Charley Hull fires 67, but slow play overshadows afternoon wave at St. Andrews

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – The good: The star-studded grouping of Nelly Korda, Charley Hull and Lilia Vu all shot in the 60s and combined for just four bogeys, with Hull grabbing the first-round lead at the AIG Women’s Open with a 5-under 67.

The bad: Their round took over six hours — 6 hours, 8 minutes to be exact.

Some other afternoon groups pushed closer to six and a half.

“It took ages,” said Hull, who sits a shot clear of Korda and Ruoning Yin. “I had a bet with my caddie. I said, ‘I reckon it’ll take six and a half’; he said, ‘No way, five hours, 30.’

“I was right.”

It was certainly a slog Thursday at St. Andrews, as high winds — topped by gusts in the high 30s — and the Old Course loop’s crisscrossed routing slowed the start of the year’s final major to a snail’s pace. The morning wave got slightly tougher conditions and most appeared to finish in under six hours, though it still pushed back the split-tee, afternoon tee times; Hull’s group was delayed 12 minutes off the first.

Korda, one of the LPGA’s faster players, was asked if such a pace in one of the sport’s biggest championships was acceptable. (To be fair to the women, the men turned in three-balls around six hours two years ago on this very course, though they were playing it much longer than the 6,498 yardage listed on Thursday.)

“Obviously not,” Korda answered, “but with circumstances of the wind and then with it kind of intersecting between two holes, it’s kind of a given.”

Korda added that the front nine was “flowing a good bit.”

“But once we hit the 11th tee box,” she continued, “it was just full-on breaks.”

Inside the relentlessly windy start to the AIG Women’s Open at St. Andrews

There were only a few under-par rounds Thursday morning as wind dominated the Old Course at St. Andrews.

Korda’s threesome waited for about a half-hour to hit their tee shots at No. 11, where as many as four groups backed up during the afternoon wave. The three chatted and tried their best to stay warm. Hull said she went to the toilet.

All three, clearly on top of their games, made par.

A few holes later, the wind died down and the trio combined to play the last five holes in bogey-free 6 under. Korda birdied Nos. 17 and 18 while Hull, sporting an all-black ensemble and aviators to keep her eyes dry in the wind, clipped her 70-yard approach almost perfectly at the par-4 finisher.

“I thought I holed it for a minute,” Hull said.

Hull watched some of the television coverage before her round and thought Yin’s morning 68 was an “unbelievable score.”

“I’m like, I’d take that now because it was gusting a lot on the range, and I said to my coach, feels like they could call it at any minute because I don’t know how the balls are staying on the greens,” Hull said. “To go out there, shoot 5 under, play pretty solid, it was a lot of fun.”

Fun, but long.

Or as Korda said, “Really long.”