Weekend Wrap - County Antrim Edition

 Any questions?  

If we fire up the Wayback Machine to January of 2025, I would have had two criticisms of Scottie Scheffler's game and record, although that might not be quite the word.  My first demerit would be that, despite his gaudy 2024 win total, exactly one of those wins was against a full field (that being the Players Championship).  The other slight nick would have been to note that he'd only won one of the four majors (and, to continue harping on field size), it was the one with the tiny field (though, admittedly, he'd won it twice).  

So, what does he do despite the slow start to his season due to that kitchen injury?  I blink and suddenly he'll be going for immortality at Shinnecock.  OK, I'm going to go way out on a limb and predict that he'll get his U.S. Open before Phil....  I know, it's a gift.

Geoff frames his coverage on the winner's failure to complete the Calamity Slam:

Hopes for a Calamity Slam died Sunday when Scottie Scheffler yanked a 14-footer at Royal Portrush’s vaunted one-shotter, ending an unfathomable run of birdies on the 236-yarder.

And that amounted to the Ulster drama Sunday when Scheffler captured The 153rd Open Championship for the first time to go with three majors. The 29-year-old is one U.S. Open win away from becoming the seventh holder of the career Grand Slam.

The final margin of victory of four strokes over Harris English was nearly a carbon copy of this year’s PGA Championship, where the former Georgia star tied for second, five behind Scheffler.

Five strokes back in third place was American Chris Gotterup, the recent Genesis Scottish Open winner playing in his first Open Championship and fourth major.

Scheffler’s dominance means the last three Champion Golfers of the Year are from America (Brian Harman and Xander Schauffele).

Of the 13 players finishing T10 or better in The 153rd, eight were Americans.

A bit surprised by Geoff's xenophobia, although technically the Yanks are the foreigners in this event.  I guess we'll just chalk it up to Geoff being depressed at absence of meaningful golf for the next eight months.  I know it's the most depressing day in golf to your humble blogger, only slightly mitigated by it being a Ryder Cup year.

And here's Geoff's take on Scottie's mid-round walkabout:

But back to Sunday’s “drama.” Scheffler started Sunday with a four-stroke lead over Haotong Li

and birdied the first hole to dash the field’s hope he had woken up and decided to become the field’s other ordained Monk.

A brief hiccup in the par-4 eighth’s fairway bunker led to his only double bogey of the week and a seven-stroke lead briefly reduced to five. A bounce-back birdie at the ninth immediately turned Sunday into a coronation. Scheffler had converted ten straight 54-hole leads. Or eleven straight if Hero World Challenge wins are your thing. But that 20-player silly season event certainly does not come with a well-deserved “Champion Golfer Of The Year” tag, a Claret Jug or a $3.1 million check.

It was a wee bit more dramatic than that, methinks.  Scottie had made a mess of the Par-5 seventh as well, though bailed himself out by making a long par putt.  He looked like the rest of us when we lose our will to live, then bounced back on the ninth and managed his way home.

More Calamity-blogging:

Scheffler separated himself from the field in too many ways to count, but six birdies in 16 par-3 chances seems especially brilliant given the difficulty of Portrush’s difficult one-shotters. He led the field with a 37.5% birdie conversion rate on the par-3’s. And not only did he avoid Calamity, he slayed the monstrous 236-yard 16th. The hole where past greats have intentionally played away from the green in fear of coming up short.

The 153rd field hit the green 200 times out of 452 (44% GIR rate). Scheffler’s four tee shots at Calamity finished a total of 48 feet from the cup:

• 3 feet 5 inches (Birdie)
• 17 feet 5 inches (Birdie)
• 14 feet 4 inches (Birdie)
• 14 feet 4 inches (Par)

About that lowly par. Scottie, what went wrong?

“I was fortunate to be able to enjoy the walk with a putter versus having to go down there into the ravine and try to hit a wedge out,” he said of his week on the 16th. “I'm very grateful for the tee shots this week, but like you said, disappointed with a par today.”

He was smiling (in case you hadn’t guessed).

Initial impression of the hole?

“The first day we played it, it was raining and blowing in out of the left, and I smoked a 3-wood to 30 feet, and I thought it was a pretty amazing shot,” Scheffler said after hoisting the Jug. “And then I was playing against Sam Burns in a practice round, and he hit 3-wood to about 25 feet and made it. I was like, shoot, just hit a great shot and I lost this hole still.”

Maybe he handled it well because he took time to smell the roses:

Scheffler’s secret to success came down to his affinity for a hole that induces heartburn in most.

“It's one of the coolest views that I've seen in the game of golf, to be honest with you,” he said. “Teddy [Scott] and I were standing there, I think it was on Friday, we were kind of looking out. It was a day in which you had a bunch of rain and there was a rainbow on the other side and you're looking out over the golf course on the right, and you've got the huge bluffs by the ocean and it's just mounds and hills, and the town is in the distance. It's a really, really cool hole.”

Or, maybe he handled it well because he's the best ball-striker of the day?  Just a thought.

Shall we dive into the Tour Confidential roundtable, where you'll not be shocked at the silly question with which they lead:

Scottie Scheffler dominated at Royal Portrush, finishing 17 under par and winning by four in what was one of the most anticlimactic major Sundays in recent memory. Scheffler, at age

29, now has four major titles, and how he lapped the competition is reminiscent of Tiger Woods’ prime. Is it premature to wonder if Woods’ 15 major titles are in reach? If so, when does that conversation need to start?

