Open Championship Thursday

Yesterday we had a reference to the color yellow....  In the first ever Unplayable Lies correction, I would like to clarify that the only thing yellow on this golf course are the pin flags and scoreboards....  Everything else is brown, trending browner.

South African Erik Van Rooyen has it to -5 as he plays the final three holes, and Jon Rahm has removed a headcover on every tee thus far, driving the green on the Par-4 third.

Actual Journalism - Frank Nobilo and the Golf Channel crew tell us that, stimping 9.5, these greens are really slow.  Except, they weren't stimping the greens:

"Baked out" and "fast and firm" will be the buzzwords of the week at the 147th British Open, where the fairways are plenty speedy. 

A Scottish drought has made conditions so fast that Tiger Woods even said that the fairways are faster than the greens. 

So Golf Channel decided to find out if Woods was right. A member of the groundscrew said the greens were Stimping at 10 on Wednesday; all that was left was testing the fairways. The maintenance crew said it tested the fairways on three to four different spots on the course and was getting about nine feet. When they tested the 11th fairway in the video below, they said the reading came up 9 1/2 to 9 3/4 — just barely slower than the greens.

Define "barely"!  It begs for a rather obvious follow-up, but perhaps Frank wasn't allowed on the greens...

Rhetorical, One Hopes -  Golf.com with this header/query:

Could we see a 500-yard drive at a baked-out Carnoustie?

Nothing to see here, I've been reliably assured.... 

Before jumping to any conclusions, 500-yards drives are not unknown, even on this side of the Atlantic.  And, you might be surprised to learn, the record is way longer than that:

Before ShotLink, another golfer posted a very big number on the Tour: Carl Cooper's 787-yard drive at the 1992 Texas Open. But not everyone includes Cooper's drive because the distance was aided by the presence of a downhill, concrete cart path.

It's good fun to go ga-ga over the length that these boys can send it, but the required skill is obstacle avoidance, in most cases the pot bunkers.

Martin (Golden) Slumbers -  The R&A majordomo addresses the curious testing of drivers:

The R&A has had capabilities at previous Opens to test drivers for COR (coefficient of restitution) and CT “characteristic time.” In laymen’s terms, the spring-like effect of

driver faces. But the governing body is becoming more proactive this year. 

“We’ve always had an equipment test capability down on the range, certainly since I’ve been involved in the Open,” Slumbers said. “It’s been an option for players or the manufacturers to take their equipment in and have it tested. We felt it was an appropriate next step to more actively seek to test players’ drivers straight out of the bag.”

Testing is fine, it's action that that's scarce....  But this is curious:

It was a request to players, and I think many of you underestimate, we have a very good relationship with our players, and it's a very collaborative relationship, and we had absolutely no problems with the players coming and were interested in what we're doing. A lot of them actually wanted to know how does the test work, and what is it really testing for?

Yeah, I'm sure the first reaction was, "Gee, I wonder how they do the testing?"  But I can't help but hope that Bryson deChambeau was one of the thirty tested....

Rory, fresh off telling the world he wants to get back to a more freewheeling style, notices something on the grassy knoll:

However, according to Rory McIlroy, those tested may not have been picked by coincidence. Speaking to the media on Wednesday, McIlroy, who won the Open in 2014, suggested one particular company was targeted. 

"No, I wasn’t selected. I did have a look at the board and see who was selected. I think there was one manufacturer that was singled out a bit more than anyone else. The one that I’m using," McIlroy said. 

The 29-year-old is referring to TaylorMade. The company's M3 and M4 line is used by bombers like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Kopeka, Jason Day and Jon Rahm. According to the Golf Channel's Tim Rosaforte, 16 of the 30 drivers tested were TaylorMade products. In a given week, somewhere between 33 and 36 percent of the field uses a TaylorMade driver.

I for one am comforted to know that those 500-yard drives will be coming off the face of a conforming driver....  Unless, you know, it's Rory that sends it.

Mr. Slumbers also made clear that decorum will be maintained:

“We understand the USGA and the referees’ decisions that were made at Shinnecock, and we completely respect those decisions,” Slumbers said. “In the event of a similar situation this week, clearly, the first thing is you understand the facts because you never get the same situation and there will be lots of reasons. But we have looked very carefully at the Rules, and I don’t think it was good for the game and not the right way to have played this wonderful sport, and we would make a decision based on the facts of any incident that happened later in the week.”

