Emiliano Grillo is savouring the moment. The Argentinian is currently having a ball at the Open, only the lip of a hole coming between him and the course record on Friday. He has also had the pleasure of watching his country lift an international football trophy this past week, something his hosts can’t quite say themselves. “It’s a nice week to be in England,” he admits. “Not for you guys, but for me it is.”
Recording a second-round score of 64 means the 28-year-old is six under par for the tournament and well placed going into the weekend at Royal St George’s. “Sixty-four is definitely a good round”, he said. “I got a little look at the 63. I didn’t know it was the course record but it doesn’t matter. Playing under par in a major is what you’re looking for.”
The little look came on the 18th when Grillo posted up an approach shot from 100 yards that spun across the green and towards the cup almost as if the ball had sensed its destiny. But after flirting with the lip, it apparently defied the law of gravity to spin out on to the green and deny Grillo an eagle. The birdie was sealed without difficulty.
For the world No 80 the past year has been one of ups and downs, with consistency the end goal. “When it’s been up it’s been up and when it’s been down it’s been down”, he says. “I’d rather play well than average, that’s for sure, but I haven’t been able to find that middle ground where I’m making putts and playing more consistently. It’s been either top 10 or a missed cut.”
Grillo says the putting has been coming together of late but that his work off the tee has been less productive. His PGA stats suggest Grillo’s talents lie the other way around, with his greens in regulation percentage the fourth best on the tour, ahead of Jon Rahm and Stewart Cink but behind fellow second-round breakout Collin Morikawa. In an Open where wedge shots are proving tricky for a number of players, Grillo’s style could yet serve him well. His one-putt percentage, on the other hand, is 37.5%, for a rank of 175th.
Grillo has won only one PGA tour title in his career, the Frys.com Open in 2016, and he is sanguine about the challenge that awaits him over the rest of the weekend. “You know you can do it, you know you can shoot low numbers out here,” he says. “But even if you don’t have the wind it’s still a tough golf course. I hope the weather can stay the same. Hopefully it dries up a little bit more and we get a little more roll and the short clubs off the tee, but you just have to keep doing what you’re doing. If it worked today, it can also work at the weekend. It doesn’t make a difference.”
If Grillo were to buck his 190-1 pre-tournament odds and win on the Kent coast he would become only the second Argentinian Open champion, after Roberto de Vicenzo at Birkdale in 1967. It would be quite an achievement but by his own admission would be unlikely to register with his fellow countrymen in anything like the way Argentina’s triumph over Brazil in the Copa América final has.
“Golf is probably the sixth or seventh biggest sport back home,” he says. “Angel Cabrera won a Masters and a US Open and there’s a lot of people who still don’t know anything about him or golf. There’s only 100,000 handicaps in Argentina, maybe another 100,000 who know a little bit about the sport. So it’s not big, and when you compare it to the UK or Europe or the US or even China, it’s just not growing.”
As for the football, Grillo is just as passionate as any other fan of La Albiceleste. “You could see how everyone just went and hugged [Lionel] Messi, it was a special moment,” he says.
“In my eyes Messi is the best player of all time so I think he just needs a little gold cup to have no doubts about it. I know I’m not up there with him but I’m trying my best. He’s won so many titles, I’m trying to get my number one this week and hopefully the rest will come.”