LIV Golf Leaderboard At The 2024 Open: Burmester Ahead Of Niemann And Johnson As 10 LIV Players Make The Cut
LIV Golf Leaderboard At The 2024 Open: Burmester Ahead Of Niemann And Johnson As 10 LIV Players Make The Cut
LIV Golf List of competitors At The 2024 Open: Burmester In front of Niemann And Johnson As 10 LIV Players Take care of business
South African Dean Burmester is in a tie for fourth place overall and leads the LIV Golf charge at the halfway point of the 2024 Open Championship.
The four-time DP World Tour champion and one-time LIV Golf winner is out in front compared to his League rivals courtesy of an excellent two-under-par round of 69 in blustery conditions at Royal Troon on Friday.
While many of his peers failed to make the weekend as wind gusts reached well over 30mph at times, Burmester made the most of an early start (8:36am BST) to sit on two-under for the Championship via four birdies in round two – three of which arrived before the turn. Burmester was the only LIV golfer under par once the cut was made, with only 10 players in the red at all.
Shane Lowry tops the Open leaderboard on seven-under, while the cut was finally locked in at seven-over – sending a plethora of huge names home, including Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Bryson DeChambeau.
10 of the 17 LIV golfers at Royal Troon earned weekend tee times, though, with Joaquin Niemann and Dustin Johnson putting the most pressure on Burmester
The Chilean posted consecutive rounds of level par at Troon to enter Saturday T11 and with decent hopes of claiming a first Major, while Johnson – who has a T8 (2021) and T6 (2022) finish at The Open in recent years – is continuing his love affair with British links golf as he sits T13 after a two-under Friday left him one-over for the Championship.
Brooks Koepka was one-under after Thursday but battled away on Friday to finish alongside his compatriot, Johnson on one-over. Koepka is eight back with two rounds to play and holds an outside chance of securing a maiden Open title to go with his PGA Championship and US Open victories.
One of the pre-tournament favorites was US Open champion DeChambeau, but The Scientist struggled badly once again on Friday and ended up missing the cut by three shots after a five-over day followed up his four-over on Thursday.
DeChambeau blamed “equipment related” issues for his troubles after the opening round and will not have chance to rectify them over the weekend as he joined 2016 Champion Golfer of the Year, Henrik Stenson in shifting his focus to LIV Golf UK earlier than expected.
Stenson, who defeated Phil Mickelson to lift the Claret Jug eight years ago, stacked a two-over round on top of his six-over Thursday to match Louis Oosthuizen, Sam Horsfield, and Tyrrell Hatton in making a premature departure on eight-over.
Mickelson, however, did make it through to the weekend on five-over despite a three-over round on Friday.
Take a look at how all 17 LIV players have fared at The Open Championship so far this week.
