PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland -- Congratulations, J.J. Spaun, you've made it to the Open Championship for the first time in your career. Here's the first hole at Royal Portrush -- there's out of bounds on both sides. Make sure you hit it straight.
In your honor, Padraig Harrington; how does setting your alarm for 4 in the morning so you can hit the first ball of the entire tournament toward this tight, bowling alley of a corridor at 6:35 in the morning sound?
"There was plenty of second thoughts, 'Why did I say yes?' Because of the tee shot. There's got to be easier ones," Harrington said. He spent his time on the range before hitting about 40 3-irons intermittently to familiarize himself with the wind and ended up making birdie on the hole. "I hyped up the tee shot as much as I could so when I got there today, it wasn't too bad."
Welcome back, Shane Lowry. Don't think that the opening hole -- all 425 yards of it -- gets any easier for someone who has won this tournament here before. With hundreds of fans lining the ropes just next to the danger zones, the fairway might look even narrower than you remember.
"The first tee shot wasn't that easy," Lowry said. "I wasn't feeling very comfortable there."
And how about you, Rory McIlroy? The shot you hit in 2019 on that very same tee, the one that went left and never stopped going left until it found the out of bounds and led to a quadruple-bogey 8, is all anyone can talk about in the lead-up to this year's Open. Now you get to try it all again.
The scene on Thursday when McIlroy did step up to the first tee was like something out of a movie. The galleries were 20 deep, and the tension in the air gave way to an eerie silence. When McIlroy appeared, the crowd nervously cheered. He grabbed that driving iron once again and took two practice swings. He glanced at his yardage book and took a peek at the flags to check the wind. Finally, he swung -- the ball pierced low through the air and started going left. This time, it stayed in bounds.
"I think Rory's made that tee shot a lot scarier. That's all I could probably think about for the last three days," said Tom McKibbin, also a Northern Ireland native. "Yeah, a little bit nervous and a little bit scared of hitting that shot. I didn't want to hit that bad of a shot."
After McIlroy missed a short putt for par and carded a bogey, a fan in the galleries summed it up.
"Better than last time."
"I felt like I dealt with it really well today. Certainly dealt with it better than I did six years ago," McIlroy said of the opening hole. "I was just happy to get off to a good start and get myself into the tournament."
Through one day of the 153rd Open Championship, there might be tougher holes and harder fairways to hit, but the first hole at Royal Portrush has become the clear antagonist. Its tee shot is a psychological mountain each player has to climb before even settling into his round. The way the tall grandstands frame the box hides the wind, and the way the bunkers -- at 275 and 290 yards -- stare back at you can make even the most confident players question their strategy.
"It's playing so tough. The wind, you somehow don't feel the right wind but it's in off the right," Thomas Detry said. "You have to take on the tee shot. Sometimes there's a couple of holes where it feels like you just want to get it in play, but [here] you want to be a bit more aggressive to give yourself a chance to better make par because it's really long."
In a nutshell, No. 1 embodies the course's ethos: Stay on the short grass -- or else. On Portrush's official course website, the description of the hole -- named Hughie's after the man who used to own the right side of the hole that's now out of bounds (the left side used to be a horse farm) -- beguiles its challenge.
"Pro's tip: Unless against the wind, take a 3 wood or long iron for your opening tee shot."
Sounds easy enough. Let the best golfers in the world tell you: It's not.
"Talk about committing to swings. We warm up on the range, and it's kind of down out of the right and you kind of lead yourself into a bit of a false sense of security," 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith said. "And then you get there, and it's like, 'Yeah, all right. Really need to step up here.' I think I tried to hit that one underground and almost missed it. Not the greatest start to a major championship I've ever had."
Maybe you were saved by the rough or the fescue that frames the fairway like McIlroy was Thursday. Now, you've got an uphill shot with a likely bad lie toward an elevated green that is still firm despite the rain that fell throughout the day.
"You've got to thread it," Jason Day said. "Once you're in the rough, very difficult to control the ball coming into it. The greens are so firm, so it's hard to get the correct distance landing it. And you've got to hit the fairway there to get yourself in good position to be able to get yourself on the green to at least give yourself a chance to birdie."
Birdie? There were only 12 of them on No. 1 on Thursday. How about trying to just make par?
Smith scrambled for bogey. Ben Griffin made a double. Matt Wallace got to play the hole at the worst time of the day: when the rain and wind were taking pleasure in smothering the course. Somehow, he made a 4. By the end of the day, the hole averaged a score of 4.295 -- fifth hardest on the course -- and only 55% of players were able to hit the fairway, which is 70 yards wide but feels about half of that.
For all its rigidity, the hole also displayed the many ways in which players could make or break a score. South Korea's Young-han Song had 200 yards into the green; he made birdie. Aldrich Potgieter had 168 yards in; he made bogey -- the same score K.J. Choi made even though his own tee ball didn't even reach the fairway and his second shot left him 249 yards to the pin.
Club selection was fluid. Some players prioritized ball flight, others distance. Some, like Lowry, planned for a specific club in advance only to opt for something that gave them a semblance of more security.
"There was no chance I was hitting my 4-wood," Lowry said. "I wanted to keep something down out of the wind. So I was like, biggest head in the bag, give it a rip. Thankfully it went straight."
"With it being wet, it could go anywhere," Wallace said of his tee shot. "Two-iron would leave another 2-iron in, so I went with the mini driver. I hit a good one, but then you got a strong drawy 6-iron, 5-iron into a really difficult hole. We played in the hardest moment."
Even the No. 1 player in the world -- who opted for a fairway wood -- missed the fairway left Thursday. Scottie Scheffler was able to still make par, but plenty others were not; the hole saw over four times as many bogeys, or worse, as birdies.
"At the moment, it was challenging, but then you get out there and you play more holes, and it was almost a simple tee shot compared to some others with the weather we had," Nico Echavarria said.
Echavarria is right. Several players spent plenty of time talking about how difficult the 11th hole, in particular, was off the tee Thursday in this wind. While some of Portrush's tee shots can be vexing in different ways, the first's intimidation mostly comes from how straightforward it appears to the naked eye. That is, until you step up to the first tee.
Conquering the first hole won't exactly predict future success this week -- be it during the rest of a player's round or the rest of the tournament -- but playing the hole well can signal which players are confident in everything from their club selection to their ball flight to their mental approach.
After Thursday, with the emotional tee shots and ceremonies in the rearview mirror, the hole might not feel as climactic, but its importance will remain.
"I'm happy that round of golf is over with," Lowry said. "And I'm looking forward to the rest of the week."
Don't get too comfortable just yet.
"Today was not even that hard of a pin," Matteo Manassero said. "It can play even harder."