ISPS HANDA Senior Open: Day one digest

Percy hit the front, Sabbatini was playing like he'd never been away, there was pin-seeking at the 16th and everyone loved the driveable par four on day one of the ISPS HANDA Senior Open. Here is everything you need to know from The Geneagles Hotel.

Percy on top

Cameron Percy produced a brilliant birdie blitz around the turn to take a one-shot lead after day one of the ISPS HANDA Senior Open. The Australian teed off in the favourable early conditions at The Gleneagles Hotel and made the most of the calm winds, recording four birdies in a row from the ninth in a 63 that got him to seven under. Frenchman Lionel Alexandre was his nearest rival after a bogey-free 64, one shot ahead of four-time Major champion Ernie Els, 2018 winner of this event Miguel Ángel Jiménez and American duo Tom Penrice Jr and Pat Perez. "I drove it really good but you have to here," said Percy. "I didn't hit in the rough once and so that was really nice. Seemed to have really good numbers, and I stopped pretty close to the hole and made a couple of putts. The par fives, I drove on in two and the short par four I drove, and that helped."

Rust? What rust?

Between August 2023 and April 2026 Rory Sabbatini played six competitive rounds of golf - on Thursday he fired a 67 in a Senior Major. The Slovakian played no ranking golf at all in 2025 as he took a break which he admits he "loved" but on April 2 he turned 50 and became eligible for the senior game. Within two weeks he was teeing off at the Senior PGA Championship and while he missed that cut, he has not missed another in seven appearances on the Champions Tour. "It's good to be out here," he said. "Obviously I stepped way from the game for about two-and-a-half years, and I'm not going to lie, I loved that a lot. That was very enjoyable. Decided end of March to come back out here and been slowly working on getting some of the rust out of the game. It's getting there. It's getting closer. Obviously when you take two-and-a-half years off and you come back, I was showing up putting on marble greens and I was using a sledgehammer it felt like. I had no touch, no control. That started to come back. Knocking the rust off and cleaning up areas of the game. All of it is starting to come back into form. Yeah, definitely a lot of positives."

Sweet 16

Not one but two Ryder Cup captains nearly made holes-in-one at the 16th.

14 brings the fun

Big drives and long putts - everybody loves a driveable par four.

The great escape

The scoring may have been impressive but the King's Course is still a real test - as Stephen Gallacher and Søren Kjeldsen found out.