And if you only partially respected their decision?

Slumbers understood these specifics, but when pressed on them, he implied that perhaps there were alternatives in the Rules that could also have been applied. 

“And Rule 1-2 says you can’t use 1-2 if you've used another rule, so they used 14-5, which doesn’t have a DQ option in it. But there are other ways, there are other parts of the rule book which refer to etiquette and the powers of the committee, and we’re fully aware of those clauses that are in that rule.”

And he's the committee.  But Phil would never have acted out in Martin's sandbox, nor would he have at Augusta.  

You've likely seen this, but even the Carnoustie scoreboards are getting cheeky, as per the photo that's blown up Twitter:

 Coincidence?  I don't believe in coincidences....

Now On the Tee... - But barely...Don't they have people to do this for them?

Likely no round will be more impressive than that of Jhonattan Vegas Thursday. While the Venezuelan golfer is at Carnoustie just like every other golfer, the way he arrived is rather incredible. 

Vegas was set to fly to Scotland a week ago on July 12, but it was only that morning that he realized his visa to travel there was expiring that very day. An issue, sure, but he had a full week to resolve the issue. A quick visit to the UK Embassy should do the trick. But the visa was just the beginning of his bad luck. 

Things weren’t looking good as of Tuesday afternoon. His passport had been held up and weather was worsening in New York, which was where he would be connecting. His 10:31 a.m. Thursday tee time loomed eerily in the distance. 

Well, New York to Edinburgh to Carnoustie wasn't going to cut it. Vegas's clubs were checked baggage by now, but he needed to get his body to Carnoustie first and foremost, so he took a different route: Houston to Toronto to Glasgow to Carnoustie. He detailed it all for people to watch on his Instagram story.

He arrived without his bag, so the gang in the TM trailer will be assembling a set for him...  Lucky his name wasn't picked, as there's no time to test that driver.

They Can't Help Themselves - The Open returns to Carnoustie for the first time since 2007, but our press nabobs find this the perfect time to trash Trump:

The Ailsa Course at Turnberry is one of the finest links in the world, and a member of

the Open rota. At least, ostensibly. 

Turnberry has not hosted the Open Championship since 2009, and is not scheduled as a future venue. A matter that lies, at least in part, with the resort's ownership. Before he ran for president, Donald Trump bought the property in 2014. His political foray has complicated matters, a sentiment acknowledged earlier this year by R&A chief executive Marin Slumbers. 

“Turnberry is a fantastic golf course and will be a great venue when we get there,” Slumbers said in February. “It would be very complex having an Open at Turnberry at the moment. You’ve got the ownership issue of the course and the staging there. But there are a number of other courses we haven’t been to for a few years, and we are looking forward to going back to all of them."

OK, but the Ailsa wasn't a particularly great golf course, Kind of the Torrey Pines of Scotland (great piece of land, poorly utilized).  The more interesting question is about the successful rennovation, and we can't touch on that because you'd have to credit Trump.

Prop This - This has historically been Alex Myers' home turf, but Golf.com has the skinny on how to lighten your wallet:

British Open prop bets: From low lefty to best Brit, here's how to invest for Carnoustie

Lowest lefty I've seen is either Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters, but it's admittedly an extremely competitive category.

Mixed Message -  There was this note about Justin Thomas, justifiably concerned about contracting Yani Tseng disease:

Justin Thomas openly admits he's superstitious about touching a trophy before he's won it, so drinking wine from the Claret Jug two years ago should be a bad omen for this week.

By the way, we're talking about the newly-hirsute Justin Thomas:

Last player with a beard to win the Open Championship:  Bob Ferguson at St. Andrews.... wait for it, in 1882.  he looked like this:

First place purse: £12

I'm just saying that I wouldn't obsess over drinking out of the claret jug....

Note to Readers - This will be goodbye until +/- July 30th, as I've determined not to bring the laptop.  We anticipate dodgy WiFi on too much of the trip, and it's one less thing to lug.  Enjoy the Open and we'll catch up when we can.