Corey Conners was in the first game out at Royal Portrush Saturday morning after making the cut on the number — and he played like he had nothing to lose.
That worked firmly in his favour.
The Canadian fired a 5-under 66 to move up 41 spots on the leaderboard and into the top 10 with much of the field still to tee off. He sits at 4 under for the Open Championship.
Conners, who was the lone Canadian to find the weekend at the Open Championship, had struggled with the speed of the greens the first two days (they hover around 11 on the stimpmeter — for comparison’s sake, the greens at Oakmont Country Club for the U.S. Open were about 15) and had left many putts short on Thursday and Friday. But he made a simple adjustment on Saturday and putted phenomenally, gaining strokes and sitting 14th on the greens for the day.
He was also back to his normal, consistent self off the tee and with his ball striking. Add it up, and he was first in strokes gained: total.
Conners’ 5-under effort was the early low round of the day, and just two off the low round of the week, shot by Scottie Scheffler on Friday.
The Canadian opened with a birdie on the first before adding two in a row on Nos. 7 and 8. He missed a short par-saver on No. 9 from just four feet to make a bogey but got it right back with a birdie on No. 10.
He also birdied the par-5 12th before draining a 42-foot bomb on his closing hole to come into the house.
The round could have been even lower as Conners missed three birdie tries of less than 10 feet on Saturday while enduring another miss from 15 feet on No. 15.
Conners, who is Canada’s top-ranked male golfer, has been a consistent presence on major championship leaderboards through 2025. He is one of just 18 golfers to make the cut at all four majors this year and notched a top-10 finish at the Masters. He was trending towards another great result at the U.S. Open before being forced to withdraw due to a wrist injury.
Conners told Sportsnet before this week at the Open that he felt things were “back to normal” with his wrist and said on Friday after his round that he was “striking the ball well” despite admitting he had struggled in his career to this point with adjusting to the firmness of links turf.
With a hot putter, and some ball-striking confidence, Conners can now aim to make a final-round charge.
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