Lots to cover, so buckle up and let's have at it:
Ever wonder about the origins of the town's name? Mike Tirico (via Shack) have you covered....
Go ahead, blame it on the Vikings. I had always assumed that only the Russians could be responsible for such a dour place....
What should we expect? Experienced linksologists know it all begins on the spectrum.... the color spectrum, that is:
Yellow, on its way to brown.... Purge '99 and '07 from your memory banks, this will not in any way resemble those weeks.
The Forecaddie, a/k/a The Man Out Front, expects lots of birdies:
The Forecaddie finally took a stroll around Carnoustie and got a close look at the conditions. As Tiger Woods said Sunday, the fairways are faster than the greens and, for The Man Out Front, the look is hard to like.
As magnificent as the firm, yellow-beige-dead fairways look in person to lovers of links, the poa annua and fescue greens are too green, too soft and holding shots enough that TMOF can’t envision players trying many long run-up shots. In practice rounds, The players have been attacking hole locations with ease and appear unfazed by the ground firmness.
Also of note is the rough. The tall stuff is not very tall in most places and pretty harmless. In spots, like the 18th, some denser grasses might complicate matters for the bomb-and-gouge approach. And certainly there will be flyers, but overall The Forecaddie won’t fault players who attack Carnoustie.
Here we pause to contemplate our first major surprise, to wit, the guys are planning on hitting more drivers than assumed from all the Hoylake '06 comparisons. Brooks Koepka, as an example, could hit as many as nine drivers per round, and he's not alone. Bomb-and-Gouge on a baked-out links? We'll see how that works out....
It smells like a wide-open Open, as seconded by Alistair Tait:
According to Rose, anyone can win the 147th Open.
“The beauty of this golf course is that length isn’t a necessity, which brings the whole field into it,” Rose said.
Carnoustie is so hard and dry bombers such as Johnson aren’t necessarily going to have an advantage. Anyone who hits fairways this week is a bomber. There’s absolutely no grass or soft areas to stop the forward momentum of tee shots. Johnson and 2007 champion Padraig Harrington hit tee shots into the Barry Burn short of the 18th green in practice rounds – 475 yards off the tee.
Forget obvious favorites. Sixty-year-old Bernhard Langer is a 500-1 shot. He’s won three Senior Opens in the last eight years. His first came in 2010 at Carnoustie.“It’s going to favor a patient one for sure because even if you play this golf course aggressively, you’re going to have ups and downs during the week,” Rose said.
OK, but it isn't THAT wide open.... Here's a guy that intends to B&G his way around:
Not everyone seems intimidated though.
“The rough isn’t as thick as I expected,” said Harry Diamond, who caddies for Rory McIlroy. “It’s playable.”
He expects his man to hit a lot of drivers to take some fairway hazards out of play.At least one wily veteran of ’99 agrees with Diamond. Back then Duval opened 79-75 and made the cut. He eventually finished T-62. He was 22 over par. He still shakes his head ruefully at the memory, the pain of which hasn’t faded with the years.
As always, consider the source.... That sentiment would be sufficient to take Rory off my list, but of course with childhood friend Harry Diamond on the bag he hasn't sniffed my list of picks. I don't know the right strategy for the week, I just don't expect our Rors to trip over it until Monday at the earliest.
That Golfweek item has quite the good lede as well:
CARNOUSTIE, Scotland — This dour Scottish links, named for the dreary town for which it provides the sole reason to visit, is not an aesthetically handsome course. But Carnoustie has never been about beauty. It’s about brutality, the medieval rack of British Open venues, designed to stretch knights of the golfing realm to breaking point.
Many competitors snap early in the tournament, others late. Some aren’t even intact when they step onto the first tee Thursday. There may not be a course on the planet that can intimidate the world’s best golfers as readily as Carnoustie.
Much of that repute owes to the infamous 1999 Open, when superintendent John Philp defended his beloved course in much the same way that a pitbull defends its master: without favor, restraint or regret. But that was almost two decades ago. Is that reputation warranted?
Dour? Dreary? I'd have used "grim" as well, but let's not quibble... It's less than an hour from St. Andrews, but a world apart.