Jessica Marksbury: Tiger showed us that Jack’s major title was actually achievable — and you could argue that, given the many years of injury Tiger endured during his prime, he really should have won more than 15. But watching Scottie, it’s hard not to imagine him eclipsing Tiger — and maybe even Jack. I know there’s some recency bias at play, and there’s a lot that needs to happen, of course, to bring that all to fruition. Scottie has to avoid serious injury and somehow maintain this outrageously high level of play for the next decade-plus. But man, it sure does seem possible right here, right now.

Josh Sens: Tiger had twice as many majors by 29, but Scheffler has a superpower that Tiger lacked at that age: he seems entirely at peace with himself. Not too early to start a harmless water-cooler conversation. Assuming he stays healthy and yip-free, Scheffler’s got a shot at it, with another decade or so of golf prime ahead of him. The fact that he’s not the type of guy who will be paying attention to any of our water-cooler chatter will only help his chances more.

Josh Schrock: Scottie has a shot at it, but I think we might be discounting how many majors that is, given the current depth in men’s golf. I think four or five is a ton. For Scottie to win 11 more against this group would require an unbelievable level of sustained excellence and injury luck. It’s possible, but it’s still a massive ask, even for the guy who is the best player since Tiger.

Zephyr Melton: Scottie may be on a Tiger-like run, but 15 majors is too high a total to reach in the current era. I could see Scottie threatening double digits, but that feels like his ceiling.

Yeah, it's just human nature, no?  A man wins his fourth major and we can't help but turn our minds to his sixteenth major, right?  Seriously, what's wrong with these folks and how does Jess Marksbury keep her job?  Some recency bias?  

It's fair to say that Scottie has been playing at a Tiger-like level, but it's quite extraordinary to just concede that he can keep doing that for another decade or more.....  Dare we see how she handles the inevitable follow-up?

Scheffler has won his four majors in four years, but other pros have gone on heaters before, too. Most recently, Brooks Koepka won four in three years; Jordan Spieth won three in three years; and Rory McIlroy won four in four years. What makes you think Scheffler will or won’t taper off like this group?

Marksbury: Scottie seems grounded in so many valuable ways: faith, family, lifestyle, that there doesn’t appear to be anything in his way. He’s just so steady.

Sens: Agreed, Jess. Spieth seems similarly at peace with his life, but his game was never as well-rounded as Scheffler’s. And unlike Koepka and McIlroy, Scheffler does not appear to have any

let-up week to week. And that seems to stem from his life outside of golf. He knows that golf matters, but he also understands it only matters so much.

Schrock: You don’t need to look further than his pre-tournament press conference. He loves golf, competing, and the work required to be great. But the fact that he isn’t defined by his golf allows him to do what he’s doing. Rory once talked about how he used to think less of himself as a person if he played a bad round. His golf defined his existence. That Scottie clearly puts his family and faith ahead of golf should give him a good shot at maintaining a high level of play. Longevity is something that isn’t talked about enough; it’s the impressive thing about Rory. Scottie is far, far ahead of everyone right now and has been for two years. I’ll be interested to see how long he can continue this.

Melton: As my colleagues mentioned above, Scottie’s mindset is what sets him apart from his competitors, and that’s something that can’t be learned. In terms of on-course play, Scottie’s combination of course-management discipline and distance control with his irons is a deadly combo; it’s why when he’s playing well, it looks so boring. When you’re hitting to the correct spots with the correct numbers and rolling in a few putts, you become tough to beat.

This is the more interesting question, as the three guys cited are interesting comparisons.  To me it's pretty clear that Scheffler is the more complete player than Koepka or Spieth, although there's not shortage of hindsight in the comment.  In the moment, each of those two appeared to have unlimited upside, the subsequent arc of their careers coming as quite the surprise.

But, in the moment, whose future career would have appeared to be brighter, Rory in August 2014 or Scottie today?  That to me should be the object lesson for Jess Marksbury and every other golf fan, the fact that the ability to sustain that level of performance is the indicator of greatness, but we all get fooled in the short term.  We couldn't see ahead with Rory, Jordan and Brooksie, yet we think we can with Scottie.  Curious that.

Not that I don't agree with them about Scottie being perhaps more grounded.  Tiger was able to sustain his greatness through his blinding ambition.  Could Scottie accomplish the same by refusing to care too much about it?  I have no clue, but what a fascinating thing it'll be to watch.

Shall we talk some Rory?  Here's a sample of the reactions:

Rory McIlroy’s British Open might’ve been the greatest victory lap of his career

Sorry, but what are the other victory laps against which  this one would be judged?

And this:

British Open 2025: At Royal Portrush, it was Scottie Scheffler’s Open, but Rory McIlroy’s week

This Open Championship belongs to Scottie Scheffler. His performance was too commanding,

too complete to suggest otherwise. Four masterful rounds delivered the links title that had been conspicuously absent from a résumé lacking little else—four rounds that raise serious questions about whether golf is witnessing generational excellence or something approaching all-time greatness. Yet somehow, Scheffler felt almost secondary to a man who finished seven shots behind.

That statement sounds absurd until you consider what unfolded at Royal Portrush this week. McIlroy has long been golf's most beloved figure, and that affection always intensifies during the Open Championship. But what manifested here was more than support. Fans packed 10-deep around most holes, scrambling over dunes and through fescue, many unable to see McIlroy but desperate simply to be close enough to shout his name. In the hospitality suites, patrons abandoned their tables the moment he appeared, pressing faces against plexiglass windows like children at an aquarium. Parents hoisted kids onto shoulders for fleeting glimpses. Bleachers filled an hour before his arrival, only to empty the instant he moved on to the next hole.

The scenes grew increasingly surreal. A teenager with a bleached buzz cut—"The Open" styled into the back of his head—ducked under the ropes at the second hole, phone extended for a selfie before marshals swept him away. At one point, television cameras captured a man swimming in the frigid Irish Sea, waving a flagstick topped with an Open flag in one hand and brandishing a yellow "GO RORY!" sign in the other.

