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.