Australian Open: Cameron Davis sets pace with Jason Day looming

Cameron Davis is playing the hare to the hounds of Jason Day and Jordan Spieth at the Australian Open.

Cameron Davis during his opening 63 at The Australian Golf Club. Picture: Getty Images

By the end of the first day of the Australian Open, former national amateur champion, 22-year-old Cameron Davis, was cast in the role of the hare after taking the outright tournament lead with a brilliant round of eight-under 63.

Over the next three days, two of the world’s best in Jordan Spieth and Jason Day will play the hounds and try to run down the Sydney-sider, and they fancy their chances.

Day is poised to strike at five-under (66), alongside Adelaide’s Nick Cullen and one shot behind Taylor Macdonald (six-under 65) of Queensland’s Redcliffe club.

Of the current top 10, eight of them had the advantage of playing in the benign conditions offered yesterday morning.

LEADERBOARD

The afternoon was a different matter. The wind that was barely whispering when Davis and Day finished their rounds, was whipping around the course by the time world No 2 and defending champion Spieth was halfway through his round.

A bogey, bogey start set the Texan back on his heels early but he worked his way back into his round with birdies on the 4th and 5th. However it was one step forward, one step back for most of the day as he accumulated five bogeys and six birdies.

His round stuttered along like a car being driven by a teenager still figuring out the stick shift, which he said was predictable given he was coming off the longest break he’s had from the game since he left college.

A clutch 4m putt on the 18th left him at one-under, and he was content given the difficulty of the conditions and his rough start. “Three-under from there is pretty solid in this wind,’’ Spieth said.

“There were tremendous scoring conditions this morning which we’re hoping to see tomorrow so I’ve got to go out and take advantage and move up the board, and those guys will get what we had in the afternoon and it will be more difficult, so being seven back isn’t really seven back, given the difference in the (conditions).

He said he would be looking to shoot around 66 in his second round this morning to get himself back up the leaderboard.

“You see scores back up on the weekend (here) because the wind always blows and the greens firm up, so I’m not anxious about the finish of this tournament yet.”

By contrast, Davis found all the right gears early.

He is a tall, raw-boned lad who not only has length off the tee but beautiful finesse around the greens, as evidenced by his chip in on the 7th hole yesterday, which was followed by a bunker shot that hit the pin on the 8th and only narrowly avoided dropping in. By that stage he was six-under after seven holes, having birdied everything except the third.

“The first eight holes everything was looking like it was going in, even from off the green, which was nice’’ he said.

An errant tee shot on the 9th resulted in his only bogey, but he regrouped quickly to gain shots on the 12th, 14th and 18th.

Davis is very familiar with The Australian Golf Club layout, having played eight rounds there in five days two years ago to win the Australian amateur title.

As a rookie professional, he qualified to play on the third-tier Mackenzie Tour in Canada this year and has now reached next month’s final stage of qualifying for the second-tier Web.com tour. He shot a final round of seven-under to finish second in the second stage at Murrieta in California earlier this month and appears to have brought that form to Australia.

He vowed to treat today’s second round “like any other round’’ despite knowing that he will have the major winners Day and Spieth hunting him down during the coming days.

“I know that they’re there, it’s nice that they’re there because it makes it feel like a really big tournament and it’s great to have played this great with that kind of stuff going on,’’ he said.

“With a start like this, I feel like if I can keep on doing what I’m doing, I’ll be right up there come Sunday.’’

Day has a simple plan for bringing the young man down and lifting the Stonehaven Cup.

“I think if I can shoot 5, 5, 5, 5, get it to 20-under, then I’ll have a good chance of winning,’’ he said.

But he conceded that was easier said than done given that he will to play his second round this afternoon in the same wind that confounded Spieth, and fellow US Tour players Cameron Smith (one under) and Matt Jones, the 2015 champion, (even) yesterday.