Then there were the sounds. Golf tournaments typically produce predictable audio—polite applause following good shots, disappointed murmurs after poor ones, the familiar rhythm of gallery appreciation. This was something else entirely. This sounded like a concert or football match: nonstop chants, serenades of McIlroy's name, a celebration that seemed barely concerned with the actual competition unfolding. This was a four-day festival of worship, punctuated by moments of pure sporting theater.

Saturday provided the crescendo. McIlroy, seven shots back and needing magic, delivered exactly that: birdies on three of his first four holes, the kind of explosive start that has defined his career. The sounds that followed were deafening, lasting, primal—the type that cannot be manufactured or conjured, erupting purely from instinct and emotion. The defining moment came when McIlroy's eagle putt crawled 56 agonizing feet across the green before disappearing into the cup. The eruption that followed shook the ground, a sonic boom of pure joy that seemed to suspend time itself. After his 66, McIlroy called Saturday the loudest round he could remember and cited that eagle—and the thunderous response it generated—as one of the coolest moments of his career. This from someone who had slipped on the green jacket just months earlier.

Sorry for that long excerpt, but let me push my luck by seeing how you react to this bit, especially the ending: 

It sounds counterintuitive, but it's a phenomenon experienced frequently by elite athletes—particularly Olympians who spend lifetimes working toward something that arrives only once every four years. Upon reaching the summit, they find themselves adrift with nowhere left to climb. There's also been his mounting frustration with his position in the game and the scrutiny that accompanies it. He's occupied this fishbowl existence his entire adult life, carrying a burden most of us can't fathom. Though there have been slip-ups and shortcomings, the throughline of his career has been grace. When that grace wasn't reciprocated—when criticism felt unfair or harsh—his reactions at Quail Hollow and Oakmont became understandable, if not admirable.

Admirable?  We're now rationalizing hissy fits?  Joel (Beall, the author), can you not see the throughline from here to, say, Wyndham Clark?

Hard to skip the TC panel, although they seem to intentionally frame it in the oddest manner possible:

The last time the Open was at Royal Portrush, Rory McIlroy fizzled in a disappointing homecoming and missed the cut. This time, he seemed rejuvenated, produced Tiger-like galleries, and finished T7. Will this week be remembered for Scottie’s first Claret Jug or Rory’s proper return to Northern Ireland?

Marksbury: Great to see Rory’s redemption here at Portrush, and it probably stung a bit less toMelton: It will certainly be meaningful for Rory on a personal level, but in the grand scheme of things, few casual fans will remember much from his performance this week. It was a feel-good story, sure, but Scottie claiming the Claret Jug is the only thing that matters. have such a deficit to make up, given Scottie’s lead. This major will definitely be remembered for Scottie’s first Open win, but there was no doubting who the crowd favorite was this week, and that was Rory.

Sens: Rory McIlroy is a career Grand Slam winner and a future Hall of Famer. We shouldn’t be giving him participation prizes and I doubt he’d be satisfied with them anyway. This week was about Scheffler winning another major. Rory having a nice showing doesn’t count as much of a conversation piece.

Schrock: I’m going to go ahead and zag here. I don’t think it’s a participation prize to say that Rory’s week was much better and more meaningful than six years ago. Justin Leonard spoke about the burden for Rory having to play in front of his home country with everyone trying to will him over the line. This was Scottie’s major, but he will win more, and I think the lasting image from the Open’s Portrush return will be Rory fist-pumping as he made eagle on Saturday to send the crowd into a fit of delirium.

Melton: It will certainly be meaningful for Rory on a personal level, but in the grand scheme of things, few casual fans will remember much from his performance this week. It was a feel-good story, sure, but Scottie claiming the Claret Jug is the only thing that matters.

I think the Rory stuff was great, heart-warming and something of a vindication after that bizarre Thursday in 2019.  That said, it comes after a bizarre interregnum where Rory seemed to intentionally squander so much of the goodwill he had accumulated, at a time when he should have been fat, dumb and happy.  

But this was also an important competitive week for Rory, and it's hard to ignore the disappointments in that regard.  His game was as it ever was, with that same combination of highlights and lowlights evident on the back nine at Augusta.  A great talent, but one prone to frequent large misses.

This is no doubt true:

Bryson DeChambeau climbs into top 10 at British Open, all but locking up Ryder Cup spot

So, what was the deal with Thursday?  Kinda stealing Rory's signature move there, but those last three rounds he showed an ability to stay with Scottie, though not at all the same thing when you shoot 64 on Sunday from the middle of the pack.

This to me is quite the bizarre take:

During final round coverage on NBC, analyst Kevin Kisner had an interesting take on the Clark and Oakmont debacle, which resulted in numerous golf personalities on social media questioning his comments.

"I'm not sure anybody in the situation handled it properly," Kisner said on the broadcast. "Wyndham probably could have nipped that in the bud with an earlier, or justifiable, statement, but locker rooms are supposed to be sacred. Not sure how that picture got out, USGA can help with that. I think if everyone just sat at a table face to face, that situation could go away pretty quickly."

His comments make it seem as if he's pointing a finger at the USGA for the photo getting out. No Laying Up's Tron Carter is who initially posted the photo of damage on social media. After Kisner's comments, numerous people flooded social media to post about the situation.

We love our Golfers Behaving Badly stories, but I actually have sympathy for the guys that fight a little anger out there.  But this takes me back to the era of Tim Finchem, Nurse Ratched for those who were there with us, whereby it's the job of the adults to protect the children from the consequences of their actions.

Think Clark has developed an expectation that he'll be protected?

