Andy DevaneyFélix Mory supplied the first proper jolt of the Danish Golf Championship, signing for a course-record 65 at Great Northern to lead by one after the opening round.
The Frenchman’s seven-under card put him ahead of Denmark’s Lucas Bjerregaard and South Africa’s Brandon Stone, giving a difficult first DP World Tour season a rather more elegant line than it had been wearing. Great Northern is hosting the championship in Kerteminde this year; Mory has introduced himself by lowering the number everyone else has to chase.
Mory finds a gear at Great Northern
There was little mystery to the early damage. Mory’s irons behaved themselves, which in professional golf is roughly equivalent to discovering the hotel has upgraded you and nobody intends to correct the mistake.
Close-range birdie chances followed at the first, third and sixth, while he drove the short par-four fourth and converted a long putt at the ninth to reach the turn in 31.
“I like to play in Scandinavia. I played really good. I was pretty solid off the tee and was pretty accurate with my irons. I didn’t miss too many greens because here if you start to miss the greens it’s pretty tough to get up and down in some places. It’s a really fun course to play and I had fun here.
I played a lot the last four weeks while I was off, I had a few games with friends, I was in France and we played a lot. It was nice to take time off and come here rested it’s fun to get going again, I love the tournament.”
That last point matters. Mory arrived having missed 12 cuts in 16 starts this season, although three made weekends in his previous five suggested the adjustment to DP World Tour life was finally becoming less theoretical.
Trouble arrives, then the 17th changes the mood
An up-and-down from sand at the 11th moved Mory to six under, before Great Northern reminded him that course records are rarely handed over without paperwork. Water at the 13th cost him, and another dropped shot followed after he missed the next green.
The response was the useful part. A birdie at the short par-four 16th stopped the leak, then the par-five 17th provided the round’s defining blow: a second shot finished inside ten feet and the eagle putt disappeared.
“Seventeen played really short today because we played downwind and I think I had like nine iron on the second shot on this par five and hit it close, I was in the rough and I thought it was going to be a flyer, and it did that. I was a bit lucky it ended up so close, I think six, seven feet but I hit a good putt, and it was nice to make the eagle.”
Bjerregaard keeps the home crowd interested
Bjerregaard’s 66 was untidier but no less useful. Starting at the tenth, the two-time DP World Tour winner built momentum with sharp iron play and an eagle at the 17th, briefly surrendering ground with a three-putt at 18 before working his way back into a share of the lead.
A missed opportunity at the fifth and bogey at the eighth left him one behind, but the important part for Danish spectators is obvious enough: the home challenge is not hiding in the middle of the leaderboard. It is one swing from the front.
Stone finds some life in an old putter
Stone matched Bjerregaard at six under, producing a finish that rather improved the complexion of his card. After mixing four birdies with two bogeys, he birdied the 15th and 16th and eagled the last.
His explanation involved an old putter, which is comforting news for every golfer who has ever kept obsolete equipment in a garage on the grounds that it may yet apologise.
Behind the leading three, Filippo Celli, Francesco Laporta, Wenyi Ding, Oliver Lindell and Freddy Schott share fourth place at five under. The leaderboard is compact enough that nobody at the top has earned the luxury of admiring it for long.
Mory’s adaptation is finally showing on the scorecard
The broader story is not simply that Mory shot 65. He matched the lowest DP World Tour round of his career at a moment when his season has begun to look less like survival and more like acclimatisation.
His graduation followed a strong 2025 HotelPlanner Tour campaign, so the struggle to carry that form immediately into the higher level has been an instructive one.
“I struggled a bit at the start of the year, to be honest with you, I didn’t think it was going to take me so long to adapt to the DP World Tour because I played a few years on HotelPlanner Tour.
I didn’t think it was going to be so different, but it’s more like the vibe is different. The golf courses are a bit more difficult, and they test your game a little more. I’m pretty confident with who’s on my bag and with my clubs as well. I’m getting the rhythm and trying to enjoy it as much as possible.”
One round does not settle a season, particularly on Thursday evening. It can, however, alter its temperature. Mory has spent much of 2026 learning how small the margins become one level higher.
At Great Northern, for one day at least, everybody else was learning his.
