Aberdeen Antics

As I'm watching the lads at Royal Aberdeen go lower and lower, writers are still

debating whether Royal Aberdeen is too tough a test the week before the Open Championship.  I'm new at this golf writing thing, but when scoring is lower than the FedEx St. Jude Classic, maybe we oughta give that meme a rest?

In other news, Scottish Housewife Elsie demonstrates her abiding support for Scottish athletes with this:

Russell Knox must becoming a softie.. 24 deg C here today in the Highlands.. and sunshine all day.. and still shining now......

That's in reference to Know wearing a ski cap in yesterday's opening round.   It wasn't quite 24 degrees (that's metric for 75 degrees, a quaint relic just like the monarchy).  Of course Knox has two eagles on his outbound nine this morning, so that sound you're hearing is Elsie jumping back on the Knox bandwagon.

The Most Interesting Man in Golf had an interesting issue in a bunker yesterday:

As if getting out of a bunker wasn't hard enough at Royal Aberdeen. Throw in rodents around your ball in sand traps, and you're basically doomed. 

And for some reason, the fact that this happened to Miguel Angel Jimenez makes it all the more comical.

 

You have to love this, because the ruling is actually dependent upon the results of an autopsy:

The Most Interesting Man in Golf then inspects the rodent's status. Rule 23-6 in the Rules of

Golf state that a dead animal is a loose impediment and cannot be removed.

I didn't see this on the TV coverage, but I wonder if Miguel didn't jump the gun there.  Had the rules official determined after the fact that the rodent was dead, Miguel would have been hit with a penalty.

In other Aberdeen antics, Phil and Rory are both on the golf course trying to back up their strong first rounds, and both are having little success.

We all love the Mechanic, but he sported a look yesterday that needs to be avoided.  His bald spot was visible over the visor on the right side of his head, and it was gone later in the round, so perhaps someone provided a word to the wise.

As relates to the youngster, Alex Myers is asking if Rory is the best first round player ever:

OK, perhaps that's a bit too bold of a statement -- and one that would probably be impossible to prove -- but this season, no one has been better on Thursdays than Rory McIlroy. McIlroy continued his trend of going low on Day 1 at the Scottish Open with a 64 that gave him the course record at Royal Aberdeen and the early lead in his final tune-up for next week's British Open.

We saw a similar performance from McIlroy at the 2010 British Open. Then 21, McIlroy torched St. Andrews for a 63 before stumbling to an 80 on Day 2 (in fairness, conditions were much tougher the second day).

What amazes me about Rory is his lack of the appropriate weapons for links golf, given his passport.  In that second round 80 at the Old Course, he just kept throwing shots up on a sub-orbital flight path, never even trying to punch a lower shot.  Not what I expected from the guy that holds the course records at Portrush and now Aberdeen.   

Now, per this John  Huggan piece, Rory has at least stopped whining about it and, while I'd still like to hear

more conviction in the presentation, the words at least sound right in print:

"You've got to relish the challenge," said the man who, three years previously, had openly expressed a deep and profound distaste for a similar combination of links courses and less-than-perfect meteorological conditions. "I'm trying to adopt more of that mind-set, especially for these two weeks of the year."

It's always said that there's no need for yardage book on a links, which is not exactly true, it's just that the adjustment for the conditions is far greater.  But get a load of these wacky yardages, and remember that he played in the relative calm of the morning wave:

"I hit a really good drive into the wind on the seventh," he said. "And they measured it at 255 yards. Then on the 12th I drove it 373 yards. On the third hole I hit a 4-iron and it pitched at 187 yards and ran out another 40 yards. Then on the seventh I hit the same club 160 yards. That's nearly a 70-yard difference."

That's the challenge and the fun in it.  And mind you, he didn't even mention driving the green on the 436-yard 13th.

One last Rory note before we move on.  He failed to make birdie on the Par-5 second when he missed a putt that couldn't have been three feet.  It was a pretty obvious shove, as I could readily tell five time zones removed.  But Rory just glared at the line, as if it was inconceivable that you wouldn't start a putt of that length outside the hole.  He did the whole petulant routine the guys give us, with the minor exception that he didn't tamp down an imaginary spike mark.

Links golf is notorious for its tight lies, and the commentators would do well to explain that more in setting up the shots around the greens.  But Phil had an unnaturally tight lie yesterday, as per this unembeddable video ( though the announcers should really know to call it a buggy path).  And for phans of Phil phlops, check out this video of Phil flopping it backwards off the dunes in a practice round.