The rain is tumbling down at Carnoustie and the hard and fast links that claimed victims such as Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Sergio Garcia yesterday is a markedly different beast today. One of them men who coped quite well with the conditions in the first round was Rory McIlroy as he carded an opening round of 69 to sit three off the lead. Reporting from Carnoustie, Philip Reid writes that the 2014 champion's strategy of being aggressive off the tee reaped dividends, even though he didn't drive it well. One man who did drive it well was Paul Dunne and that was despite a cyst on his right hand which he has delayed surgery on in order to play this week. Last year's British Masters winner managed to play through the pain in carding a level par round of 71. McIlroy is the first of the Irish in action this morning at 7.52am and you can follow all of the action on our liveblog from 7.30am.
On to hurling and Jackie Tyrrell writes in his column this week that Lee Chin's attempt at full-time hurling has not worked out. The Wexford man gave up his job last year to focus fully on hurling but the former Kilkenny man does not believe that it has worked out and points to someone like Cats goalkeeper Eoin Murphy as the perfect example of how to live life off the pitch. "Are you setting yourself a schedule and sticking to it as if it's a job? Or are you taking it handy, doing a few bits here and there, whiling away the hours on the couch before you go to training in the evening?" Tyrrell writes.
In soccer there was bitter disappointment for Shamrock Rovers last night after they managed to beat AIK 1-0 in Stockholm to force extra-time before losing out by a single goal in the final 30 minutes and therefore crashing out of the Europa League. Derry City followed their Dublin counterparts out despite beating Dinamo Minsk 2-1 in Belarus. That leaves Dundalk and Cork as the only two Irish teams in the competition after Stephen Kenny's men held on for a 2-1 win on the night against Levadia Tallinn, giving them a 3-1 aggregate victory that was watched by Martin O'Neill as well as the Peak6 consortium which took over Dundalk at the start of the season. Stateside, Manchester United's pre-season campaign got underway with a shaky 1-1 draw against Club America in Phoenix thanks to Juan Mata's late equaliser.
In cycling, Geraint Thomas extended his Tour de France lead yesterday with his win on Alpe d'Huez while Ireland's Dan Martin lost ground on what he described as "such a hard day".
“I wasn’t even breathing hard, I just had nothing left in my legs. It was just getting to the top as fast as possible. [The issue]is just general tiredness,” Martin said afterwards.
In athletics, Ireland's Phil Healy and Ciara Mageean finished just off the pace at the Morton Games last night in what is good preparation for the European Championships which take place in Berlin in three week's time.
