A 48-year-old journeyman golfer from Southampton ranked 115th who had never won a top-flight tournament until 35 days ago was atop the US Open leaderboard on Friday night at the tournament’s halfway mark.
World, meet Richard Bland.
The unheralded Englishman, who went off as a 500-1 underdog this week at Torrey Pines Golf Course, added a second-round 67 to his opening-round 70 to go five under for the championship and a share of the 36-hole lead with the Georgia native, Russell Henley.
Bland, whose four appearances in major tournaments have been scattered across four different decades, started on the back nine beneath a marine layer overcast and reached the turn at two under, then added three more birdies over the next six holes to match the low round of the tournament.
“I was feeling pretty good about my game,” said Bland, who is playing on American soil for only the second time in a 28-year professional career and betraying no sign of nerves on the sport’s biggest stage. “I’ve been driving the ball well for five, six weeks now, which is the cornerstone if you’re going to put a fight up for a US Open.
“When I saw this place on Monday, it kind of set up to my eye. There’s not too many doglegs. It’s all there just straight in front of me, and that’s the kind of golf course I like. There’s nothing kind of jumping out and grabbing you or anything like that.”
This time last month, Bland made modest headlines at the British Masters by winning his first European Tour title in his 478th career start. Not that it was enough for an endorsement deal: the hat Bland has worn around Torrey Pines is branded not with Titleist or TaylorMade but Wisley, the golf club in Surrey where he’s a dues-paying member.
Now he is the oldest 36-hole leader in US Open history with a parade of household names in his wake.
Brand had toiled for nearly two full decades on and around the continent without breaking through – even losing his European Tour card three years ago only to grind out enough ranking points on the minor-league Challenger Tour to rejoin the top circuit – before finally becoming the oldest first-time winner in the tour’s 50-year history.
That hard-won payoff to Bland’s years of persistence on professional golf’s periphery had all the ingredients of a Hollywood ending. Turns out it might not have been the final act.
Bland’s success on the 7,652-yard South Course is all the more improbable given his limitations off the tee at a time when US Open course setups have, critics say, disproportionately favoured the tour’s weapon-grade hitters. His average driving distance of 297.8 yards through two rounds is near the statistical bottom of the 152-player field, but he’s yet to three-putt in 36 holes and ranks among the top five in fairways hit. He is the only player in the tournament to have not missed a putt from inside 10 feet, depositing 31 of 31 attempts. So far it’s been enough to tame the eighth-longest course in major championship history.
“It’s nice to give these gym-goers a run for their money,” he quipped.
His unlikely ascent to the top of the leaderboard on Friday came as one more familiar contender after another buckled under the oceanside track’s punishing cocktail of narrow fairways and unforgiving kikuyu rough.
A number of big names who were in danger of missing the cut benefitted from the overall tougher sledding on Friday that lowered the cut line to plus-four, including reigning Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama (three over for the tournament), Phil Mickelson (two over), world No 1 Dustin Johnson (two over), Rory McIlroy (one over) and Bryson DeChambeau (even) – all of whom spent Friday with their weekend plans in doubt. Even the steely Brooks Koepka, the two-time US Open champion whose charge appeared inevitable after early birdies on the second and fourth, came back down to earth with bogeys on the fifth and sixth and three more on the back nine.
Only Henley managed to keep pace on the day with a one-under 70, briefly taking the solo lead with a birdie on the 17th before falling back into a tie with Bland after closing with a three-putt bogey.
Former Open champion Louis Oosthuizen was one shot off the co-leaders at four under with 2020 US Open runner-up Matthew Wolff, while two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson birdied five of his final six holes for a 67 that moved him to three under overall alongside world No 3 and pre-tournament betting favourite, Jon Rahm.
But all eyes will be trained on the surprise package from Britain’s south coast when he tees off in the final group on Saturday afternoon at 1.35pm (9.35pm GMT), halfway home to a most impossible dream.
“Golf is all I know,” Bland said. “When times got tough and I lost my card two or three times, I think, what am I going to do, go and get an office job? I’m not that intelligent, I’m afraid. So it was just, right, OK, I’ve always been someone that can get my head down and work hard, and I always knew I had the game to compete on the European Tour at the highest level. I’ve always known that.
“But as any golf career, you’re going to have peaks and troughs. Of course you are. But I just think every kind of sportsman, sportswoman, they have that never-die or that never-quit attitude, no matter whether it’s golf or it’s tennis or it’s boxing, whatever it is. The old saying is you get knocked down seven times, you get up eight. I’ve always had that kind of attitude that you just keep going. You never know in this game, you just keep going.”
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