Troon, Scotland: In a pre-tournament interview, Jasper Stubbs admitted he expected the butterflies to be swirling around in his stomach when he stepped foot onto the first tee in the opening round of the 152nd Open Championship.

What the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) winner could not have envisaged was that his tee shot with an iron club would veer so far off line that it would clear the fencing that lines the right side of the hole and fly out of bounds. Reload.

After all those weeks of preparation and months of anticipation, a more demoralising start for the Australian would be hard to imagine.

Given the high levels of stress that he must have been enduing, it’s to his credit that Stubbs made a par with his second ball. Nonetheless, a double-bogey six on the card was certainly not what the doctor ordered.

For any golfer to recover from such a shattering setback so early in their round would be mentally challenging.

Stubbs went on to drop further shots at the third, fifth, sixth (a three-putt double-bogey), seventh and ninth. A birdie at the long fourth was the sole bright spot in an outward seven-over 43 that contained just two pars.

Three more bogeys followed on the back nine, but Stubbs never allowed his spirits to drop and was rewarded with a final-hole birdie set-up by a 324-yard drive and finished off with an 18-foot putt.

Signing for a nine-over 80 may not have been what he had hoped for, but it was only two shots worse than Rory McIlroy and two shots better than a trio of Major champions in Ernie Els, John Daly and Todd Hamilton.

“It’s an amazing golf course,” Stubbs said in his pre-event assessment. “It’s pretty close to a true links. It’s seven out, two in a little loop and nine back in. It’s cool to play golf that way. I like it, but it’s a brutal golf course once that wind gets up.”

Japan’s Keita Nakajima would not disagree with those sentiments. The 2021 AAC winner also carded an 80, his card scarred with six bogeys and two double-bogeys against a solitary birdie.