Troon Tribulations

Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

It's Open week, so of course sales of SPF50 sunscreen are through the roof.  What?  

There's no such thing as bad weather in Scotland," said entertainer Billy Connolly, a native of the country. "Only inappropriate clothing." Judging by the forecasts for Royal Troon, hopefully the 2016 Open Championship field packed proper attire. 

The early outlook isn't promising for Troon this week. According to Accuweather, it could rain every day during the British Open, with Friday envisioned to be particularly wet. Moreover, storms are expected to bring heavy winds, with gusts reaching as high as 30 mph.

It's not an Open Championship until one sees the first ski cap, if not a brolly....

Shack uses his Forward Press feature to note the significance of The Golf Channel televising their first major:

After 21 years and commencing at the same course where their founder won his second

Open, Golf Channel joins the exclusive world of men’s major championship television coverage. 

A cable channel covering a major is nothing new to American audiences given that ESPN was the first to take one of golf’s four biggest championships exclusively to pay TV. Here in the UK, this year’s move to Sky Sports continues to be frowned upon even as the combination of resources between Golf Channel, NBC and Sky figures to upgrade the The Open’s world feed, which will account for a decent portion of coverage on both sides of the Atlantic. (Sky is even offering Thursday’s coverage free to entice new subscribers.) 

Arnold Palmer and Joe Gibbs’ channel devoted to golf moves to another level in hosting one of the big four. Given that Golf Channel doesn’t have to cut away to a NASCAR show, the huge commitment to their first Open at Royal Troon may be taken for granted. But not at their Orlando headquarters.

The broadcast windows are long, and Geoff shares the Yin and Yang of what to expect, including this that I'd guess will cause projectile to be hurled at my Samsung:

While we know the voices, much of NBC and Golf Channel’s success will depend on how they are able to make links golf resonate with American audiences that have been quietly dwindling for this championship. That means teaming composer Yanni with bagpiper Eric Rigler (Braveheart, Titanic) to brush up the famous “In Celebration of Man” theme that become the iconic U.S. Open theme during NBC’s tenure. Stephen Dillane of Game of Thrones voices several pre-produced pieces playing up the annual return to links golf.

After the two U.S. Opens, haven't we suffered enough?  But this sounds intriguing:

Producer Roy is most excited about a new feature that will come in handy on firm, fast links (Troon is not at the moment). Called NBC Links Trax, the technology utilizes the Hawk-Eye technology that detects where balls land on tennis course lines. 

Links Trax graphically highlights where a ball lands and tracking its path and proximity to the hole. Throw in NBC’s new graphic package playing off of iconic Open Championship elements, wind gauges galore and no shortage of voices, with the hope we see golf’s oldest championship in a new light.

Troon is very, very green, which you should read as "soft".  But you'd have thought that Geoff might have worked in the most obvious of benefits for golf fans, the absence of Joe Buck.  On a sadder note, we'll also have to get through the awards ceremony without Diana "Bethany" Murphy, whose slurred rendition of Champion Golfer of the Year might make me forget Yanni....

For those of a Karmic bent, do enjoy this video of Rory making a nine on the Postage Stamp, though I'd temper the glee since it was, you know, a practice round....

And aren't we glad that Veej got into the field at the last minute?

At 52, Marco Dawson's first British Open appearance was bound to be memorable no matter what happened. But after Tuesday, it's unclear how much his caddie will even remember of the trip to Royal Troon thus far. 

Dawson's looper, William Ciplinski, had Tuesday's practice round cut short after being struck in the head by an errant tee shot. The accident occurred with Dawson and Padraig Harrington on the famed "Postage Stamp" green. As the players in his group were finishing up the eighth hole, Ciplinski was hit by Vijay Singh's drive on No. 7.

We can kid our old friend Vijay because Ciplinski is fine.

Jaime Diaz displays his narrative skills, making an event won by Mark Calcavecchia seem riveting:

Some tournaments stay in the mind longer and more vividly than others. Though all golf

courses are beautiful, sometimes there’s something particular about the physical stage where the key moments play out that imprints indelible images and accompanying sensations.

Such events don’t have to be major championships. But because its stark and elemental links atmosphere enhances all the senses, the Open Championship is best for creating such scenes. 

Troon in 1989 was such a place. It’s far from the most picturesque of Open venues. Even though the town and course lie hard on the coastline of the Firth of Clyde, the setting is spare and dour, accented by unlovely things like a trailer park, the institutional Marine Hotel and a suitably ancient but not particularly charming clubhouse.

That's certainly my sense of the place, though your mileage may vary.... 

Norman made it exciting, with his epic final round in which he finished ninety minutes before the final group....  But then he imploded in the most Normanesque of fashions....

My biggest takeaway?  Apparently Calc knew the bunker was in play, but Norman didn't?  Curious that, but one assumes Norman capable of finding other ways to drop kick it away.... He was just that good.

