Bucket-hat Barclay Brown, Sheffield amateur, makes fast start at 150th Open at St Andrews

The amateur who plays out of Hallamshire Golf Club and is on a golf scholarship at Stanford in the United States, demonstrated his fearlessness on the biggest stages by posting a four-under-par total in the first round at the Old Course.

While not good enough for the outright lead, it at least had him on the first page of the leaderboard.

Teeing off in the second group out at 6.46am, Brown – who qualified for his maiden Open appearance at Hollinwell earlier this month - had birdies on the seventh ninth, 12th, 14th and famous road hole 17th.

Brown, discernible by the bucket hat he wares on his head, only dropped one shot on the 10th.

Brown said: “Obviously very pleased with that. It was very enjoyable. Fortunately nice to keep it relatively stress-free. Very pleased with myself.

“I was unbelievably nervous at the start. And then once I got through the first couple of holes, yeah, it was nice to kind of calm down a little bit and hit some good shots and just get into it.”

He was followed in by Danny Willett, his fellow Sheffielder who eagled the 18th to post a score of 69, three-under-par.

Willett, the 2016 Masters champion, said: “We had two bad drives that cost us, 12 and 17. 17 we got away with in fairness. I made a good four down there.

“But yeah, 12 really killed the momentum that we kind of nicely had going on the front nine. We had a lot of putts. But it’s hard to get it really close to all these flags.

“So you’ve got to get your pace pretty good and get lucky on a few. Yeah, all in all I’d say it was pretty good.”

John Parry of Harrogate, playing in his first Open 12 years after his only victory on the European Tour, birdied the road hole 17th en route to a three-under par 69.

Cameron Young, the American playing his first Open, leads the way after an eight-under-par 64, with Rory McIlroy firmly in contention after a 66.