After turning down Masters invite, Jacob Olesen co-leads The Open after Day 1

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PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — The co-leader at the Open Championship passed up a Masters invite and then tried, but failed, to go to the famous tournament as a fan.

Rookie professional Jacob Olesen was the first man of the day to shoot four-under 67 at Royal Portrush and walked off the 18th green with his name atop the leaderboard at a major championship.

“Yeah, it is cool. I didn’t really look at it,” he said of the leaderboard behind the 18th green. “I was trying to see where my ball had actually ended up. Obviously annoyed to finish off with a bogey.”

The bogey on 18 meant Olesen would share the lead at the end of the day with Matt Fitzpatrick, Haotong Li, Harris English and Christiaan Bezuidenhout.

“He played really nice today,” playing partner Taylor Pendrith said of Olesen. “He flighted his irons really well and hit a lot of quality shots without making many mistakes.”

One shot further back was a group at three-under headlined by world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.

“Felt like I hit the ball nice off the tee, and really only had one swing I wasn’t too happy with on maybe the 2nd hole,” Scheffler said. “But outside of that, I felt like I hit a lot of good tee shots, hit the ball really solid, so definitely a good bit of confidence for the next couple rounds.”

Scheffler’s 68 was equalled by Tyrrell Hatton, Matthew Jordan and Sadom Kaewkanjana.

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Last November, Olesen made a bet on himself by choosing to turn pro and join Europe’s DP World Tour rather than play in this April’s Masters tournament as an amateur after earning entry by winning the 2024 British Amateur championship.

“I had made the decision to turn pro when I signed up for (European) Q-school,” he said. “If I got through and got a DP card, I’d turn pro. I was pretty at ease with that decision. I think also with having gotten a fairly decent good start on DP, it’s kind of helped make me feel like it was the right decision.”

Olesen has three top-10 finishes and is ranked 62nd in the Race to Dubai.

But just because he wasn’t playing at Augusta National didn’t mean the 26-year-old Dane wasn’t interested in checking it out.

“I watched a little bit of it, not as much as probably I normally do. I was actually there on Monday because I played the Georgia Cup where the Amateur champion plays against the U.S. Amateur champion, and we had gotten tickets for Monday,” he said. “Right as we got to Augusta, we could just see everyone flooding out, and checked Twitter and it had gotten cancelled, so we never got to get in.

“I guess maybe that’s a sign for I’ll get in there as a player instead of as a spectator.”

Olesen’s road to professional golf hasn’t been a straight one. Asked why he waited until age 25 to turn pro, he gave a rather straightforward answer.

“I just wasn’t good enough,” he said. “I was never in college thinking I’m going to quit college and go pro now because I wasn’t at the level that was required.”

Olesen’s path to the pros began at a Ranger College in Texas, a community college.

“Whoever was the coach there at the time had messaged my coach on Instagram if he had any players that were willing to go,” he said.

From there, he transferred and played three years at Texas Christian University and another year as a post-grad at Arkansas where he was an all-American. Then, with a Masters invite on the table he chose to return to Europe and begin his professional career.

“Getting out on DP has always been a dream of mine.” he said. “It’s what I watched all the time growing up, Thomas Bjorn, Anders Hansen, those Danish guys before us that are there now, so it’s always been a dream.”

He’s working on another dream this week at Royal Portrush.