American Brian Harman remained firmly on course to claim his first major title on a rain-soaked final day of the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
Harman took a five-shot lead into the closing 18 holes and maintained that advantage at the turn after recovering superbly from a shaky start.
Only two players in championship history have squandered a five-shot lead after 54 holes, Macdonald Smith in the last Open staged at Prestwick in 1925 and Jean van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999.
Rahm’s drive was pulled towards a collection of gorse bushes but somehow avoided all of them and left the world number three with a good lie and clear shot, from where he came up just short of the green and two-putted.
Harman’s tee shot on the fifth then followed the same line as Rahm, only to plunge into a bush and force him to take a penalty drop, leading to a second bogey and cutting his lead to three.
That was just Harman’s fifth bogey of the week and for the third time he bounced back immediately with a birdie, holing from 15 feet on the sixth to edge further clear.
Back-to-back birdies for Brian Harman, and he has a five-stroke lead @TheOpen. pic.twitter.com/4VDUEjIctK
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) July 23, 2023
And when he also birdie the next following another quality iron shot, the lead was back to five.
Rahm’s bogey on the ninth briefly gave Harman a six-shot cushion, but Austria’s Sepp Straka almost immediately birdied the 11th to get back within five.
Rory McIlroy, who began the day nine behind, made the ideal start with a hat-trick of birdies from the third and recovered from a bogey on the 10th with a birdie on the 14th. But at six behind, holes were running out for the 2014 winner.
