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Publication by EssentiallySports |
July 17, 2026 | Edition #353 |
👋 {{readername | Hey golf fans}},
“Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo,” sing George Harrison and Paul McCartney,
“Here comes the sun
And I say, ‘It's all right’”
The bright day on Merseyside probably had Bryson DeChambeau humming the Beatles song on his way to 'threading' Royal Birkdale. And why not? Not only is he just two shots off the leader, Jackson Suber, but he also answered Nick Faldo's harsh comments about his strategy in kind. Meanwhile, Scottie Scheffler earned a new award, a pro 'apologized' to his mother, and Tiger Woods spoke about Royal Birkdale. You will find all this, plus your regular golf game, poll, some interesting numbers from Birkdale, and more in today's edition.
Let’s get started…
Bryson's not-so-subtle jab has gotten a response from Faldo as well. The six-time major champ wants to take some credit for Bryson's round.
Jackson Suber leads after first round. But can you guess how many players are within five shots off the lead? 68% of our readers got it wrong.
You Shipped an AI Feature. Your Database Felt It.
When you add AI to your app, the data profile changes overnight. Every prompt, response, and user interaction becomes a timestamped event. That's not your app's usual row count.
Vanilla Postgres handles it until it doesn't. Query times creep up. Dashboard refreshes slow down. You start reaching for a second database or a data pipeline to offload the load.
TimescaleDB extends Postgres for exactly this. It doesn't replace what's working. It makes Postgres stay fast as AI-generated data piles up.
Hypertables partition your data automatically as volume grows. Hypercore compression cuts storage 10x. Continuous aggregates keep your dashboards live without re-querying everything. No pipeline. No second database. No migration.
Same Postgres. Same SQL. Just built to handle what AI features actually generate.
If You Get a Chance, Which of These English Links Courses Would You Like to Play?
Last Poll Result: 39.34% of you have equal love for two specific Open Championship moments: Tom Watson’s 1977 win and John Daly’s 1995 victory. 13.27% of you voted Padraig Harrington’s 2008 title defense your favorite.
Most popular stories this week
4: The number of players to lead or co-lead The Open after R1 on their debut. The last player to lead or co-lead after R1 was Jordan Spieth in 2017, who won.
4.353: The 6th played the hardest in round 1 with a stroke average of 4.353. The hole witnessed only 10 birdies and 89 pars for the day.
26: 26 of the past 122 champions have been in the lead or co-lead after R1. Jordan Spieth did it last time in 2017.
68: Scottie Scheffler’s R1 68 was the lowest opening-round score by a defending champion since 2016. Zach Johnson shot 67 in round one that week.
113: The total number of champions since 1892 within five strokes of the lead after R1. There are currently 59 players within that range.
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