Clark finished T-4 at the British Open and spoke with media Sunday after declining to talk Saturday.

"Yeah, so obviously I feel terrible with what happened. I'm doing anything I can to try to remedy the situation. We're trying to keep it private between Oakmont, myself and the USGA. I'm just happy we have a pathway moving forward, and like you said, I'm hoping we can get past this and move on and hope there's no ill-will towards me and Oakmont.

"Like you said, I'm just trying to get past it. I want the best for Oakmont, the USGA and myself. Like I said, I'm very sorry for what I did and feel terrible, and hopefully in a few months we're past this, and it's something of the past."

Yes, we're all hoping we can get past Wyndham, though it would be easier if he could just, yanno, stop destroying shit....  But by all means find a path forward, just like the path forward from the PGA that led to...well, the need for another path forward.  Shockingly, Golf Twitter had thoughts.

A great week for the people of Northern Ireland and a worthy champion.  Not too shabby.

Elsie and John arrive today, with golf planned for Tuesday and Wednesday.  I'll be back, though I suspect not tomorrow.  Cheers.

East Neuk Lethargy

We're in the midst of a mid-vacation lull, the confluence of a planned golf break combined with unfortunate weather.  Yesterday (Saturday for those as disoriented as we are) we had planned to play the Balcomie before watching the third round of the Open (digging the late tee times).  Alas, it was a pretty miserable Scottish day, unfortunate given plans to take a couple of days off to recharge.

We did go to the club and were on the first tee, hoping for enough of a break to get in some holes.  David Snodgrass, Head Professional of CGS was in the shop and helpfully showed me the his radar app, which gave seemed to indicate that, if we could survive what came down right around our tee time, we'd have a dry (or dryer) stretch behind it.  But we didn't survive, as it came down pretty hard before we could even roll a practice putt, and it was pretty clear that my playing partner was less than enthused.  So, we bailed, which means we'll be well rested when next we take up weapons.

We did our foraging, including finding a new fish monger in Cellardyke, which is sort of an Anstruther suburb as near we can tell.  Mostly we felt the weather, a soft rain most of the day with the occasional heavy bursts, demanded laziness, which is our signature move.  We managed to get all of our errands done before the leaders teed off at 3:35 p.m. local time.

I had played the Craighead with Ross, Elsie and John's son, on Friday, using up the last of the good weather.  We got spritzed on just a wee bit, but otherwise quite a fine day without much wind, and the golf lived up to the benign conditions.  Alas, the cameras did not come out, except for one bit late in the day.  Ross played quite well, even par on the outbound nine, and finished with 76, which is quite good on the Craighead.  

As I noted in my most recent post, the Craighead has had my number.  Friday was a welcome change, as I adopted a bit of an attitude on the first tee.  The opener is a Par-5 in which the tee shot needs to avoid a series of four bunkers on the left, the ground contours combined with draw spin creating a force field that attracts TaylorMade TP5Xs (there's an outcropping of gorse bushes on the right that I've visited when being overly cautious).  I had been hitting a 5-iron with mixed success, but said "F It" and banged a driver down the middle, and basically hit it great all day.  The short game wasn't half bad either, notably on the Par-3 fourth.  A fourball ahead told us they would hit their tee balls and then let us play through, which was quite kind.  Ross and I both missed the green, but with a small gallery we both got it up and in as if we knew what we were doing.  As I remarked to one of the nice gentlemen, THAT never happens.  My experience is that any time one is rushing to play through one ends up butchering the hole....

After playing through we had clear sailing for the remainder of the day, and the golf was quite tidy.  I ended up with an 82, which on a "Strokes-Gained" basis would have been a 78 from tee-to-green and a 90 on the greens.  The only photos I took were on No. 16, when Ross' tee shot ended up suspended above the ground on a branch of a gorse bush:

From where he made his par.  But please don't try this at home kids, especially if you don't actually know what gorse is.

Just a couple more photos, first from dinner back at the Dory Friday evening:

That's the small, intimate interior and we did like the stoppers on the front doors.  We'll be back there Wednesday evening with Elsie and John.

One of the late evening sky from our aerie bedroom:

With time to kill, care for some Open Championship blogging?  Ummmm, sorry, but that was actually rhetorical......but no one forces you to read.

First, Geoff does his typical numerical summary of Saturday:

Round Three By The Numbers

• 7,289: Third round yardage (7,381 yard max)
• 69.971: scoring average (71.812 in Rounds 1-3)
• -14: Leading score (Scottie Scheffler)
• 65: Low round by Russell Henley
• 8: Birdies by Scheffler
• 3: Birdies in three days by Scheffler at Calamity (16th)
• 32: Birdies on 16 by the field through three rounds
• 9: Wins by Scheffler with last nine outright 54-hole leads
• 1st: Scheffler in Strokes Gained Putting
• 29: Lee Westwood’s back-nine record-tying score
• 7: Scores of 3 in Westwood’s back nine
• 34: Rounds in the 60s on Saturday
• 19: Rounds over par
• 11 ft. 0 inches: Saturday green speed
• 0.392 inches: average green firmness (0.012 inch less firm than yesterday)
• 8.8mm: Rainfall on Friday

Portrush is very much on my short list of best links, nay, best golf course on this planet, with said opinion only relating to 16 of their 18 (I've not played the new 7th and 8th, purpose-built to land that 2019 Open).  To this observer it's a ten out of ten, both on the merits and the eye candy scales.

I remember a vignette from 2019, in which someone asked Tiger what he thought of the course, to which he  cryptically responded, "Big-boy golf course", or words to that effect.  Six more years of ab crunches and light winds have them overpowering it, but what don't they overpower these days?

