A new Open heavyweight emerged at Portrush, and he’s totally anonymous

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — On a loud, boisterous, at times punch-drunk Thursday at the Open Championship, Matthew Jordan arrived at the 18th green at Royal Portrush bathed in an eerie silence.

Jordan strutted into the enormous alleyway between the U-shaped grandstand looking the part of an Open contender. His motions were sharp, confident and focused, his ball sat in the middle of the green, and his name rested squarely next to a red “3” on the yellow leaderboard, below only a handful of others. In a few moments, Jordan would reach for his round-closing par putt before the ball touched the bottom of the hole. For the ninth consecutive Open round, he would leave the 18th green in contention — a perfect nine-for-nine in an otherwise empty major championship resume.

That was a very impressive feat requiring no shortage of golf’s two most fleeting skills — longevity and consistency — and yet a third thing was still missing: Recognition. Jordan cleaned up his par, waved his thanks to the smattering of applause, and disappeared up the galley into the rest of his day. If not for a brief press conference, he might have escaped Thursday at the Open Championship without any further acknowledgement at all.

But as it turned out, there was so much worth hearing about from the 29-year-old pro in only his fifth major championship start. Like how he learned links golf playing at one of the most revered tracks on the Open rota. And how he became the steadiest man in recent Open Championship history, sporting a better score to-par since the start of the 2023 Open at Hoylake than everybody but Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm. And how he’s managed to do each of those things despite remaining the 152nd-ranked golfer in the world, a DP World Tour pro whose only start in the United States came in the alternate-field Puerto Rico Open.

Who is Matthew Jordan? And more importantly, how did he became the Open Championship’s sneakiest star? On Thursday at Royal Portrush, the answer started at the beginning.

You might remember Jordan’s major championship debut at the 2023 Open Championship. Jordan, then 27, was the darling of tournament week at Royal Liverpool, a young pro who’d grown up as a member at the club and survived a triumphant qualifying battle just to get into the tournament. He battled four days of hometown galleries and nervy moments with the composure of a testy veteran, finishing with a heroic birdie on the last to earn an invite into the Open again in 2024 under the tournament’s top-10 exemption.

“It was just the perfect finish to what has been the most unbelievable week,” he said then. “I just so wanted to knock it in for everyone who’s supported me, just to have them go mental one last time. They stuck with me — even in the rain like this.”

You might have forgotten about Jordan last July when he returned to Troon. He arrived in Scotland in a competitive lull, the missed cuts piling up as his ranking sagged into the 200s. On a blustery, mostly miserable weather week in Troon, he achieved the nearly impossible feat of four straight identical scores of even par. After four 71s, he signed for a 72-hole score of 284, escaped with another T10 (sandwiched between three missed cuts), and secured another, equally improbable invite back to the Open in 2025.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when Jordan arrived at Portrush on Thursday and delivered the goods again, shooting a six-birdie, three-bogey 68 on the tougher side of the tournament draw. For the third straight year he’d elevated his game just in time for his biggest start of the season, and for the third straight year, he’d done it by simplifying.

“I think my ability to, if I make a mistake, not compound it,” Jordan said Thursday. “I think that’s one thing that I’ve been impressed with, because quite a few of the days that I’ve played in Opens have been tough, have been difficult. You are going to make mistakes. So there probably is that side mentally.”

Toughness is a word that gets overused around this time of the year, usually as a means of diagnosing the style of golf required to survive the uncertainty of the linksland. There is some truth to the suggestion that resilience plays a larger than usual role in links golf, but that’s not the only thing.

“The secret of links golf? I think there’s a couple. I think mainly when people probably come over, [the secret] is being able to understand how far to hit half shots, different flights, start lines,” Jordan said. “I’ve been hitting 9-irons over 200 yards. I was hitting an 8-iron on 17 — even though it went long, my purpose was to hit it 120. There’s a lot of that. It’s not just kind of stand there and hit it. So being able to adapt and understand exactly how to hit those kinds of shots.”

Some unquantifiable percentage of Matthew Jordan’s current Open Championship hot streak is luck. Much like last July at Troon, conditions were vastly harder on tournament Thursday than any practice round. And much like last July at Troon, Jordan was prepared for the carnage by virtue of a pre-tournament visit in similarly diabolical conditions.

“I ended up like playing like it was today. I ended up playing a really hard golf course. I ended up playing and coming off and going, wow, this is going to be a real test again,” Jordan said. “Fortunately enough, by the time I get there, I play a bit better.”

Still, Jordan’s performance in two major starts outside of the last three Opens (at Oakmont in June and St. Andrews in ’22; two starts, zero cuts made), reflects there might be something unique about how his game responds the Open challenge. As does his performance on the DP World Tour since Troon (four top-10s, eight MCs, no wins).

But it is not unheard of for a golfer to emerge with a gift for the linksland. Paul Lawrie won the ’99 Open at Carnoustie and rarely contended again. Todd Hamilton won the ’04 Open at Troon over Ernie Els and missed 27 of his next 31 cuts. Ian Baker-Finch’s professional life after a win at the ’91 Open at Royal Birkdale is most notable for broadcasting. Those golfers were all gifted enough to win a major championship, but they were lucky, too. You have to have both.

“It’s just how I’ve played,” Jordan said Thursday afternoon. “I just seem to play better in [The Open], and I can’t tell you exactly why that is. I guess you don’t do it through bad golf.”

For now, Jordan can only dream about the unknowables, like the gap between a T10 at Hoylake and a first-place finish at Portrush. (“Apart from winning it, I can’t imagine it being much better,” Jordan said after that first magical week at Royal Liverpool in ’23.) But if his Thursday performance continues into the weekend in Northern Ireland, the world’s 152nd-ranked golfer will have to contend with at least one ironclad certainty.

Things are quiet now for Matthew Jordan, but they won’t be for much longer.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.

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