The Open: Jhonattan Vegas on his torrid trip to Carnoustie

Jhonattan Vegas compared his journey to The Open as "like a horror movie" after he endured a number of problems getting to Carnoustie.

Vegas arrived at the course just an hour before his 10:31am tee time, without his clubs, and fired a five-over 76 after hasty preparations on the range.

The Venezuelan was scheduled to fly to Scotland late last week, but he then realised his visa had expired and he was not issued with the required paperwork until Wednesday.

The 33-year-old flew from Houston to Toronto and then onto Glasgow, where a helicopter was waiting to whisk him to Carnoustie just in time for him to board the first tee alongside Xander Schauffele and Tony Finau.

"It almost seemed like it was a horror movie happening for the past week," said Vegas afterwards. "Last Thursday I was supposed to travel here, get here by Friday morning, have a few days to kind of adjust to the time and all that stuff. So I look at my visa, and I got really confused with the dates.

"It wasn't that big of a deal because I could have gotten a visa in 24 hours, but the people at the consulate in New York responded on Monday morning, saying that I applied for the wrong visa. We fixed it on Monday, and I was supposed to be in Houston on Tuesday morning, to get our flight and be here Wednesday, right? But that didn't happen.

"Something happened with UPS in New York that the whole UPS shut down. So the visa never left New York until late that day. So I went Wednesday morning, got it, got on a flight from Houston to Toronto, and I got my agents to give me a helicopter ride from Glasgow here. But my clubs decided not to show up today, which was nice that the only bag that didn't show up was my golf clubs!

"But at the end of the day, I gave it a try. I wouldn't do it every single day. It's fun playing here. It's fun playing majors, fun playing The Open. This is my second one, so I wouldn't really miss it for anything.

"As long as I had a shot at making it, I was going to go for it. And like I said, I played this even feeling awful. It feels good, I'm sure, if you tell anyone in the world, you're going to have a chance to play The Open Championship, even if you show up two hours before the time, everyone in the world would take it.

"So I definitely did and gave it a try, and it didn't work out as good as I wanted."

Just a couple of hours after stepping off his overnight flight, Vegas bogeyed the second and third holes and, although he pulled one back at the long sixth, he dropped another shot at the ninth to slip back to two over.

He also bogeyed 11, 15 and the final hole to return a 76, but Vegas can enjoy a relaxing evening and a decent lie-in on Friday as he does not begin his second round until 3:32pm.