With LIV Golf taking a starry field to India, plus Rory McIlroy and many of the rest of the sport's most gilded names heading for Pebble Beach, the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship is battling for airtime this week.
And yet for the majority of Thursday morning it appeared as though a journeyman from the Isle of Wight was going to grab all the limelight on the fairways of the Royal Golf Club in Riffa.
The DP World Tour – formerly the European Tour – is in its 53rd year. More than 10,200 players have played on it. Only once has any of them ever broken 60.
Oliver Fisher became the first to shoot 59 in the tour’s history, back in 2018. And, because of a bogey at the final hole of the opening round in Bahrain for Brandon Robinson Thompson, he remains the only man to do it.
Robinson Thompson acknowledged he was aware history could be beckoning from the ninth hole onwards. By that stage, he had made just 29 blows and had two eagles on his card.
With just the par-4 18th to play, he was on 12-under par. The adrenalin was clearly pulsing as he chased the birdie he needed for history, as he proceeded to push his drive into the waste ground to the left of the fairway.
He had hit 16 of the 17 previous greens in regulation, but his approach to the last went long into the rough. It took him three to get down from there, meaning he signed for a 61.
No mean feat, and good enough for a three-stroke lead at the end of the day. But, still, he acknowledged it was tinged with a little feeling of what might have been.
“I didn’t really picture it this morning when it was raining and there were forecasts of super-strong winds,” Robinson-Thompson said.
“I’m very happy to get off to the start I did. [There is a] little bit of a sour taste in my mouth, but I holed my fair share.
“It was just an accumulation of a lot of good decision-making and execution. I wouldn’t say it was perfect by a long way, but I was smart when I had to be and I hit a couple of shots to 25, 30, 35 feet. Luckily, I made a couple of those.”
The majority of Robinson Thompson’s career to date has been played in professional golf’s margins, including stints on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica and the Mena Tour.
The 32-year-old Englishman is probably not used to having his every moved tracked, but his back nine was suddenly under the scanner as “59-watch” gripped.
The broadcasters were in place to see his putt at the 16th, which would have given him a fifth successive birdie, lip out.
“It looked in the whole way,” he said. “I can’t complain. Walking off the green one of the cameramen said, ‘That was an opportunity, just make the next one’. Then I made a 40-footer on the next hole. Shout out to the camera guy.
“I think it’s my lowest round as a professional, let alone on the DP World Tour. It has to be up there with a Sunday to close out a Challenge Tour event last year.
“I know it’s the first round but 61, that’s up there. Everyone keeps saying [it’s tough to follow a low round] but I’ll just keep doing the same stuff.”
The chasing pack contains some other players who have also had a good look around during their careers. Callum Tarren, who shot an eight-under 64 and is in second place, likened the Royal Golf Club’s “crazy greens” to his time playing in China.
The 34-year-old Englishman says he is trying to consolidate his career after a tough time in the United States last year. At one point in 2024, he missed the cut in seven tournaments out of eight on the PGA Tour.
“Last season wasn’t great for me, I had a pretty poor year,” Tarren said. “Having status out here from the PGA Tour last year was like a bonus.
“I’m just trying to take advantage of the starts I get and get back. It’s going to be windy tomorrow, the wind picked up considerably towards the end.”
Local golfers reckon the main defence the course has against tour pros is the weather, which is usually blustery. The course was designed by Colin Montgomerie in 2008, and it has plenty of quirks.
The layout is adjacent to a water treatment plant, and there are earthworks within the perimeter of the course. The plot is split almost exactly in half by pipes running over ground.
At points where the course skirts the neighbouring villas, there are signs saying “no resident buggies” are permitted. Presumably that is lest they get mistaken for the fleet of club buggies that are in action during the competition.
That includes at a number of points where volunteers are employed to ferry the players from one green to the next tee box. Given the large spaces between many of the holes, the walk is a lot longer than the 7,302 yards the course itself plays.
According to Richie Ramsay, whose six-under 66 was good enough for a share of third, the wind provides the biggest test.
“There are some accessible pins out there, the fairways are a bit wider and the rough isn’t as thick as in previous years, but the wind isn’t easy,” Ramsay said.
“It gusts at points out there and the greens can be slopey, so, if you get on the wrong side of them in the wind, it can be quite tricky.”
