Open Friday

The true links have an intimacy with the waves; they are much on the same level, in close relation, almost cousins and part of the ocean if you can imagine sea turned into land or the land suffering sea change into something rich and rare.

H.N. WETHERED

Lest we forgot, a morning blogging regimen is an awkward fit with an Open Championship.  As I prepare to regale you with blinding insights as to Round One, Round Two marches on and undermines it all.  

But I was just treated to the sight of Tyrell Hatton leaving one on the bank at Calamity Corner...Reminding me that I wanted to share this of your humble blogger.  I had missed my line slightly off the tee....

By slightly I, of course, mean by about forty yards....This was quite a good recovery, though it would be a far better story had I made the putt.

Shall we dive in?  It's surprisingly hard to find anything that passes for a game story midway into the second round, so this will have to do:

No surprise here – Brooks Koepka’s in contention at another major. 

On a day full of bizarre activity and downright shockers occurring all about Royal 

Brooks with a local hero.

Portrush in the opening round of the 148th British Open, Mr. Commonplace once again took up residence near the top of the giant yellow scoreboards. 

With a 3-under-par 68, Koepka was in a tie for third place and just two shots in back of pacesetter J.B. Holmes. It is the 14th time in the last 17 rounds played in majors where Koepka has been in fourth place or better at the end of the day. 

His consistency in majors is like the sun coming up and the clouds opening up in the oldest major championship in the world – as they often did in the first round. But not even Mother Nature’s most vicious lashings threw Koepka off.

Although it seems as though it might have been better.....  

Of course, the haters only want to talk about the disasters, of which there was no shortage.  Perhaps I was early with that local hero bit, because we now know what 1.7 million people screaming collectively sounds like.

Rory is no longer a kid, having turned thirty earlier in the year.  And while I've been sympathetic about the unique emotions involved with this home game, how does one explain a round that started with a quad and finished with a triple?  

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Rory McIlroy’s first round at the 2019 Open Championship couldn’t have gone any worse. 

It was downhill from the start. His first shot of the tournament was a snap-hooked iron off the tee that bounded left of the fairway and out of bounds. That led to a quadruple-body eight. He missed a short putt on the next hole, then righted the ship somewhat before finishing double-bogey, par, triple bogey for an eight-over 79. 

“It was obviously a disappointing day,” McIlroy said after his round.

Disappointing?  That doesn't quite cover it, does it?

So, that opening tee shot?  With an iron and all....

“I hit the ball out of bounds right yesterday on the practice round. That might have been in my head a little bit, not sort of wanting to leak it out to the right.”

Hmmm... so, you're no-good, horrible shot was caused by a no-good, horrible shot on Wednesday?  OK, but by that logic, shouldn't the reload have missed right?

“So I was trying to guard against that a little bit, and a little bit too much right hand and got the ball going left…Tee shots like the first happen, you can get one riding on the wind a little too much, that’s fine.”

No, it wasn't fine at all....  Then our hero makes a calamity of Calamity Corner, but not in the usual manner:

“The putt was a 6-foot putt. And in normal conditions with not a lot of wind it was probably like a ball on the left. But the wind was hard off the right. I’m thinking, is the wind going to affect this or not? I still played it a ball on the left, and I missed it left. So as I’m walking up to hit the next one, I should have trusted the wind. I’m sort of talking to myself about the last putt. It’s not like my head is going to Kelly’s tonight or something. But I’m berating myself about the putt I just hit and went to tap it in and didn’t…The one that I’m disappointed about most is the little short putt on 16. That was inexcusable.”

At least Rory is showing development in his choice of adjectives, as "inexcusable" is appropriate to the offense.  

He doesn't have anything of note to say about the mess he made of No. 18, which was likely to final nail in his MC coffin.  Here's what it looked like at the end of the day:

Quite the troika, he made a double, a triple and a quad.... It's like he hit for the cycle.

Brandel Chamblee has made no shortage of enemies over the years, but these comments might strike you as unduly harsh:

“Has a sporting event ever had the wind knocked out of it quicker than this one today?” Chamblee asked. “This is nothing new what we saw today out of Rory McIlroy. He has

had – historically – a bad run of first rounds. When someone plays poor golf in the beginning of a tournament and then great golf the rest of the way then it’s not something physical. It’s not something technical. That they’re not putting themselves in the right frame of mind to either begin a golf tournament or end a golf tournament. 

“On paper coming in here, demonstrably, Rory McIlroy was the best player,” Chamblee continued. “I know what the world rankings say. But when someone consistently performs under expectations, the word is choking. We shy away from it. But now it’s five years [removed from winning a major]. And there was a reason why people shied away from picking him this week. And it was because everybody felt like the moment was going to be too big for him. You don’t like to be correct in these presumptions, but it played out exactly that way.”

Yanno, everything bad that happens on a golf course is not the result of choking.  I've had my own reservations about Rory's approach for some time now, most notably about the boyhood friend on the bag, but this one is somehow different.  

