Tuesday Tidbits - Ayrshire Edition

It was beautiful on the West Coast of Scotland yesterday, as I'm sure it will remain.  Shall we dive in on that very topic?

Everyone Talks About The Weather... - Forget the players and their form, we lede with this all-inclusive header:

British Open 2024: Weather forecast includes rain, wind and 'uncertainty'

Those last three are familiar to me, but what is this "British Open" of which they speak?  I thought the Open Championship was this week (a little purist humor for you).   

But does it make sense to practice on Monday in still conditions, when the week will look more like this:

And perhaps like this as well:

Quite the compelling case, I might just tune in.  Though I wouldn't be crushed if Scotland got all this rain out of its system, not that what happens in Ayrshire much affects the Kingdom of Fife.

Stepping On Your Story - Martin Slumbers, the retiring R&A majordomo, hit the interview circuit, including the Golf Channel set, to talk purses and priorities:

A record amount of prize money is being offered at this week’s British Open, with the winner to receive $3.1 million from a $17 million purse.

The R&A announced the increase of $500,000 from last year’s event at Royal Liverpool, but also cautioned that the escalating prize money in the game is a concern.

“The R&A has a responsibility to strike a balance between maintaining the Open’s position in the global game, providing the funds required for governance and developing amateur and recreational golf in 146 countries internationally,” said Martin Slumbers, CEO of the R&A. “We have to make choices if we want to continue to build on the significant growth in participation that is essential for golf’s future.

“We remain concerned about the impact substantial increases in men’s professional prize money are having on the perception of the sport and its long-term financial sustainability. We are determined to act with interests of the global game in mind as we pursue our goal of ensuring golf continues to thrive in 50 years’ time.”

So, a warning shot to those overly-entitled touring professionals, who might just miss  the message on account of this:

Nothing says control your greed like staging the return of the Claret Jug in a $200,000 automobile.  

The Postage Stamp - They'll have us quite sick of it before the first tee shot, but who doesn't like a shortie?  Shack has all sorts of bullet points for us:

• 123 yards: Official Open yardage. 

• 5: Bunkers. 

• 33 paces: Green depth. 

• 1907-1909. Established in these years by architect and club professional in Willie Fernie overhauling the course. 

• 1922-23: James Braid adds 67 bunkers to Troon including two on the Stamp. 

• 15 feet: Drop from tee to green.

• 5th: Shortest hole in major history. (Shortest: 15th Los Angeles Country Club 2023, 81 yards).

• 3.09: Scoring average in the 2016 Open. (87 birdies, 290 ars, 66 bogeys, 11 doubles and 1 other)

• 3.09: Scoring average in the 2004 Open. (82 birdies, 273 pars, 83 bogeys, 19 double bogeys+)

• 4: Score of Greg Norman in his 1989 Open final round 64, the only bogey of the day.

• 3: Hole-in-one’s during The Open (Gene Sarazen, Dennis Edlund and Ernie Els)

• 1994: The Postage Stamp gets a Royal Mail postage stamp designed by Paul Hogarth and valued at 35 p as part of a collection that included versions of St.Andrews, Muirfield, Carnoustie and Turnberry.

Sarazen's was quite the thing, made in 1973 at age 71, and age at which he'd no longer have a tee time. Operating from memory, but I believe he holed out for a two on his  other crack at it.

Geoff dives into the history:

I thought it’d be fun to trace the wee three’s evolution into one of the world’s wildest, weirdest and shortest championship holes on a proven links. Troon’s 8th hole stands out for so many reasons, including a strange lack of super-shorties on the Open rota (but the short-yardage gems are coming back in all of golf, as I wrote in the new Links).

Besides its tiny size and distance, the 8th at Royal Troon reminds us that most all-time great holes were not dialed in from day one and that changes carried out with the intent of spicing things up, in the right hands, can make things better.

Troon’s evolution into the course we know today involved a series of updates fairly typical of early links reacting to popularity shifts, the desire to reach 18 holes, and changes in the ball.

“Originally the course contained only nine holes, afterwards it was extended to twelve holes, and subsequently to the full round of eighteen,” Horace Hutchinson wrote of Troon in 1897’s epic, British Golf Links. “Surveying the links in their primitive state, even the most enthusiastic golfer would have been appalled at the prospect of playing over them; but with perseverance all obstacles have been overcome, the result being that a most enjoyable game can now be had upon them.”

