie Scheffler on Wednesday, and he didn’t feel much rust (Burns has been on a tear of late, with four straight top-20s and a solo second at the U.S. Open). On Thursday, however, he could only muster a three-over 73, which put him well on the way to a missed cut.

Come Friday, everything changed. A solid front nine 32 got him back to one over for the tournament. Three birdies in his next four holes got him on the leaderboard for the first time. Then he finished with three more birdies, including a hole-out from the bunker on 18.

The round was full of brilliant shots, from the 260-yard 3-iron he hit to gimme distance on 13 to the 22-foot birdie putt on 11 to the pinpoint wedge on 10. When it was over, he had tied the record for the lowest round in a major with a 62.

“I caught myself by surprise,” he said. “I honestly feel like I played a pretty solid round of golf yesterday and then just a terrible finish there on 16, 17, 18. I thought, coming into the day if I could get it to red numbers for the golf tournament, that would be a pretty good spot. I think the finish there the last three holes was just a bonus.”

In typical Burns fashion, he didn’t know he had tied the major record—or what the major record even was—until an official told him. Nor did he know what had happened with Lucas Herbert, the Australian who took top billing most of the day as he threatened to break the same record, set by Branden Grace at this same course in 2017. Burns saw that Herbert was nine under going into the last, and figured he’d shoot 61, but the Australian missed a short par putt, and had to settle for tying the record.

Burns’ philosophy this week is one he summarised as “embrace the chaos.”

“I would say I’m not a huge fan of links golf,” he said. “I just haven’t played well on links golf. It’s not something I’m very familiar with. I get to do it maybe once a year … yesterday, I hit not a bad shot on 17. I hit a 3-iron in and was trying to hit it just left of the green and I get up there and it’s in the left side of the lip and I have to hit it backwards. That kind of stuff is frustrating to me. You feel like you’ve hit a decent shot, and the next thing you know you’re hitting it backwards.

“The main thing,” he added, “is you just try to come out and execute to the best of your ability and learn to accept whatever the outcome is.”

At home, he said, he hits it high and has control over where it stops. Here, you can hit a beauty but miss a slope by a foot, and the outcome will be different by 30 yards. Acceptance is the only solution that has made sense to him, and he learned on Friday that if you stick around long enough, the breaks will go your way. Once in a great while, if you’re very lucky, they’ll even go your way every single time.

• • •

MORE GOLF DIGEST OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE

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Main Image: Oisin Keniry/R&A