Is the Open Championship the best of the majors?  Gary Van Sickle makes the case, and "birdies the opening hole" with this:

1. The Open Championship is golf’s greatest event because it’s the oldest and has the game’s greatest pedigree. Hell, it’s the granddaddy of all modern sporting events. It began more than a century before the first Super Bowl.

The Open was first contested by eight hardy Scots playing three 12-hole rounds in a single grueling day in 1860. How old is this event? Some perspective: the U.S. flag had only 33 stars. The Civil War hadn’t happened and World War I was more than 50 years away. The Pony Express started the same year as the Open but the tournament pre-dates automobiles, the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Harry Potter and Nike. 

That’s old.

To connect Gary's dots, it's a mere 35 years older than The U.S. Open but an impressive 84 years older than The Masters.  But you know the rest, the Championship Belt, the Claret Jug and Bobby Jones..... though this might be the strongest of his ten reasons:

7. Links golf is why the Open Championship is the best major.  Scotland and England (and Ireland, of course) have cornered the world’s market on great links golf. The Old Course. Royal Troon. Turnberry. (Or is it Trumpberry now that Donald Trump owns it?) Royal Birkdale. Royal St. George’s. And the rest of the Open rota. 

You turn on the TV to watch the Open coverage and here’s what you see: Sodded face bunkers. Swales. Brown fairways. Burnt-out fescue. High winds. Sideways rain. Grim, worried faces. It’s obviously the Open Championship… or a “Sharknado” sequel.

Green this week, but we take your point, Gary, and enthusiastically agree.  Mike Bamberger, by contrast, is casting the CBS reality show, Survivor-Troon:

"You don't need a lot of flash to be successful there," says Todd Hamilton, who won the last Open at Troon. "You just need—" 

Uh, internal fortitude. 

This will be the ninth Open played at Troon, and the last six have been won by Americans, each of them an expert in workingman's golf. "You go to that 1st tee with your lunch pail," Hamilton says. Arnold Palmer won at Troon in 1962, Tom Weiskopf in '73, Tom Watson in '82, Mark Calcavecchia in '89, Justin Leonard in '97 and Hamilton in 2004.

O.K., Weiskopf could be viewed as the outlier in that group. He was a perfectionist and suffered for it. But that week in '73 he accepted the haphazard nature of seaside golf. The winner at Troon will be somebody who knows how to roll with the punches.

It's always hard to draw too many conclusions from that prior groups of winners, because Palmer and Watson weren't exactly mudders..... it really depends on the how much you believe that weather forecast above.

 Bams has a couple of other forecasts, the first from that Weiskopf fellow:

For that reason, among others, Weiskopf is bullish on Dustin Johnson. "I think he'll run the tables," he says. Weiskopf envisions four rounds in which Johnson drives it past Troon's menacing fairway bunkers and thereby plays a course far different from many of his competitors, who will be inclined to use irons off the tee to stay short of the traps.

I don't know the course well enough to know if that's true, but it's how The Old Course played from the Nicklaus through Tiger eras.  They flew the trouble that got in other players' way, but now everyone in the field can carry it...

But this, after Oakmont and with that Accuweather forecast in mind, is all-too believable:

Weiskopf says you could see a similar problem this week but with a different result. "As exposed as some of those greens are at Troon, on that front nine especially, you could have that same situation, easily," he says. A ball moves while a player is standing over it. "But over there, that R&A runs the event with so much authority, so much knowledge, you'll never have a situation like that mess in Oakmont. They'll say, 'O.K., tell me what happened.' It will be a shot or not, and they'll play on." 

Weiskopf's point is this: The Scots invented the rules and the language of the game. You'll never hear a self-respecting British golf snob speak of a "signature hole." But play on is a war cry over there. That and, on you go. The Open is not an entertainment to them. It is a championship, the oldest and broadest in all of golfdom. You may not remember the 12th hole at Troon. But you'll remember who won there and how he did it.

As we've seen at St. Andrews, the effects of the distance race has come where least expected, on the exposed links of Scotland.....  they had to suspend play last year because balls were oscillating wildly (an oxymoron, I think, but bear with me) on their greens, which are more tightly mowed than ever conceived to offer some kind of defense to the ancient fields of play.  

Stimpmeter readings are less gaudy than at an Oakmont, but still unsustainable given the expected winds in those locales.... players can't play when balls are moving, though no doubt the R&A is more likely to accept the answer that the wind did it than their cousins in Far Hills....  But still we find ourselves at a bit of a crossroads, where fast greens are required to test the players, but they can't play on those greens in normalish winds.

The only saving grace at Troon is that the greens are pretty flat, so perhaps that and the lushness will save us this week.

Have you see Lee Wybranski's poster for this week's event.... He's very good and I like it very much, evocative as it is of the wonderful old British Rail posters:

Obviously an hommage to  the 8th hole and its nickname, though couldn't he get a railway line into it somehow?

If you're not familiar with Troon's famed Railway Hole, here's some video that will acquaint you.  It's the most difficult hole on the golf course and the drive is especially brutal:

Enjoy the week and I'm sure I'll have more for you as the week progresses.