At 6 feet 9 inches tall, Jonathan Thomson should be able to dunk a basketball. But this Englishman is a golfer and his tee shot at the 162-yard, par-3 16th hole at Royal St. George’s in Sandwich, England, was nothing but net.
The ace vaulted him inside the cutline and helped him shoot a second-round 3-under 67 on Friday for a 36-hole total of 2-under 138.
“You dream about playing in The Open as a kid and then you come here, have a hole-in-one and make the cut, and it’s just like, wow,” said Thomson, who lifted his arms to the sky in celebration.
Asked to recount the glorious shot, he said, “The roar, the shot, everything about that hole, it’s indescribable really. It sort of was a real booster because I was grinding out there as well, to be fair. It wasn’t easy. I was playing good. I just couldn’t seem to get anything going properly. Then that happened and it was like, you know, that’s just awesome.”
A big man with the big moment
6′ 9″ @jigger_thomson sends the crowd wild at 16 with the first ace of the week
#TheOpen pic.twitter.com/FAnBYb3boV
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 16, 2021
The last to make a hole in one at 16 in a British Open at Royal St. George’s? None other than Tom Watson in 2011. England’s Tony Jacklin, the former British and U.S. Open champion, made the first hole-in-one shown on live television at the same hole in the 1967 Dunlop Masters.
The 25-year-old Thomson, a native of Sheffield, England, is making his major championship debut after finishing second to New Zealander Daniel Hillier in the 36-hole Final Qualifying at Hollinwell, where he is the attached professional.
Thomson first picked up a club at the age of five at Rotherham Golf Club where he practiced alongside future Masters Tournament winner Danny Willett. Thomson has the height for basketball or to be a lineman in football, but he was diagnosed with leukemia when he was seven and had to give up impact sports. After recovering from the illness at 12, he grew to become the tallest player in European Tour history in 2018 and currently ranks 889th in the world while competing on the European Tour’s Challenge Tour. So far, he has handled his big break well.
“We’ve done a really good job of taking control of this is just another golf tournament,” he said. “Obviously it is a major, but we’ve done a real good job of managing that so far, and that’s certainly one of the aims going forward, to keep on top of it.”