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Min Woo Lee was keeping up a brave face after a triple bogey - and a visit to a molehill - soured what should have been a fine debut at the British Open.

Not that he wanted to make a mountain out of a molehill in the rough but Min Woo Lee has discovered the hard way just how capricious the British Open can be.

In his description of just one crazy hole which turned his debut round at a major championship upside down on Thursday, the rising Australian star summed up his adventures on the 15th, when his ball ended up in a trap that nature had created, with a mixture of bemusement and world-weary resignation.

It was the longest par-four on the course at 496 yards at Royal St George's, and the 22-year-old was chugging along quite nicely at level par, thinking that if he could start converting some of the birdie chances he'd been giving himself, he could end up with a round in the 60s.

So, what happened next Lee?

"Well, I hit a pretty poor drive, was in a pretty bad position in the rough and I thought I could hack it out," he mused.

"But then it's gone and ended up in a worse spot. But then, luckily, the rules officials gave me a free drop because there were sandpits there where a mole had been burrowing there.

"So then I hit it out to the right, but I was in thick hay again - and then into a bunker again."

He paused for a moment as he reflected on it all, before concluding with a shrug: "I suppose that's Open golf..."

He wasn't wrong.

The triple bogey seven he walked off the 15th green with had destroyed his round and he admitted that, though he recovered to par the next two holes, he was "mentally drained" by the time he reached the 18th and racked up another bogey to finish at four-over.

Not that he was complaining.

"I mean, it was fair. You hit it good, and you can score - and then you hit it bad, and you get penalised," he said.

"For my first major, I was enjoying it until I made my triple bogey, but there's another day that I can bring it back."

With the field making hay in the fairly accommodating morning conditions before the wind began to whip up, Lee reckoned he hadn't felt nervous in his first major.

"I think for my first major I handled myself pretty good other than that one hole," he said.

Yet, clearly, the adventures of the past week since he won the biggest tournament of his career, the Scottish Open, to earn his surprise place at Sandwich had taken a bit more out of him than he'd suspected.

"I think I got a bit caught up in just the golf round. I won last week, I should be happy. But I'm going to enjoy this afternoon off and, hopefully, play well tomorrow.

"I've got not too much pressure on my back, I'm just going to go out there tomorrow and try to make a lot of birdies."

A 66, he fancies, will ensure he's here for the weekend - and a phone call to his big sister Minjee, one of the world's best, may be in order.

"I didn't get that much advice from her (before my first round)," he shrugged.

"Probably why I played bad."