The two 62s and the putt that almost rewrote Open history

A five-foot putt slid wide at the 18th green at Royal Birkdale on Friday afternoon, and with it slipped the chance for Lucas Herbert to become the first man to break 62 at a major championship. The Australian tapped in for bogey, signed for an 8-under-par 62 and joined a club of five others who have ever shot that number on golf's biggest stages. Hours earlier, or so it felt, Sam Burns had matched him from the other side of the draw, capping his own 62 with a bunker hole-out at the last that drew a roar still ringing around the dunes at the end of play.

In any other week, one of these rounds would dominate the back pages for days. Together, they form the rarest kind of Open artefact: two record-equalling rounds on the same day, on the same course, from players separated by 3,000 miles of geography and almost nothing on a crowded leaderboard.

A tie at the top of the record book

The 62 has now been shot at a men's major six times. Branden Grace did it at Royal Birkdale in 2017, joining a list that for years had only two names on it. The field has since caught up: the South African, Justin Thomas at the 2017 US PGA, Xander Schauffele at the 2019 US Open, Rickie Fowler at the 2017 US Open, and now Herbert and Burns in the same afternoon on the Southport links. The four-round-total records sit in different lanes, but the single-round ceiling has been tested nine times in nine years.

Herbert went out in 30 and came home in 32, a morning wave of birdies that ran long into the wind. He missed two short putts inside six feet, one of which cost him a tap-in par and the other the record outright. According to BBC Sport's dispatch from the 18th green, Herbert pulled his five-footer at the last after what had otherwise been a near-flawless day with the putter. Had it dropped, his total of 61 would have been the lowest in men's major history by a stroke. The slip was small, the consequence enormous: a number that no man has yet posted in a championship.

Burns from the sand

If Herbert's round ended on a quiet groan, Burns's finished with the loudest sound an Open crowd makes. The American ran his second shot past the pin at the 18th and faced a greenside bunker, the kind of lie that on a links in mid-summer can either finish a card or save one. He splashed the ball out, watched it track and drop, and tapped in for one of the more dramatic closing birdies the championship has seen. BBC Sport called it a "fantastic finish". The roars from the packed grandstands carried across to the practice ground.

The two rounds, separated by perhaps an hour of play, set up a championship that now has an unusual look. The 154th Open is only two rounds old, the cut still to be made, and the story is not merely the leaders but the marker itself. Neither golfer is a stranger to professional golf's sharper end. Herbert, 30, has spent the better part of a decade working his way back from the easier tours to the upper tables of the European and PGA circuits. Burns, a former PGA Tour winner by his mid-twenties, has been a model of consistency without ever fully converting close weeks into the loudest ones. Both should make the cut; both will begin Saturday with a number next to their names that almost no one in the field can match.

What the wind did, and did not do

Links golf in July rewards the prepared. Royal Birkdale sits on a strip of dunes between Southport and the Irish Sea, and the sea breeze that defines the venue was present on Friday, just not in the form many had feared. According to CBS Sports' score report, the morning groups had birdie chances if they missed in the right places. The course had been softened by earlier rain but not flooded, and the greens, slower than the opening round, gave putts the chance to stay on line longer than they had on Thursday.

Herbert's 62 owed most of its numbers to a hot putter and steady iron play. He hit 17 greens in regulation, according to the round sheets posted by BBC Sport, and needed only 24 putts to complete the circuit. Burns's round was similar in shape but punctuated by the kind of long, scrambling par saves that majors demand. Both golfers avoided the double bogey that wrecks a low round on a links. The bogeys Herbert did make came on two of the harder holes on the card, the 7th and the 18th. The bogey on the 18th is the one that will haunt the retelling.

The leaderboard, and the chase

The Open Championship is four rounds, not one, and a number like 62 in the second round raises a question every championship eventually must answer: was the day softer than it looked, or is the mark a genuine leading indicator? Royal Birkdale in 2017, the last time the Open came to this stretch of Lancashire coastline, was won by Jordan Spieth at 12 under. Grace's 62 that year was an outlier in a week of mostly over-par golf. The 154th playing of the championship has begun more cheaply: scoring has been lower, the rough thinner, the greens more accessible.

The players chasing Herbert and Burns will tell a different story on Saturday morning. The third round of a major is where the leaders go low and the chasers find out what they have left. A two-shot swing on a links hole costs a round; a four-shot swing can cost a tournament. The record book does not care about scoreboard arithmetic, only the lowest stamp on the final card. Burns and Herbert now carry that stamp together, the joint holders of golf's hardest-to-reach club.

What the record means, and what it does not

The 62 has a strange place in major championship history. It is rare enough to be news every time it happens, common enough now that it no longer defines a season. The list of holders reads like a who's who of the modern era, with the conspicuous exception of one name: Tiger Woods never shot 62 in a men's major. Neither has Phil Mickelson. Neither has Rory McIlroy. The leaderboard of major winners is full of 63s and a spattering of 62s. The 62 is no longer a freak event. It is the floor of an extraordinary afternoon.

Herbert, asked afterwards by BBC Sport about the emotions of the day, said he felt "all the emotions" in a tone that suggested he had not yet settled on which one to keep. The 30-year-old's career, punctuated by a single PGA Tour win and several close calls, has been working in that direction without quite arriving. The 62 does not guarantee anything beyond two more rounds at Royal Birkdale, but it cements his name in a record book that will outlast the leaderboard. Burns's reaction, judging from the broadcast, was a mix of relief and wonder. His bunker hole-out was the swing that mattered; the rest of the round was execution.

The cut line will fall by Saturday evening. The leaderboard will move. The wind is forecast to pick up over the weekend, which usually suits the chasers and punishes the leaders. The 62s will stay where they are. They are the second-round story of the 154th Open, and they will still be the second-round story long after the claret jug has changed hands. Only five men in the history of the men's game had managed it before Friday. Two of them did it on the same afternoon, on the same course, and one of them came within a fraction of an inch of doing something no one has ever done.

This article frames the second-round 62s as a joint record-equalling event rather than a horse-race dispatch; the Open leaderboard will shift significantly across Saturday and Sunday.