When he holed his birdie putt last night I did pick up on Scottie's three straight birdies on Calamity Corner, though it's so soft that the words "Bobby Locke's Hollow" have been rarely uttered on the broadcast.  I just wasted some time going through my slideshow, but finally found some of my old Portrush pictures, first this from my own play on Calamity Corner, but from that other "hollow":

It was quite the great shot (actually, both shots, meaning my own and Theresa capturing it), though I haven't seen anyone down there since Thursday, and that guy holed his shot.

Care for some more old shots?  Again, rhetorical, here's your humble blogger sending it on No. 5:

They've been saying repeatedly on the Sky broadcast that Harry Colt didn't see it as a drivable Par-4 when he built it in the 1930's, to which I'll add that no one did at least until 2019.

This is Theresa putting on what is not the 15th hole.  I was pleased to hear an announcer say that it's Rory's favorite hole on the golf course, and would be on my short list as well:

That's our friend and Portrush native Lowell Courtney tending the pin.

This is a view out to the Valley Course, and if I have it right, those dunes are where Martin Ebert built the new 7th and 8th holes.  This is the view off the back of the fifth green:

Here are the ruins of the Dunluce Castle just up the road, from whence the golf course takes its name.

It's been a little different watching to local coverage, ironically forcing your humble blogger to again experience Sir Mumbles.  I though I was done with him, and quite glad to be.  The most notable bit about the Sky telecast is how much lighter the commercial load is, a welcome relief (unless, of course, one is hoping to use the commercial breaks for, well, relief).

I quite agree that this plenty strange, though the header seems a bit over the top:

British Open 2025: Rory McIlroy hitting another golf ball by accident is one of the most bizarre moments in golf history

Perhaps that 25-year old headline writer should consider that golf history goes back quite a long way.... Of course, I was dying to know what ball it was, mostly as a proxy for how long it was buried in that turf.  Pretty sure I didn't lose any balls on that hole...

I did mention the fish monger above, which was one of those typical scenes in the East Neuk.  He turned out to be a fellow Crail member, and he seemed to ready to concede the Open to Scottie with a one-shot lead after thirty-six holes.  I was the one saying, "It's still golf and there's still an eternity to play", though he seems to have gotten the better of me in the prognostication game.

Mt own trenchant commentary would be to note that Scottie remains awfully good at the golf thing, and combines it with as good an attitude to be found.  The only cloud on the horizon is the inevitable regression to the mean:

British Open 2025: This one stat is why Scottie Scheffler is dominating at Portrush

Here’s the stunning development of the week: Scheffler is absolutely thrashing the field on greens that Rory McIlroy has called among the most undulated in links golf, and when he’s doing that, basically no one has a chance. Scheffler has gained 7.87 strokes for the tournament with the putter to top that category, and it’s his best statistic, just ahead of SG/approach (7.36), where he’s No. 2.

Forgive me for counting, but isn't that actually two stats the attest to his dominance, the two most important at that.  Nothing correlates to success better than proximity, though making putts never hurts.

My only thought above is a guess that he can't continue to putt quite as well as he has for the first three days, the inevitability of regression and all.  That said, it may well be that he doesn't have to....  If you listened to the chasers yesterday, especially that guy he's paired with, they seemed to be playing for Ryder Cup points and experience more than an expectation of victory.  But, as a wise man said, it's still golf, so I guess I'll tune in.

I'm going to finish with an Eamon Lynch column that touches on some difficult issues.  Eamon is an Ulsterman, so it probably makes sense to allow him to deal with this first issue.  They finished quite late last evening, but not quite as late as they wanted to, due to the kind of issue of a unique to this tiny country:

Lynch: Normalizing the abnormal is happening on both sides of the gate at the Open

The concept of “normalization” wasn’t invented in Northern Ireland but it was perfected here. From the 1970s, the British government worked tirelessly to present the image of an otherwise ordinary society being wrecked by mindless terrorists, conveniently positioning itself as a defender of norms instead of an active belligerent in a conflict that killed 3,500 people. Almost three decades after the Good Friday accord largely ended the violence, normalizing the abnormal continues, inside and outside the gate of Royal Portrush, where the 153rd Open is taking place.

The R&A altered third-round tee times and logistics because the town of Portrush is hosting a band parade by pro-British Protestant loyalists that will begin as spectators are leaving the course Saturday evening. The Open was announced four years ago, so the parade’s scheduling isn’t accidental. Nor was there a debate about which one would give way when a major sports event with a global audience clashed with a parochial, coat-trailing parade. After all, this is a place where the government census asked those who identified as atheist to declare their family’s historic religious affiliation, literally demanding to know if one is a Protestant or Catholic atheist.

In a world awash in antisemitism, don't these folks know they're Tom Lehrer (from his National Brotherhood Week)?

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,

And the Catholics hate the Protestants,

And the Hindus hate the Moslems,

And everybody hates the Jews.

Not to make light of these ancient grievances, but you'd think they would make common cause.  

Back to Eamon:

Loyalist parades are a staple of Northern Irish summers. The intent is to claim ownership of the street. Most are organized by the Orange Order, a fraternal group founded to maintain Protestant supremacy. They’re frequently controversial and have often sparked violence when the Order insisted on marching through predominantly Catholic neighborhoods. Enormous bonfires are another feature of the festivities, and last week two drew widespread condemnation. One was built close to an electricity substation that powers Belfast’s two main hospitals, another was topped with an effigy of migrants in a raft — a brazen example of the far-right racism that underpins much of loyalist sentiment. Organizers rejected calls to remove either and the government sat idle. Naked bigotry normalized as an expression of culture.

