Weekend Wrap - The Winter of Rory's Discontent Edition

Shall we lede with the bad news?  Only 8 1/2 months until the next significant round of golf. 

On Rory -  Let's not mince words, this might be his most dispiriting loss ever, because it was firmly in his grasp.  He's certainly dominating the post-event headlines:

Rory McIlroy dreamed of winning this Open. Then came heartbreak

So, I walked into our Pro Shop Sunday morning and the entire staff was all-in on Rory, with my lone voice expressing doubt.

How it felt at St. Andrews as the Open flipped from Rory McIlroy to Cam Smith

Was it any different than it felt on TV?  It had a Lexi Thompson feel to this cynical observer, sort of an "It'll be interesting to see how he screws the pooch this time"..

British Open 2022: The collective hopes of 52,000 people could not will Rory McIlroy past a balky putter and a mulleted man

Well, The Old Course and mullets is now officially a thing....

To me, though, this might be the saddest take:

British Open 2022: Rory McIlroy didn't win the claret jug. But he won this Open

I'm thinking that's exactly how it feels to Rory this morning, no?

There is a chapel on North Street called St. Salvator’s, close to where the gray cobblestones of the road converge with the ruins of St. Andrews Castle. There are no church services during the

summer so on this morning its pews were empty, pilgrims instead finding worship in the myriad pubs that lie in the chapel’s shadow. But three men stood solemnly outside St. Salvator’s gates Sunday, perhaps marveling at its 15th century architecture or maybe just seeking a moment of peace. That silence was broken by a shout across the road. “Hey boys,” cried out the voice, “don’t forget to pray for Rory.”

It wasn’t intended to be comical. It was not said with irreverence or blasphemy. Alister MacKenzie once wrote that golf and religion are two of the things the Scottish take seriously, and sometimes they are one and the same. For anyone who watched this championship, who saw and heard and felt the bond between the masses and Rory McIlroy, the shout’s request was shared by many.

However, on this day, like so many days before it, those prayers went unanswered.

The tournament that was supposed to be his wasn’t, as McIlroy leaves the Open without its cherished trophy.

It's a cruel game we play, and yet this doesn't quite work for me:

As for that pain, McIlroy didn’t do what needed to be done on Sunday. That said it’s not fair to say he gave this Open away. Smith took it with a 30 on the closing nine. “Look, I got beaten by a better player this week. Twenty under par for four rounds of golf around here is really, really impressive playing, especially to go out and shoot 64 today to get it done,” McIlroy said.

He didn't make the kind of mistake that gets replayed on Gollf Channel's endless loop, but he very much left an opening for the Camerons to exploit.  Just look at that endless loop of short Par-4's, none of which he birdied on Sunday.  And when he gave himself a good look, and here I'm thinking about No. 3, he put a very tentative stroke on his putts.

Shall we see what the Tour Confidentialistas think of it all?

2. One could make the argument, of course, that McIlroy didn’t do enough in his round of 70, which included 18 two-putts. The betting favorite coming into the week, McIlroy now stretches his number of years without a major to eight. In your opinion, what held McIlroy back on Sunday? And what does he need to do to break the drought?

Berhow: His putter held him back. The game is there, the drive is there, the mindset is there, the

preparation is there. He just didn’t make the putts today he made much of the week. He finished top 10 in all four majors this year, so he’s doing everything he needs to. His time will come to win that fifth major, but what a heartbreaking ending when it seemed like that day was today.

Zak: Bad luck? He hit every green in regulation. He two-putted every green. If you eliminate Viktor Hovland, which Hovland did to himself, Rory started the day with a four-shot lead and got beat by a 64. There’s some bad luck to that.

Melton: As many have noted, Rory’s putter didn’t cooperate on Sunday. Beyond that, though, he looked a little bit surprised when Smith rattled off four straight circles to pass him in the final round. Once that happened, Rory wasn’t able to kick it into high gear to catch back up. He just couldn’t push the right buttons on Sunday.

Dethier: I don’t think he needs to do anything differently to break the drought except play more major championships in his current form. Unfortunately he does have to wait eight and a half months before he gets to his next one — hopefully he’s in the same form when he does.

Colgan: First, I think he needs a hug. Otherwise, though, I agree with Dylan. This week’s performance would have won him three majors this year. It just so happened to come on the one week it didn’t.

He's a great player, but with a huge asterisk attached.  He's got major holes in his game that he's only partially shored up.  The putter, most notably, but also distance control on his wedges, and we saw the effects of these weaknesses yesterday.  He's also not the steeliest of them, and Alan Shipnuck captures the slow-motion disaster in walking all 18 holes with Rory on Sunday, picking things up after his birdie on the Par-5 fifth:

On the 6th and 7th—both short, downwind par-4s—McIlroy continued the worrying trend of squandering perfect drives with mediocre putts (No. 6) or imprecise wedges (No. 7). After a

routine two-putt par on the par-3 8th, McIlroy had a long wait on the 9th tee as Cameron Young, tied with Smith for third at the start of the day, drove into the gorse and, after an unplayable-lie penalty, took a second bogey to go with four birdies. The 9th is the beginning of the Old Course’s most pivotal stretch, with three drivable par-4s in the span of four holes. McIlroy munched on a banana and then idly swished his club to stay loose. You could feel the anticipation building. His driver remains one of the most potent weapons in the game, and now McIlroy, already leading by two strokes, had a chance to grab this tournament by the throat. But when it was finally time to play, he produced a toey push that stopped short and right of the green. (Hovland, in a curious act of capitulation, laid up with an iron off the tee and made par.) Still, McIlroy had a good angle to a middle-left flag on one of the Old Course’s most benign greens. It’s the kind of shot he routinely knocks stone-dead, but McIlroy left it 12 feet short with an indifferent effort. Then he smashed the putt through the break. Another missed opportunity.