Rory is a mess and is due for a comeuppance, but we should all tread lightly this week.  Being an Ulsterman is not something any of us can understand, and we all know how much he wanted to play well this week.  Who knows, maybe this will provide the shock to the system that he so clearly needs.  

Joel Beall takes the more empathetic approach to the curse of caring too much:

Even by those standards, this week is a different tune. For the first time in 68 years the Open is being played on the Emerald Isle, a land whose cultural, political fissures remain complicated in spite of recent progress. A land McIlroy calls home. He may not be a Portrush lad, but the links was the site of his breakout performance, the so-often cited 61 as a 16-year-old. 

McIlroy hoisting the claret jug wasn’t the sole storyline worth watching this week, but it was the most irresistible. 

"The problem is that when you focus on results, you are actually less likely to get those results," writes Dr. Jim Taylor in Psychology Today. "If you are focusing on results, you’re not focusing on the process, namely, what you need to do to perform your best to get those results. This result focus can cause you to get really nervous before competitions, which makes it nearly impossible for you to perform your best."

I don't get much right in predicting golf results, but I did figure this would be a tough week for Rory.

Of course, props go to Shack, who was all over the internal OB and its potential for disaster.  Alan Shipnuck with the tip-in, though he has this really strange lede:

Many great golf courses have a bad hole, and for reasons we can’t explain, it’s often the first or last.

Who can't explain it?  It's for the most obvious reason in the world.... Clubhouse are built near the road, whereas the most interesting land is out near the water.  The reason for weak opening and closing holes is the simple need to get the players from the clubhouse out to the meat of the golf course....  Alan, I'm glad we had this discussion. 

After that unforced error, Alan gets with the program:

Pebble Beach’s opener is cramped and awkward, while Augusta National’s closing hole is almost as bad as Cypress Point’s. Where the first hole at Royal Portrush breaks from this tradition is that the untowardness is entirely arbitrary and unnecessary. A pleasant 421-yard par-4 with a really neat, elevated green is bastardized by out-of-bounds stakes on both sides of the fairway. This is not the proverbial mole on Marilyn’s face, it is a festering wound oozing creamy puss.

Thanks for ruining breakfast, Alan.  But he makes his case:

O.B. down the right is defensible only because there is a corporate hospitality structure

hard against the first fairway. The O.B. left is a crime against humanity. It’s far too close to the fairway: just shy of the first bunker the white line is only four paces from the edge of the first cut, with firm, fast turf leading up to it. 

On Thursday, especially in the morning, the wind was coming hard from the right, making out-of-bounds in play for any ball with hook spin. Ask poor Rory McIlroy. A lot of air went out of this Open when his opening tee shot sailed O.B. by a yard or two, leading to a brutal snowman. 

Out-of-bounds is designed to protect private property, so you’re not playing a shot out of Grandma’s garden; internal O.B., as on Portrush’s first hole, is usually a red flag of a sad mistake, either in the course design or the thinking of the course stewards. To the left of McIlroy’s ball was a lovely expanse of linksland. Left of that is a cart path, and left of that is a grass area trampled down by spectators heading out onto the course, all of if framed by grandstands the likes of which players get a free drop from most every week.

Can we agree that no fairway should have OB on both sides?  At least not a fairway in a major....

 Did you catch any of Tiger's play?  Not a pretty picture for sure....

Coming off another long layoff and playing just his fourth event since winning the Masters in April, Woods looked out of sorts and frustrated in the opening round of the

148th Open Championship. 

He also was hurting. 

Woods admitted as much after signing for a seven-over-par 78 that looked difficult from the very first tee shot, when he pulled the ball into the left rough and winced as he watched the offending stroke veer off line.

“I'm just not moving as well as I’d like,” Woods, 43, said, suggesting his surgically repaired back is not nearly as healthy as it was when he won the Masters in April. “Unfortunately, you’ve got to be able to move, and especially under these conditions, shape the golf ball. And I didn’t do it. I didn’t shape the golf ball at all. Everything was left-to-right. And wasn’t hitting very solidly. 

“I didn’t do much out there today,” he added candidly. “I hit a lot of missed shots, they were all left. Wasn’t hitting it solid. Everything was off the heel. Just trying to scrape it around. Best I could do was seven over.”

Hard to watch, for sure.  Cold weather and late-career Tiger are a bad fit, and it's even that cold at Portrush.  That's why I was a bit skeptical about the conventional wisdom that Tiger would be most likely to pick off an Open Championship at this juncture of all the majors.  Think what he would give for an August PGA at this point.

Have we ever heard anything like this from Tiger?

At one point, he told one of the media contingent following along that he felt like he was in the way of playing partners Matt Wallace and Patrick Reed.

Old and in the way?  From the current Masters champion....

There seems to be a conspiracy of silence about David Duval...  He's a member of the tribe, but he flat out embarrassed himself out there, and I'd like this to be a teachable moment.  But first, the soft bigotry of low expectations:

The PGA Tour Player Handbook has a section titled “Conduct Unbecoming a Professional.” But what about conduct becoming a professional? 