Ryan Herrington likes this guy:
Still, the case can be made that Rose is playing the best golf of his career right now atage 37. Since the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs last August, the Englishman has had four wins, 17 top-10s in 22 worldwide starts and moved up to No. 3 in the World Ranking.
For this reason, Rose comes to Carnoustie with an abundance of confidence, if also a little caution. He acknowledges his record in the Open hasn’t been what he hoped: just one additional top-10 (T-6 at St. Andrews in 2015) since his finish in 1998.
“I don’t believe in superstition or anything like that, but I just feel like my game is in a good spot,” Rose said. “I feel like I’m playing well and creating chances regularly. So, yeah, it’s up to me, really. Not stats or not records. It’s just about me and playing this golf course this week and creating my chance to win.”
Fair enough, but after picking him in both The Masters and U.S. Open, we're through.... Bizarre though, that his only Top-5 in this event was at Birkdale as an amateur. Burn me once, shame on you.... Of course back in the day I picked Sergio to win 7-8 Opens, and we know how that worked out.
Rose remains unsettled on strategy:
Despite his familiarity with the course, Rose says he has yet to finalize a game plan for how he’ll approach it this week. The unusually firm-and-fast conditions of the course has Rose trying to decide how aggressive he will be off the tee.
“It’s probably going to be a mixture of [drivers and irons],” Rose said. “Definitely for me it’s going to be knowing when to attack, and I think it’s going to be about good strategy, knowing which pins are your birdie opportunities, which pins to respect.
“I always start off quite conservative in my game plan, and by the time I get to Sunday, I’ve changed it dramatically through the week as well. So it is always a fluid situation. I think, until you see the forecast on a links course, you can’t really make too much of [it].”
Luke Kerr-Dineen does a deep dive into the finishing hole in an attempt to make this rather insignificant case:
British Open 2018: Breaking down one of the most underrated shots in golf history
Meh! His point is that Lawrie had a one-shot lead in the playoff, and hit an underrated shot to the green to win his claret jug. We can stipulate to the fact that the shot didn't get its due, and still not care very much. It's Paul Lawrie, for God's sake, there's no reason for us to care...
I want to use his work in support of two other points, the first being the misunderstood nature of the finishing hole at Carnoustie. It's a bear, often called the toughest finishing hope in either Open Championship or major championship golf, a justifiable premise. But mostly it's justified based upon the meandering Barry Burn, which the player crossed three times on the hole:
The Barry is a factor for sure, but I would argue that it's to OB stakes left that raises the threat level from Red Zone to Soiled Undergarments.
My second point is to reargue the Van de Velde meltdown, of which you'll see much this week, which is largely misunderstood. The Frog made a horrible mistake off the tee, in my opinion, in hitting driver. All that accomplished was to bring the narrowest section of fairway and the burn on both the left and right into play. I'd have hit an iron to that section of fairway short of the burn, but he got away with that mistake. If my memory is correct, the ball actual wa son the ealking bridge but ended up playable to the right of the burn.
From there, most of us would have had him play short of the burn, pitch onto the green, and collect his hardware. He opted for a different strategy, one that is employed by tour pros far more than any of us realize, he hit a two iron deliberately towards the grandstand to the right of the green. They do this to take advantage of the generous drop they get when impaired by a TIO, and Van de Velde successfully pulled off the shot, easily clearing the dreaded Barry Burn.
Alas, just as the French didn't envision the need for the Maginot Line to protect their border with Belgium, Jean neglected one niggling detail.... His ball struck a handrail, crazily bouncing to the other side of the burn into an unplayable lie. This has to be one of the all-time worst breaks in the history of our game.... You go out there with many large buckets of balls and never hit a handrail, and even if you did, the odds of that bounce are infinitesimal..... If the ball bounces into the burn, he likely still wins the Open.
Enough on that, shall we get to Alan's Mailbag? You know the drill...Alan Shipnuck cracking wise enabled by his Twitter feed. before we get to the main event, Alan took a side trip en route to Dundee:
I'm especially excited because en route to Carnoustie I'm stopping in Portrush to peep all the preparations for next year's Open. I shall report on what I find. Until then…
Portrush will be a great venue... I can't wait for hsi report, but also for next year's Open. Hold that thought....