And more of the same heading back towards town:

McIlroy parred the fiddly par-3 11th and then smashed another perfect drive about 10 paces short of the green at the par-4 12th. (Up ahead, the relentless Smith had driven the green and made a tough two-putt birdie to cut the lead back to one.) The hole was cut just beyond a deep swale and McIlroy, wielding a wedge, played a defensive shot that expired 12 feet short. He hadn’t made a putt of any consequence since the 17th on Friday afternoon, and when this one slid by the hole, the crowd shrieked with anguish. “I was hitting good putts,” McIlroy said afterward. “They just weren’t dropping.”

Actually, with the Open hanging in the balance, the definition of a good putt is one that goes in. “It’s hard, like, there’s a lot of putts today where I couldn’t just trust myself to start it inside the hole,” McIlroy added. “I was always starting it on the edge or just outside thinking it was going to move. More times than not, they just sort of stayed there.”

That's known as denial, which he doesn't see even as he says it out loud.  He was putting very much like a man that didn't trust himself...

It was quite the downer for sure:

As McIlroy reached the 15th tee, there were the familiar cries of “Let’s go, Rory,” but the tone had curdled. Now it was plaintive, even desperate. McIlroy needed a birdie, but he had made only two in the preceding three hours, both on two-putt kick-ins. (Meanwhile, Young’s birdie at 14 was his seventh of the day, matching Smith’s total to that point, and Young was only one behind McIlroy.) Sitting cross-legged under the rope line were a half-dozen young lads. Their eyes never left McIlroy. His drive peeled toward the left rough, and the crowd murmured its concern. In the quiet, one of the boys said, softly, “You can do it, Rory.” It was touching in its tenderness. McIlroy slashed his ball out of the long grass but it trickled 40 feet too far. He missed the putt and was now running out of holes.

But stop me if you've heard this one before, as Rory is ley down by his substandard wedge play one more time:

Another towering drive left him only 103 yards into the 16th green. McIlroy had put on a show off the tee, just as he did in winning a U.S. Open and a PGA Championship by eight strokes a decade ago. It seemed then that Rory would overwhelm the sport, but other players embraced the race for distance and cut into his advantage. More to the point, he has never addressed the biggest weakness in his game: imprecise wedge play, which is all the more vexing because he leaves himself so many wedges into par-4s. McIlroy ranks 159th on Tour this year in approaches from 75 to 100 yards — and in 2013 he was 167th. The shot he faced now, from the left edge of the 16th fairway, felt like his last best chance to make up ground on Smith, but McIlroy hit a dead-pull so disappointing he registered his disgust a millisecond after impact. He was doomed to another par.

Kudos to Rory for facing the media as he did, a welcome contrast to Bryson stiffing the media for months.  It's easy to like the man and instinctively root for him, especially given his prominent role in recent golf news cycles.  But there's reasons that he keeps coming up short, and he's struggled to address those weaknesses.

On Cam - Can he roll it, or what?  And not at all intimidated by the magnitude of the moment for sure:

1. The Open Championship is complete, and Cam Smith is your latest major championship winner. Starting the day four shots back of Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland, Smith shot a stunning eight-under 64, aided in great part by one of the best clutch putting performances you’ll see. We’ll begin our round table with him. What will be your biggest takeaway from Smith going forward?

Josh Berhow:  He does a lot of things right, but he does two things really well: make birdies and

putt. Some people just have that second gear to put up low scores when the conditions allow, and he did. It was an impressive bounce back after he shot 73 on Saturday. His up-and-down on 17 deserves a ton of credit. He needed to save par on the hardest hole in golf and went up and around a bunker with his putter and pulled it off.

Sean Zak: How he blacked out and made every putt on Friday and every putt on Sunday and somehow shot 73 in between those rounds. It’s wild. His putting stroke is so, so, so, so good.

Zephyr Melton: Smith’s putting is unbelievable. Every putt he strikes looks like it has a chance to go in — and in Rounds 2 and 4, they did! That ability to go unconscious on the greens is super impressive and keeps him in tournaments even when he falters in other areas.

Dylan Dethier: At any course that doesn’t demand greatness with driver — and especially those that DO demand greatness around the greens — Smith is That Guy. He proves that unsustainable stretches of red-hot putting actually are sustainable, as long as you have his putting stroke.

