Tommy Fleetwood broke the course record at Carnoustie to co-lead after two rounds alongside defending champion Tyrrell Hatton at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

The round, which included nine birdies and nine pars, moved him alongside fellow Englishman Hatton who fired a fine round of 65 in the same conditions on Carnoustie, continuing to ride the momentum from his top-ten finish at Close House.

Absent from the British Masters stellar field, the Race to Dubai leader, Fleetwood is playing his first event since the birth of son Franklin last week.

With life great at the moment the Englishman held nothing back with a perfectly orchestrated round of 63 to reach to 11 under.

The 26-year-old returns for his fourth event since July and showed no signs of fatigue with all parts of his game firing on all cylinders.

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A two-time winner on tour this season Fleetwood hit 90% of regulation and only needed just over one putt on the greens. With a new driver in the bag also, switching to the Titleist 917 model, he averaged 285 yards and hit over 60% of fairways.

Fleetwood made a quick start, carding birdies on the second, fourth and sixth holes but turned the heat up on the back-nine. He made five birdies in a row from the 11th.

He hit the pin for a tap-in birdie on the fifteenth, nearly chipped-in from the edge of the green on the 16th and stroked an eight-footer home on the last to carve his name into the history books.

I played well, putted well. It just unravels really, sometimes it does that.

“Most of the times, those are your best rounds when you don’t quite realise what you’re doing.”

“I would love to win a tournament. Fleetwood said after his historic round. “I’d love to win this tournament. The goal every week is to try and win whatever you’re playing in.”

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The English duo lead by one shot over Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts on, while first-round co-leader Paul Dunne sits in a tie for fourth on 9-under alongside Marcel Siem.

Three birdies in-a-row from Hatton on the front-nine saw him make the start of another sublime sub-70 round. This form continued from the 13th and he added his fifth birdie of the day on the 14th, before chipping in at the 16th despite sailing his tee-shot way left.

Hopefully I can have a good one at Kingsbarns tomorrow and all to play for for Sunday.

Colsaerts carded a 67 round the Old Course at St Andrew’s to reach ten-under and leads the field in greens-in-regulation over the course of the week.

Birdies came on the tenth, 11th and 18th to go out in 33 but the big-hitting Belgian found ‘Swilcan Burn’ on the first making a double-bogey to lose the ground he had just made.

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But when it’s your day, it’s your day and ‘The Dude’ found red numbers on the second, fourth and fifth to show defiance. He then ended his round in spectacular form driving the ninth and making another birdie to reach double figures after two rounds.

In his final tournament of the season, Rory McIlroy’s 71 left him 11 shots off the lead on level alongside Lee Westwood, struggling to make the cut in a winless season for the world number six.