I think guys who played the Scottish Open last week benefit greatly from a week of links style play. Agree/disagree and why..... -@MikeInTheCouv
For sure it's better preparation than the John Deere. You can never give yourself too much time to acclimate to the bouncy turf and slower greens and omnipresent cross-winds, to say nothing of the jet lag and English breakfasts. I'm honestly still bitter that Jordan Spieth played the Deere in 2015. When it comes to the Grand Slam, history has shown that even the greatest players only get one bite of the apple: Nicklaus, Woods and Palmer each had only one season in which they won the first two legs of the Grand Slam, as Spieth did in 2015. Not arriving until Monday morning of Open week on the Deere charter simply isn't the best preparation, for any player.
There are different ways to prepare, though we can all agree that none are to be found in the Quad Cities. There is a risk in playing either the Scottish or Irish, if you draw a bad weather week it's easy to lose your will to live. Jordan has confirmed that mistake by going over early in subsequent years, and it kinda work out for him last year, no?
Winning score? And who finishes second behind Tiger Woods? -Jake (@winfreyjake)
The average winning score over the last four years has been 16 under and I'd be very surprised if it's not even lower this year, unless the winds howl, which is not in the forecast (and right now rain is expected on Friday, which will take some bite out of the course). Per Tiger, this sets up as a very intriguing test. His weaknesses with the driver were exposed at the Masters and U.S. Open but he can holster it this week, if he is so inclined, though that will put him at a big disadvantage if Rory and other super long hitters do in fact bomb it over most of the bunkers, as has been happening in the early practice rounds. But we haven't seen a firm, fiery test like this since Hoylake, which remains one of Tiger's transcendent performances. His iron play remains the foundation of his game (he's third on Tour in Strokes Gained approach-the-green) and no one is as adroit at thinking their way around a fiery links. But the fact is, Woods is now below average off the tee and middle of the pack on the greens. He needs to have his best week of his comeback with the putter and driver (even if employed infrequently) to even have a chance. That's a big ask.
There's a couple of cross-currents in play here, let me just insert here these comments from Tiger himself:
CARNOUSTIE, Scotland — Continuing his Refreshingly Honest World Tour, Tiger Woods returns to Carnoustie for a fourth British Open and for the first time, admitted thisevent is his best chance for major championship No. 15.
“As far as long term, certainly, I would say yes because of the fact that you don’t have to be long to play on a links-style golf course, and look what Tom (Watson) did at Turnberry at 59, I believe he was,” Woods said. “Greg (Norman) was there at Birkdale, I think about 54-ish, somewhere around there. It certainly can be done.”
Even as Woods sits 28th in PGA Tour driving distance (304.9 yards) following four back surgeries, he suggested distance will eventually be an issue at other majors.
Ironic, in that we've all been shocked at how long he's been hitting it, but he seems prepared for the continuing ravages of Father Time. I do think hes' right though, and I's add that his ability to play in the wind and use the space between his ears also leads to this being the most likely.... I don't, however, expect that much from him this year, and would also not his career is defined by struggles on slow greens.
Back to Alan:
What percentage of the PGA Tour pros actually like links golf? -David (@davidtfbarry)Less than you think. These guys are all about precision – they want their nine-iron to fly exactly 158 yards and stop dead, because that's what they're used to and how they usually prepare. The quirky courses and unpredictable bounces wreaks havoc with their golf OCD. Now, almost every pro is too politic to tell reporters that they don't like links golf, because they know they'll be branded as Philistines. But the candor still leaks out in quasi-private settings. To be sure, plenty of guys do love links golf, and it's no accident they tend to be the better players who have the well-rounded games and mental acuity to answer the unusual questions presented by the Open.
It's easy and good fun to dump on them, but who can blame them? It can be so quirky and I can't imagine how maddening it would be to get stuck on wrong side of the draw.... It's the greatest golf in the world, but it presents challenges with a scorecard in one's pocket.
Is another 62 likely? -Ernie (@efahey81)If a hard wind doesn't blow, it's very likely. The course is effectively playing about 6,000 yards, the greens are pretty flat and very pure, and the rough is not particularly penal. Nasty weather is the course's only defense. Here's hoping.