It does not address that, but that’s OK. David Duval did so after his 20-over par 91 in the first round of the British Open at Royal Portrush in Portrush, Northern Ireland, on Thursday.

What did he do that was so becoming?  He handed in his scorecard.  No, really:

Duval, who has a claret jug on a resume that is borderline World Golf Hall of Fame caliber, took a 14 on the par-4 seventh hole en route to a front nine of 49. It was the kind

of hole in the kind of round that might have caused integrity-challenged golfers to walk off the course, or at the very least to avoid the ignominy of having their score posted for all to see by not signing the scorecard and taking a disqualification. 

Not Duval. Here’s what he said after his round: 

“You have an obligation as a professional athlete. If you play, you post your score. Am I happy about that? Is there some embarrassment to it? I don't know. But I teed off in the Open and I shot [91] today. So put it on the board.” 

Well played on a day he did not play well.

He took up a spot in the field, so turning in his scorecard is the minimum we should expect of him.  he took it well, but he's had no shortage of experience at posting large numbers.

My point is, why is he in the field?  If not for the cart issue John Daly would have been here as well, and what purpose is served in that?  Everyone wants to copy The Masters, but that event's most obvious weakness is the thin field.

Care for some random musings from your humble blogger?  Things that struck me while watching more golf yesterday than any human should:

Playing Through - This strategy of picture-in-picture seems more effective on Thursday-Friday, when they have more actual golf than can be shown, than on the weekend.  I found myself inadvertently stopping the fast-forward through commercials, as shots I wanted to see appeared.

Also, amusingly, during one such break, a full-screen commercial suddenly intruded...  I was in fast-forward mode, but did anyone else notice that screw-up?

Fred Daly's - The fourth has always been one of my favorite holes here, though it's mostly over-looked, probably because it comes early and doesn't offer the eye-candy of later holes.  From my 2012 post on RPGC, the coda to our Fortnight in Ballyliffin:

The first of these is in the middle of the outbound nine, specifically the fourth and fifth holes. The fourth, named Fred Daly's after the Portrush native who until Graeme McDowell's breakthrough in 2010 was the only Ulsterman to have won a major, the 1947 Open Championship at Hoylake. It's not like the citizens of Northern Ireland took any pride in that victory, but to this day 1947 remains the combination to the restrooms at the turn. The fourth is a long Par 4, 479 yards from the Tiger tees but a still robust 442 yards from the Society tees.

It's an exacting tee shot, with OB right and three deep fairway bunkers to penalize the many players that put their best "Not Right" swing on the tee ball (ahem, including the author this time through). From the fairway, the approach must be equally precise, a mid to long iron to a green nestled between two dunes, which I find very reminiscent of the famed 11th at Ballybunion. Any shot finding the dunes will provide a challenging up and down, especially if the miss is on the short side.

It's that green complex that I find so compelling, as per this old photo:

It's a great second shot, with the mounds creating a punchbowl effect, often the best way to get close is to use those slopes.  There's no shortage of great holes, but keep an eye out for this one. And, as if on cue, Shane Lowry just used the contours perfectly on his approach shot....

Skerries - No. 15 now, it's the last obvious birdie opportunity on the golf course as the players head in.  here are my thoughts from 2012:

The second sequence of holes worth noting is the thirteenth and fourteenth, this time a Par 4 and 3, respectively. Thirteen is a short Par 4 called Skerries, named for a small offshore grouping of rocky islands, only 358 yards from the Society tees. It plays up and over a large dune, the only time Colt's routing uses the dunes for such a purpose. and all but the shortest of hitters can reach the crest of the hill. The author got all of his drive, and had the pleasure of watching it take a humongous bounce and disappear from view, only to find it less than sixty yards from the green.

But that's where Colt makes it uniquely interesting, as the contours of the ground make it a devilishly difficult pitch or bump and run to get close. There are two bunkers protecting the left side of the green, so the obvious instinct is to play safely away from them. But the right side of the green features an extremely steep face on the collar, which will prevent most balls that land into it from releasing onto the green. Thus the player has to either land it short and run it up, or carry the steep face and hope his shot holds on a green that subtly runs away.

But what struck me yesterday, as how the grandstands behind the green ruin one of my favorite vistas in golf:

See that shaping to which I alluded at the front-right of the green?  It's quite evil, and has gotten your humble correspondent more than once.  Damn you, Harry Colt!

The Best Golf In The World - That's a quote from Sir Nick Faldo about links golf....  Nick tries my patience and I'll be quite pleased to avoid him on the weekend, but here we find common ground.

Before w eleave my exhumed 2012 post, we got soaked that day at Portrush, leading to this inevitable view of our Belfast hotel room trying to dry everything out before the flight home:

I have a vast collection of such photos from throughout GB&I.

Enjoy the weekend and the golf, and we'll sum it all up on Monday.

UPDATE:  I just saw this tweet from Alan Shipnuck, and since I only posted a few minutes ago:

Perfect.