The parade organizers, the Portrush Sons of Ulster, informed followers on social media that “we don’t have as much control of the town as we usually would … We hope everyone understands what we’re up against.”

Uninitiated visitors in town for the Open — and some unaligned locals — will view the parade as a source of entertainment or amusement, jaunty flute music performed by ruddy-faced men gussied up in sashes and costumes, the entire spectacle suggesting a prank pageant for guys who’d struggle to get a dog to bark at them on dating apps.

This is why it took so long for the R&A to consider coming back to Portrush, but obviously it went off without any serious issues.

To me, though, as much as I agree, I think this is a stretch on the part of Eamon:

The Open largely exists outside of this binary guff that defines so much of life in Northern Ireland. It’s unifying, a cause for celebration among people who for too long had more cause to commiserate. But even the Open is becoming a platform for normalizing the deplorable. The R&A deals with the Sons of Ulster by necessity. It deals with the Saudis by choice.

LIV Golf has a hospitality location directly across the street from the Royal Portrush clubhouse, but then the R&A’s writ doesn’t extend beyond the perimeter of the course. It does, however, have control over what happens inside. Qiddiah, the entertainment mega project under construction in Saudi Arabia, has a hospitality presence on site and one of its representatives will be playing Royal Portrush on Monday as a guest of the R&A. Qiddiah is bankrolled by the Public Investment Fund and overseen by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, LIV’s founding benefactor. Graeme McDowell, a popular native of Portrush, is working here as a commentator on the world feed for Sky Sports while wearing his LIV team apparel and regularly name-checking his employer. He was hired by IMG, which has deep business ties to the R&A.

Like it or not, that battle has been waged and lost.  The best that can be said is that the PGA Tour, which is still ravenous for the Saudi billions, may at least have put enough guardrails in place to prevent a Saudi takeover.  Of course, the key word is "may".

Coincidences? Possibly. Or perhaps the R&A is eager to position itself as more ally than antagonist to the Saudis. The process of normalizing the Kingdom’s ambitions in golf began two years ago during the Open at Royal Liverpool, when Darbon’s predecessor, Martin Slumbers, lamented the cash arms race in one breath while in the next attempting to cut to the head of the line for handouts.

“We have a number of large corporate partners that help us make this thing happen,” he said when asked if the R&A would accept a Saudi partnership in some form. “The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis. We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.”

As of now, there exists no formal commercial relationship between the R&A and the Saudis, but if we’re debating which parties on the board of the Official World Golf Ranking are compromised when it comes to deciding on LIV’s application for recognition, there’s circumstantial reason for concern about the R&A as much as the PGA Tour.

The R&A is trying to be subtle, but that seldom works with the Saudis, and never in Northern Ireland.

The problem is that in our binary world, those most aggressively anti-Saudi are members of Gays for Palestine and the like.  I consider the Saudis quite noxious, but on a relative scale as compared to Hamas?   

That's it for today.  When you awake at home, enjoy the final round from Portrush and we'll catch up in the coming days.  Cheers.

Golf In The Kingdom - A Wee Update

After our leisurely Tuesday, play resumed Wednesday on the Balcomie, with our typical mixed results.  The first difference you'll note are the long pants, quite the rookie mistake:

It was blowing a gale in the carpark, and I over-reacted and swapped out the shorts for long pants, only to regret it the entire day.  This picture of Madam is included because of what will come below:

Despite some weather concerns, the day ended up quite beautiful, with the golf only matching it episodically.  If your humble blogger could have putted he coulda been a contender, although Theresa could well say the same.  Amusingly, I took a one-up lead to the 18th tee and dribbled my drive off the tee into a gorse bush, thereby cementing my candidacy for Husband of the Year.

We had received the following in a blast e-mail from Crail:

Throughout the summer, the courses will be subject to closures owing to the notorious east coast haar (fog). The nature of this weather event makes it impossible to have a fair and equitable approach to tee time management because there is no way of knowing when the courses will open and how many people will want to play if the courses reopen on the day.

Priority Rebooking:

Players whose tee times have been cancelled owing to the closure will be given first priority to book any available tee times following the reopening of the courses. The Lifeboat House must be visible for 30 minutes before play can commence.

On arrival yesterday, we discovered that the course was closed due to such haar, though it so happens that when they say the Lifeboat House must be visible, we fortunately mean barely visible:

This was sufficient visibility to allow us back on the course and, because play was resumed before our time, we went off as scheduled.  Admittedly, that worked out better for Madam than for me, as I was unable to control my golf ball.  I'd still like to sort through with you why the Craighead is so difficult living rent-free in my head, but today will not be that day.  Though I took a couple of photos of the copses of gorse bushes, this from the 18th fairway:

In this case one would be aimed left of the bunkers visible, but in many other they are well within range.  Often, and the tee shot on the opening hole is a stark early reminder, one aims a bit away from a series of bunkers, only to over-correct and end up in even a worse spot.  But, as I said, today is not that day....

We got to The Dreel Tavern on Wednesday evening:

Off to struggle again on the Craighead with Ross, Elsie and John's son.  Perhaps he can explain my futility to me?  Or is that too big an ask?

Saturday forecast is dire.  More on that later.

Cheers.

Kick-Back Tuesday

Tuesday was an off-day from golf, and all other ambitious pursuits.  There was foraging to be done, for sure, but not much else of an import.

Most provisions come from the Anstruther Coop, but we've found other options for specific purposes.  A few years back, Theresa met some ladies while taking a plunge into the Pittenweem Tidal Pool, one of whom told us of a fish retailer in an odd location on the inland side of the main road to Crail.  Would never have know it was there:

I nice selection is on offer, and options were discussed for next week, when we'll have company.