No kidding... Add in some rain on Friday to take the heat out of the place, I could see a guy with an early tee time Saturday and nothing to lose threatening that 62. Do we think that will wake up our governing bodies? Time for another segue, this time a curious story:
Thirty players, including seven major champions, arrived at the 147th Open and received a letter from the R&A notifying them to bring their respective drivers to the equipment standards office located on Carnoustie’s practice ground by 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
Keegan Bradley, Brendan Steele and Brooks Koepka all confirmed that their drivers all passed the COR test (coefficient of restitution, or spring-like effect) administered by the R&A.This was the first time the R&A took measures that were not part of the distance insight project being done in conjunction with the USGA.
The PGA Tour has been testing club for approximately five years but has not done random testing to this point. The Tour’s rules department works in conjunction with manufacturers and tests clubs from manufacturer fans at tournaments on a voluntary basis. The USGA assists the PGA Tour in this process.
I don't know what to make of this, but here's Shack's take:
Thirty players were greeted with letters from the R&A ordering them to offer up their drivers for a COR test. It's not clear if the tests were random or if the players were specially chosen by their manufacturer affiliation or driving distance average.Welcome to Scotland!There are two ways of looking at this.The sunny side up take would believe this is just part of normal monitoring and amidst some rumblings that this year's distance increase could be fueled by hot drivers.
The cynical take says this is the act of a desperate governing body looking for something to blame this year's increases on, instead of simply anticipating that a combination of technology, athleticism, fitting and a generation of players reared on modern clubs have passed the testing procedures by. AKA, anything not to do something about the Joint Statement of Principles.
OK, let's not harsh the mellow any more than is necessary..... Back to Alan:
Which non-rota links courses most deserves to host an Open Championship? I acknowledge logistics, access, accommodation and other unfortunate factors limit the field but setting those aside... which course should welcome the Champion Golfer of the Year? -Ian (@DizzyG1964)
It has to be Royal Dornoch, given the course's grandeur, history and the stern test it presents. It has a special feel and some truly epic holes. The raised, crowned greens – which local boy Donald Ross would export to Pinehurst – make Dornoch unlike any other championship course in the linksland. It's high time it gets the ultimate championship, remote location be damned.
I love Dornoch as much as the next guy, but find little value in these types of discussions. So much of Dornoch's charms lie in its remote location and small-town vibe, why even speak of ruining that.
There's more:
Is our guy IJP just a poor misunderstood soul. -@fakePOULTER
To some degree, yes. But how many other players are compelling marshals to fire off persnickety letters to tournament directors?! There's no doubt that Poults has become a magnet for yahoo fan behavior and it's unfortunate he has to deal with that. But at some point you have to ask, why does all the bad juju swirl around this one player?
Hey, I'm still wondering why that dark cloud follows Robert Allenby everywhere.....
Do you think Tom Watson's near-win in ‘09 at age 59 would have been the greatest accomplishment in golf history? -@JoeGunter
How about sports history? This is the one week each year when we get to rue what might have been. But I've come to believe it's better that Watson didn't win. He's such a crusty character, I think the tragic hero role suits him better.
He certainly took it well, reminding all at his post-loss presser that nobody had died.
Golf was meant to be played firm and fast like at the Open Championship. Is there any way to have golfers in the U.S. embrace this? #BrownIsOk -@RonVyse
I believe that this century water is going to be what oil was in the last century: a precious resource over which wars are waged. As the global population continues to explode, lush, emerald-colored golf courses are going to become more rare, so I think golfers everywhere are going to have to learn to love burnt-out conditions. I mean, who doesn't enjoy getting an extra 20 yards of roll off the tee? But one problem in this discussion is Augusta National. It has become the paragon of golf in this country and brainwashes viewers into thinking that's what a course is supposed to look like. The USGA is trying to fight back – Pinehurst, Chambers Bay, Erin Hills and Shinnecock were all varying shades of brown. This Open Championship is going to be so much fun to watch I think it will help further nudge folks in the right direction.
One thing I was quickly taught out in Utah, is that in the West everything already is about water..... This is too big a topic for today, but American courses are already learning how to use less water, but within limits. We're constrained by heat and the resulting grasses used, so I'll have to continue to trundle to GB&I to satisfy my links Jones.
More tomorrow, I think, but I really must start the packing thing....
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