Cut day at the British Open brings with it plenty of stress and anxiety as players well down the leader board are still keeping a close eye on the scores to figure out where they stand, and whether the numbers they’re posting will be low enough to play on the weekend. Exactly where that will fall at Royal Portrush is made more uncertain by a weather forecast that calls for some wind and scattered showers on Friday that could change the equation.
The rules for who makes the cut at the Open are similar to those at the PGA Championship: low 70 players and ties advance to play all four rounds. This differs from the U.S. Open, which makes the cut at low 60 and ties, and the Masters, which keeps the low 50 and ties around on the weekend. And there is no 10-stroke rule in effect to help determine the British Open cut; so if early Day 2 leader Brian Harman or anyone else decides to go run and hide with the lead, it won’t necessarily impact who’s play on the weekend.
All this is, of course, particularly relevant for handful of the game’s more familiar names, including Jordan Spieth (two-over 73), Tommy Fleetwood (73), J.J. Spaun (73), Hideki Matsuyama (74), Collin Morikawa (75) Brooks Koepka (75) and Bryson DeChambeau (78) who have work to do Friday at Portrush if they hope to find themselves merely playing on the weekend let alone back in contention.
What are their chances of making Open Championship 36-hole cut and playing the weekend? Well, if the cut was made after just 18 holes, you needed to shoot two-over-par 73 or better to be inside the top 70 and ties (which included a whopping 96 players). And that two-over number was projected for the 36-hole cutline from datagolf.com for much of Friday. But by 3:10 p.m. Eastern, the tide had turned an one-over 143 had become the target, with 70 players exactly shooting that score or lower.
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(To DeChambeau's credit, he did bounce back with a Friday 65 to move to the right side of the bubble. Same with Fleetwood, who shot a 68.)
The stroke average for the first round was 73.038 with the field cumulatively 318-over-par, compared to the first-round figure of 72.987 and a cumulative figure of 310-over-par at Royal Portrush in 2019.
As a point of reference, here’s what the Open Championship 36-hole cut line has been for the last 10 Opens:
2024: 148 (+6), Royal Troon
2023: 145 (+3), Royal Liverpool
2022: 144 (E), St. Andrews
2021: 141 (+1), Royal St. George's
2019: 143 (+1), Royal Portrush
2018: 145 (+3), Carnoustie
2017: 145 (+5), Royal Birkdale
2016: 146 (+4), Royal Troon
2015: 144 (E), St. Andrews
2014: 146 (+2), Royal Liverpool
And here is the cut for the last two Opens at Royal Portrush:
2019: 143 (+1)
1951: 154 (+10)
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Is it the British Open or the Open Championship? The name of the final men’s major of the golf season is a subject of continued discussion. The event’s official name, as explained in this op-ed by former R&A chairman Ian Pattinson, is the Open Championship. But since many United States golf fans continue to refer to it as the British Open, and search news around the event accordingly, Golf Digest continues to utilize both names in its coverage.
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