Early Troon appeared primitive, raw and appeared to be an extreme cross-country affair. Yardages were presented from named hole to name hole, not by a number. The shortest measured 197 yards. Par was not printed but the distance to play the entire 19th century 18-holes was listed as 3 miles, 1 furlong, 156 yards.

Crail has a hole named for a battle in the second Boer War, so why not this?

The most photographed and discussed early hole seemed to be the seventh. Early Troon golfers played on some of the same ground as today’s hole, with one key difference. The early iteration of Tel el Kebir measured 322 yards and featured a blind uphill second shot to a green perched beyond today’s version. The hole had been named for 1882’s decisive Anglo-Egyptian war battle at Tel-El-Kebir.

Unfortunately, Geoff's history lesson comes to an abrupt halt as we hit his paywall:

A short par 3 eighth did not exist until Willie Fernie remodeled Troon sometime in 1907-09. Although later accounts describe a one-shot hole playing left of today’s eighth green and in a hollow still used as a winter-time green at Troon, there is no concrete evidence it ever existed. But it’s also possible Fernie created such a hole and then moved the green over to today’s spot.

The long and the short of it is that these historic links developed without the benefit of detailed records, adding to it's charm.

Geoff's homage to wee threes is worth your time, but also represents unfinished business for your humble blogger.  I've long wanted to do a post on short threes, the ninth at Lytham being the prototype of the genre to my mind.  

A Sighting - We'll see how this one goes:

British Open 2024: Tiger Woods arrives in Scotland, tours Royal Troon for the first time in 20 years

Tiger Woods arrived at Royal Troon on Sunday to begin preparations for the British Open after missing the championship that he’s won three times in two of the past three years. He missed the cut in 2022 at the Old Course in St. Andrews.

The British winner in 2000, 2005 and 2006, Woods hasn’t played an Open at Royal Troon since 2004, when he shot 70-71-68-72 to tie for ninth place, seven shots out of a playoff between Ernie Els and eventual winner Todd Hamilton. Woods tied for 24th place at the Open at Troon in 1997. He was injured in 2016 and did not play at Troon when Henrik Stenson outdueled Phil Mickelson during the final round.

For the Tiger dead-enders, the best news might be that he played a full eighteen on Sunday.   That said, he can't be loving the weather forecast.

That said, I wouldn't expect too much from the guy.  As you might have heard, Monty stuck his nose into Tiger's business, though I think the outcome is still TBD:

Tiger Woods barbecues Colin Montgomerie in war of words over retirement talk

Question:  Hw many people does a barbecued Monty feed?

Answer: All of them.

But is that an accurate take?

“I’ll play as long as I can play and I feel like I can still win the event,” he said.

Asked if his belief that he can still do so has wavered, Woods said simply, “No.”

And he stared stone-faced at the questioner. No more words were needed.

The very next questioner got straight to the point and asked Woods, a three-time British Open champion, about what Montgomerie, who grew up a stone’s throw from Royal Troon but never won the Claret Jug, had said and he didn’t hold back. “Well, as a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt. So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”

The questioner asked, “You feel like you’ve earned that? You deserve that?”

Woods ignored the question and simply continued piling on Montgomerie. “So when I get to his age, I get to still make that decision, where he doesn’t.”

Woods smirked in delight.

Monty isn't wise to wade in here, but he's also not wrong.  It's easy for Tiger to take on Monty, but punching down like that is really beneath him.

I don't know of a comparable, but the age 60 limitation is all well and good, but doesn't contemplate a player unable to walk the golf course.  Maybe Tiger is getting stronger, so we'll see how the week goes, but I do think this is a legitimate issue once his exemptions from the 2019 Masters expire (and I think tis event is likely it). 

As we've learned again and again, Tiger takes care of Tiger.  His watch includes those tiny fields at the money grabs to placate his buddies, as well the PIP program and those massive equity grants.  Are the Tour Rabbits paying attention, or are they still such fanboys that they don't see how he's selling them down the river?

But at least he'll be providing leadership at Bethpage, right?  Funny how he has time for the gym and Troon, but not for that....

Seer you later in the week.