Todd Clements posted what he described as one of the best rounds of his career so far to soar into the first round lead at the Amgen Irish Open.
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The Englishman carded an opening five under par round of 66 to sit atop the leaderboard at Royal County Down, one stroke clear of Finland’s Sami Välimäki and Spaniard Alejandro del Rey, with four-time Major Champion Rory McIlroy a stroke further back in a tie for fourth.
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Clements, who won his maiden DP World Tour title at the D+D REAL Czech Masters last year made a blistering start in Northern Ireland, birdieing two of the first three after starting from the tenth before picking up two further shots with an eagle at the par five 18th.
The 2022 Challenge Tour graduate made the turn and birdied the tricky par five first, but Royal County Down bit back as he dropped shots at the second and fourth to drop into the bunched leaderboard in the third event of the Back 9 on the DP World Tour’s Global Schedule.
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Not to be deterred, however, Clements fought back and finished with aplomb, with back-to-back birdies at the eighth and ninth earning him the advantage after the opening round on the spectacular links.
County Down native McIlroy gave the home crowds something to cheer with an impressive birdie-birdie-birdie finish to join the five-strong pack in a tie for fourth place, along with English duo Marcus Armitage and Will Enefer, South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence and Italian Filippo Celli.
Player quotes
Todd Clements: I said that to my caddie walking off, “That’s one of the best rounds I’ve played in my life so far.” It’s a hard course and yeah, delighted how it panned out.
For me, I drove it great. I hit a lot of good quality shots, and just kind of hit my ball in the right spaces. My caddie was great today, and you know, he had the course mapped out great and it worked well.
This course is as hard as it gets. Take it day-by-day; cliché. But tomorrow it’s going to be cold; it’s going to be windy and another gruelling test. Sad as it is to say, I’m probably looking forward to it.
Rory McIlroy: It was nice, I felt like I controlled my ball flight well. I’ve been working a little bit on my swing these last couple of weeks. Yeah, it felt a little better. I’ve probably struggled a lot in left-to-right winds this year, so to sort of control my ball flight a bit and test it out there today was good to see that, you know, I was able to do it when I needed to.
It’s a major championship-calibre golf course. It’s just unfortunate that we don’t have the infrastructure around the golf course to host something like an Open because if we did, it definitely would be able to host an Open Championship.
Shane Lowry: You just need to be patient out there and you need to miss it in the right spot. I felt like the first couple of holes I missed them in wrong spots and you get penalised for that. But look, one over is not the end of the world, and we go on and give it a go in the morning.
This golf course, if you hit good shots, it feels like it’s not that hard. I hit a great second shot on to that green [18] and then a nice two-putt, but you know, you hit an average shot there, you’re going to be in trouble.