James Colgan: Man, I think my biggest takeaway is that I’m a little tired of the motion sickness. Smith oscillates between oh my god good and good lord bad with a speed that makes my stomach churn. When it’s good, though, the number of players who can beat him wouldn’t fill the B-side of a vinyl.

He's always going to be a high-beta golfer, as wild as he can be off the tee, but I'm a bit in awe of his first putts on the last two holes.  That putt around the Road Bunker I've tried, and it's terrifying even if it's just a ball you've dropped for fun.

Geoff had this amusing moment from the press center:

A veteran media member of more Opens than just about anyone here glumly packed up his things on Sunday night. A storybook Rory McIlroy win fell through and no shortage of R&A free beer could brighten his mood.

“This one bums me right up there with Cinky,” a reference to Stewart Cink’s win over Tom Watson that would have tied the then-59-year-old American for most Open wins with Harry Vardon.

Given the venue, I'd have gone with the Kel Nagle reference.... But, yeah!  He also has a good take on Smith's play at the Road Hole:

The grandstand wrapping around the 17th tee has been one of the more raucous all week due to its beer stand proximity. But the crowd sensed the moment and quieted down as soon as Smith pulled driver. He calmly piped one 322 yards, setting up an approach to a pin cut 34 yards from the front and just 7 from the mid-green marking point.

Smith said he failed to draw his 158-yard 9-iron crisply.

“That second shot on 17, it's just really an awkward shot, especially where I was,” he said of a tee shot down the left center. “You're only trying to get it to 40 or 50 feet anyway. Just didn't quite commit to the shape I wanted to hit, got it a little bit toey and turned over a touch more than I would have liked.”

Smith could have flopped a wedge straight at the hole but that would have meant taking on the Road bunker and 6 into the equation with a chunk or pretty much any weird bounce off the back side.

“He had to be very decisive with that one,” said playing partner Cameron Young. “Because if you are wondering about if the play he's making is correct, it's a really hard one.”

Smith made the decision to putt 15 feet away from the hole because, in the understatement of the year, “the putter felt really good all day.”

“I knew, if I could get it somewhere in there, that I'd be able to give it a pretty good run. Yeah, managed to get away with a 4 there.”

 Crazy bold and good, and the one on the finisher was just as memorable...

Of course, we can't leave the Home of Golf without this downer from the winners' press conference:

The question seemed inevitable and yet Cameron Smith acted miffed that he was asked during his winner’s press conference to address rumors that the newly crowned Champion Golfer of the

Year is on the verge of signing a deal to join LIV Golf, the upstart golf league.

“I just won the British Open, and you’re asking about that?” Smith responded. “I think that’s pretty, not that good.”

Pressed to answer the question and either confirm or quash such talk that has been circulating in golf circles all week, Smith instead did neither.

Whatever you think of the question, his reaction didn't do Smith any favors.  More importantly, my takeaway is that he's going, as his anger felt very much like Koepka's faux outrage at Brookline.

On The Old Girl - I'm mostly relived that, given the absence of wind, the winning score started with a "2" instead of a "3".  

4. Outside of the players, the star, of course, was the course, and St. Andrews was much discussed. Going into the week, the conversation revolved around whether the Home of Golf would hold up to the modern game, and during the week, the talk centered on the defense: quick fairways and tough pins, along with all of the other traps of a links course. Was St. Andrews a worthy host?

Berhow: Yes! I don’t care if Cameron Smith won at 20 under. It’s a historic links and location, and everyone’s playing the same course anyway. It’s unique in a way only it can be. The wind is the main defense, and you can’t always account for that beforehand. I can’t wait for the next one here.

Zak: It was! Without much for Scottish weather, the R&A was forced into making the firm conditions become the story and tucking pins away from players. That’s fine! Xander Schauffele and Matthew Fitzpatrick called that tricked up, but major championship golf hovers so closely to the tricked-up line that it’s surprising it doesn’t cross the line more often. The 2030 Open (potentially) at St. Andrews will look different. Different weather, maybe a rolled-back golf ball and driver. We’re all good.

Melton: Absolutely. It produced an elite leaderboard and a compelling tournament, and identified a worthy champion. Tough to beat that trio.

Dethier: You an Old Course critic? I hear you! I will say that a course with four or five drivable par-4s is a bit strange. The scene on Thursday afternoon — when conditions led to 6+ hour rounds — was less than ideal. But this was my first trip to St. Andrews, and I am a full-on convert. To quote Tony Finau: This is the only course that could get away with it. This town, this course, this setting? It’s all perfect. Add some wind to the mix and the scores would have been a whole lot different.

Colgan: The winning score could have been 100-under and I wouldn’t have cared. That was the most fun I’ve had watching golf since the ’19 Masters. Clearly, the golf course played a role in the fun. The critics can kick rocks.

I hope folks got a sense for this unique property, very hard to capture in the two-dimensional medium of television.  

There's no question that the R&A pulled out all their stops for hole locations, very much on the edge of fairness at times.  Did you catch that back left pin on No. 17 on Saturday?  To the best of my knowledge, they've not put it there before, but nae wind and nae rain....

Gonne leave things here and we'll pick up leftovers tomorrow.  It was a great week, and I just hope you caught enough of it to appreciate links golf at its finest.