Hard to miss this farm stand just this side of the village of Crail:

We stop in mostly for the berries, which are really quite good, though they have a small selection of other farm produce as well.  And Theresa picked up a lovely bouquet of sweet peas as well, which I've been informed will be refreshed as needed.

We've been all over the evening light....care for some morning light?

That last includes the St. Monan windmill and church, whose grounds and cemetery we have yet to get over to.

Both in the morning and later in the day we headed over to the harbor and walked the piers:

We had just passed the Dory, which is closed until Wednesday evening, when we happened upon our favorite waitress from that establishment, coming out of this beautiful building at the end of the harbor:

Unfortunately, she will not be working on Friday evening, when next we dine there.  

One of the appeals of Pittenweem is that it's one of the few remaining working fishing villages, but Theresa had observed the absence of commercial activity in the harbor.  Right on cue, two fishing boats headed out to sea:

The sea, she was angry:

Maybe merely slightly annoyed?  

The view East to the crazy Anstruther nine-hole course:

And, of course, The Dory:

Also a gallery of sorts, though that's mostly irrelevant except during the Arts Festival, which we've learned from experience to avoid like the plague.

As I was cleaning up from dinner, Madam announced that she was taking her glass and heading to the sea, and that I should find her when my chores were completed.  That was less specific than she perhaps understood, but ultimately this is how I found her:

I think she's settling in nicely, eh?

I can report some modest progress on yesterday's technological issues.  The mirroring of my iPad to our TV set has become routine, now after blogging I'll subscribe to NOW for the next month.

I also used our lazy day to spend some time with the Beemer and its maddening climate controls.  I believe that I have shut off the function that automatically turns on the seat heaters, though that will do with some real world testing.  The climate controls seemed quite strange, and I didn't dwell too much on it given the cooler weather forecast.  While I found the expected control for the fan, I never found the numerical setting for the cabin temperature, so we may not be done with that quite yet.

The weather forecast isn't brilliant.  Cooler with scattered showers around in general, so we have the hope of staying dry, and just enough wind to be a factor.  We're back on the Balcomie today, with dinner at The Dreel.  Cheers!

Craighead, Briefly

Greetings from Pittenweem on a sunny Tuesday morning.  Yesterday's Met Office forecast proved to be quite prescient, which shockingly isn't always the case here.  Or anywhere.

The morning gave little evidence of what was to come, sunny and blustery, with darker clouds visible off to the Southeast.  The wind direction didn't seem to be bringing that visible trouble our way, yet cloud cover increased quickly as we got our round underway.  The forecast had wind speeds in the mid-teens, and that seemed consistent with what we found out there, making an already difficult track a survival test.  

On the Balcomie, I prefer the back tees, there being stretched to an underwhelming 5,867 yards.  It does play far harder than that, with the substantial elevation changes and general quirkiness pr0viding defenses to scoring.  Those Balcomie back tees (here the whites are the Championship tees, yellows are the members' or society tees) carry a course rating of 69.7 and a slope of 117.  On the Craighead, the yellow tees, at 6,193 yards, are all I need, and seem underrated at 70.8 and 130, respectively.  Their yellow tees stretch to 6,656 yards (73.1/135), but I feel no need to punish myself to that extent.  After all, punishing your humble blogger remains Employee No. 2's realm....

It's a struggle to define exactly why it's such a difficult course, but I shall try to explain over the next week and a half, as much to myself as to my readers.  The first aspect to address is to understand the dilemma faced by Gil Hanse in his first solo design.  With the Balcomie topping out short of 6,00 yards, the club logically wanted its second course to be more substantial, a place suitable for Open Championship qualifying and other such events, but the property available is a tiny 114 acres.  Thus, Gil shoehorned it into the available land, but the course is necessarily tight, almost claustrophobically tight, at least at certain spots.  Ironically, setting aside the frustrating Par-3 thirteenth, I find the Par-5's to be the most maddening holes out there.

Yesterday's golf can be summarized quite quickly, it being of widely variable quality and relatively short duration.  Not much photography was involved, though I did catch Thresa playing a couple of typically linksy bump and runs, here into the fourth green:

And here into the tenth:

On the latter, her ball actually bounced through the bunker, a great break she didn't seem to have appreciated as much as one might.  Like Balcomie, Craighead seems to concentrate its short, fiddly holes in the middle of the round, this being one that perhaps I'll talk about in greater length the next time we play.  

Back to that fourth hole for just a second, which used to feature the most dangerous ball washer in Scotland, but now looks quite tame:

Unfortunately, despite reviewing my 2023 and 2024 trip posts, I did not find one of my old photos of this spot.  In prior years, those two gorse bushes encroached quite close to the ball washer, and the player had to risk the peril of contact with the gorse to clean his ball, its own little Sophie's Choice moment.  Now we see safetyism run amok.....

One last funny moment, just to prove that, after bragging on my play yesterday, I'll also share the face plants inevitable here.  The tees for the eleventh hole can be seen against the stone wall in that photo of Theresa playing the tenth.  The hole plays uphill slightly and is governed by an unusual feature:

Ancient Walls

Its not just the dramatic vistas that make a round on Craighead so inspiring. The course follows and bisects the remnants of medieval revetted drystone walling. Hanse carefully and expertly integrated these ancient walls into his design.

One plays over these stone walls on two holes, here on the eleventh, as well as the Par-5 fifteenth.  Here the wall is a mere 200 yards from the yellow tees, and my history has been to leave my drive way short of the wall, making the second shot to a tiny green that much more challenging.  Yesterday I gave that HL3-wood a go, but it put me smack against the wall.  Since I didn't fly seven hours to lay up, we had some fun with it:

Oops!  Not really sure if you can make out the ball, but if only ancient stone walls were built at the angle of revetted bunker faces....

