ST ANDREWS, Scotland — Fear not golf fans, the Old Course is ready.
Anyone following the build-up to this week’s 150th Open Championship has heard gloomy predictions that the Home of Golf is about to get caught with its pants down, that it will have no answers for the biggest, baddest golfers in the world. It’s too short, they say. There’s no wind, they say. A record-shattering 59 could be on the way, they say.
Rest assured, if you plan to stay awake all week to watch the season’s final major, no matter what the winning score is on Sunday, the Champion Golfer of the Year at St Andrews will have thoroughly and properly earned it.
Let’s get one thing straight, the job of the Old Course isn’t to have answers for the world’s best players, it’s to provide the test. Yes, today’s golfers hit the ball a mile. Yes, the forecast for the week is benign.
And yes, a record score might even be in the cards. But after watching iron shots over the past four practice days explode with puffs of dry sand on fairways, and after watching Mackenzie Hughes putt the ball from 120 yards off the green at the Road Hole, make no mistake, Old Tom is somewhere smiling.
There are three main elements to links golf: the weather, the turf, and the rub of the green (or luck).
It’s true that the forecast this week looks great for watching golf but less than great for brutalizing golfers, but while I was typing this story a rain storm pelted our media tent for five minutes from an otherwise perfectly sunny sky. Point being, weather happens quickly here. And even if forecasts are correct and one of the key links golf elements is missing, the turf at the Old Course is terrifyingly perfect. It feels like your mouth the morning after a long night in a Scottish pub. That’s dry. Extremely dry. Beyond dry. Like water from that flash rain storm a few minutes ago rolling straight off the fairway kind of dry.
This is a long and winding way of saying that the links challenge at St Andrews is alive and well and golfers will be severely tested to keep their drives in fairways and their approach shots on greens. Tiger Woods said he’s never seen the Old Course this firm and, no joke, that the fairways are running faster than the greens.
Players Champion Cam Smith has seen plenty of firm golf courses in Australia but suggested much of this is new to him.
“It’s so hard to keep the ball on the fairways that it seems like you’re constantly hitting from that longer grass where you don’t have as much control,” the fabulously mulleted Smith said. “And given the terrain and the humps and hollows in front of the green, you really are kind of guessing into the greens.”
Hughes, one of two Canadians in the field along with Corey Conners, said players might as well leave their regular gameplans at home.
“You kind of throw all your stock shots out the window and you get to be creative,” he said.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said the driving range and practice areas have been basically useless this week. After all, what good is a launch monitor if your ball barely leaves the ground?
“I don’t know if you’re going to figure anything out on the range, chipping, short game area, whatever it is,” Scheffler said. “I’m going to do most of my figuring it out there on the course.”
The final key to links golf is lady luck because you only have to watch the ball skip and bounce down one fairway to know that fate will play a role this week and that the winner will be required to calmly handle fortune both good and bad. With most of the world’s best golfers barely old enough to rent a car, many don’t have much experience playing links golf, especially at the Old Course, especially under the pressures of a major championship. One guy who has seen a few things over the years offered a word of caution.
“Once you get frustrated, then say bye-bye, we’ll see you next time, because that’s what happens,” Jack Nicklaus said.
As you brew your coffee to watch the year’s final major, don’t be worried about what club players are hitting, what records might be broken, or how many par-4s are drivable, because that’s not in keeping with the spirit of the Open Championship or of this ancient town on the East Coast of Fife.
“The golf course is exactly where we want it to be … and my philosophy has always been I want to set up the golf course fair, challenging, and let these guys show us how good they are,” said R&A boss Martin Slumbers. “Now, let me make a comment about 59. Fifty-nine is 13-under par around this golf course. There’s 7,300 yards. It’s got greens that are running at 10-and-a-half to 11. It’s got fairways where the ball is bouncing 50 yards if it’s hit, and more if it catches the downslope. Thirteen-under par around that? I’ll tell you what, if someone shoots that, I will be the first person on the 18th green to shake their hand.”
When days are grey you trudge on, when the sun is shining you celebrate it.
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