Branden Grace shot 8-under 62 at Royal Birkdale in 2017, the lowest round anyone had ever posted in a men’s major. Nobody matched it at the course again until Friday, when Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns both did it in the same round.

Herbert signed for his 62 first. Twenty-two minutes later, Burns matched him. In a post on X, PGA TOUR Communications confirmed the number: six players, seven rounds of 62, ever, in men’s major championship history. Grace, Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, and Shane Lowry were the only other names on it.

Playing in fast, dry conditions with almost no wind, Herbert birdied six of his first nine holes, including the opening three, to make the turn in 28, tying the record for the lowest nine-hole score in Open history. He added birdies at 11, 12, and 16 on the back nine, then faced a 5-foot putt on 18 for a chance to shoot 61 and stand alone as the lowest round ever recorded in a men’s major. The putt slid by.

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“I’m absolutely disappointed, and at the same time, so proud of today. Very, very proud to put my name on that list of guys that have shot 62 in a major championship. So it’s kind of holding two emotions there at the same time… it’s a pretty good problem to have, to be disappointed you shot 62,” Herbert said in a post-round conference.

That miss cost him a piece of outright history, but it didn’t cost him the lead. Two groups behind Herbert, Sam Burns was building a matching round: two front-nine birdies, six more on the back, and a closing birdie-birdie-birdie run that came down to a single shot from a bunker on 18.

“It’s a hard hole. It was a tricky bunker shot because I had to land it in the fringe there and use the slope down to the hole. Definitely very lucky for it to go in,” Burns said.

Burns’ closing birdie ensured Royal Birkdale would once again be at the center of major championship history.

Royal Birkdale Now Has Three of the Seven 62s Ever Shot in a Men’s Major

Fowler and Schauffele had been the first to share the number on the same day, at the 2023 U.S. Open; Schauffele matched himself at the 2024 PGA Championship, and Lowry joined him there two days later. Until Friday, Grace had been the only man to reach 62 at The Open specifically, meaning Herbert and Burns tripled Royal Birkdale’s share of the record in a single afternoon.

The same week produced another number that had never been seen before. Six days before Herbert and Burns’s rounds, Haeran Ryu shot a third-round 60 at the Amundi Evian Championship, the lowest round ever posted in a men’s or women’s major, in either tour’s history.

Herbert’s 62 put him into the solo lead at 8-under. Burns sits three shots back at 5-under, tied for fifth alongside Bryson DeChambeau and Si Woo Kim. Herbert, a member of LIV Golf’s Ripper GC, tees off Saturday at 3:50 pm BST, twenty minutes ahead of Burns’s 3:30 pm start, as both carry a share of the record with them into the weekend.

Two rounds remain at Royal Birkdale. Whatever happens on Saturday and Sunday, Friday’s 62s are already locked into the record books; the question now is whether Herbert or Burns can turn a historic round into golf’s biggest prize, the Claret Jug.