At that point our matched was all-square and, on cue from the Met Office, it began to rain as we hit our tee balls on No. 12.  The forecast had indicated that the rain would be consistent, and we were at a critical juncture, because off the twelfth green we would make a right turn and head further away from the clubhouse, not to mention the necessity of dumping two golf balls into the Firth on No. 12.  So, all it took was a nod, and your humble blogger scurried to collect our golf balls from the fairway and we headed home, the consistent rain on the drive home validating our decision to remain dry.

The view later that afternoon from the window of our bedroom aerie further confirming our wisdom:

We quickly ducked into the local bakery after arriving home for a coffee and sausage roll (they hadn't received their delivery when Theresa went in before golf:

As we finished dinner, Theresa got an amusing push notice from her phone, indicating that it would begin raining in 23 minutes and rain for a half-hour, so we quickly mobilized for our traditional after-dinner stroll.  The sky was predictably dark, with the only brightness visible in the West towards St. Moans.

We opted to walk home via the High Street, a less scenic routing but offering slightly different views of Pittenweem and our home for these two weeks:

That brown stone building with the orange roof (orange, after the Glenmorangie tour and Harrison Ford videos, being the official color of our 2025 trip), is Eider House, our go-to rental house.  The white house with blue shutters is Herring House, which we had rented for 202 but never got to occupy.  All of this I covered in this post from last summer.

I know I've Wynd-blogged previously, but our path home from the High Street takes us part-way down West Wynd.  We do most of our walking along the water, the road that rings the harbor and the waling pathway from the end of the road towards the tidal pool, all part of the 183-kilometer Fife Coastal Path.  

Running up the hill from the harbor are a series of roads/paths, called Wynds, looking like this:

Continuing down the wind in the above photo would take us to that paved walkway you've seen in countless photos, but we can make a sharp left for a direct line home:

Through a wooden gate to the left is our outdoor space, where you've seen us eating dinner outside, as well as hanging laundry on Sunday.

Care for a couple of notes on managing life in Pittenweem, in this case with a common thread involving technology?  More accurately, these are tales of a 70-year old man managing 21st century technologies, with quite mixed results.  As always, we could sue a teenager with us, but that's not to be.

The first involves our car, a quite lovely BMW X-1, pictured below.  We now use Sixt for car rentals, and our small sample size indicates that they're better organized (Inverness Airport has its own unique issues, which I'll not delve into because we pick up our car there but we arrive by ground) and quite a bit cheaper, while providing better and newer cars.

Last year we ended up in an Audi A5, perfect for me in that I drive an Audi at home, and all the buttons looked familiar.  Sixt no longer stocks Audis, so it was a Beemer for us.  My issue is less with Sixt than it is with modern cars, which have largely eliminated physical knobs for touchscreen displays, which is an awkward fit in rental cars.

We drove the three hours from Inverness to Pittenweem struggling to control the most basic features in the car, mundane stuff like volume and temperature controls.  Idiot that I am, the volume control issue should have been readily solved using the volume control buttons on the steering column, but halfway down my butt started to get very warm, and we gradually realized that the seat heater was comin on automatically, though you'll think me mad to suggest that, no?

As an aside, we seem a magnet for crazy things like this.  In Anchor House, the house-from-hell that we mistakenly rented two years back, we were woken up several times in the middle of the night when the TV came on through spontaneous combustion..... the only solution was to unplug it.

In any event, it turns out that we're not THAT crazy:

Automatic Climate Control:

BMW's automatic climate control system is designed to maintain a comfortable cabin temperature. This system utilizes various sensors to monitor the interior and exterior temperatures and adjusts the heating, cooling, and ventilation accordingly. In colder weather, this can lead to the automatic activation of seat heaters when the system determines it's necessary to reach the desired cabin temperature.

Temperature-Based Activation:

Users can also configure specific temperature thresholds for seat heating and ventilation. When the outside temperature drops below the set point, the seat heaters will automatically engage. Similarly, ventilated seats can be set to activate when the temperature rises above a certain level.

iDrive Settings:

The automatic activation settings for seat heating and ventilation are typically found within the iDrive system's climate control menus. Users can usually access these settings by navigating to "Vehicle Settings" > "Climate Control" > "Climate Control Rules" or similar menu options.

Guess what I'll be working on once I finish this post?  I don't know what the answer is, but it's a lot to expect someone renting a car for a few days to have to dig deep into the settings menu just to avoid a sweaty behind.

My second technological foray is seemingly on a better arc, though it's best in these matters to always eschew the cockiness.  The underlying subject here is the Open Championship beginning Thursday, which is at one of Madam and my favorite courses on the planet (although, to be fair, we only 16/18ths of it).  Tow years ago I streamed the final round from Hoylake, so that in itself isn't above my capabilities (or, at least, wasn't two years ago).  But the bigger question is whether I can improve upon my laptop's 15.6" inch screen, and it seems that perhaps I can.

After golf yesterday, I confirmed that the LG TV in the den, while smaller than optimal, is at least a Smart TV.  Using Google and my well-honed technical skills, in shockingly short order I was able to successfully cast or mirror a YouTube video from my iPad onto the TV.  Just to make sure, I did it later as well, and we watched an episode of Slow Horses on AppleTV+.  For reasons I can only speculate about, Netflix, Prime and HBOMax content would not play, but Apple did.

SkySports has the coverage, though it's also available through something called NOW, so I still need to figure out that piece of it, though I still have 48 hours to subscribe.  I think the bride was quite shocked that I could figure this out, and I'll admit to a lack of confidence myself.  Hopefully the technology will not fail us, as this is an Open I very much need to see.  

Cheers for now.