Xander Schaufelle won the Open. But so, too, did the magic of links golf

TROON, Scotland — Somebody actually wrote these words, got them to Nicole Kidman, and she gave them to the world:  

“We come to this place for magic. We come to AMC Theatres to laugh, to cry, to care. Because we need that, all of us.”

SNL had a field day with it, but you gotta admit, there is something to Ms. Kidman’s wee speech. All you have to do to make it work for this green-lovin’ website is replace AMC Theatres with Open golf. 

Open golf is links golf. It’s seaside golf. That’s true every year but some years more than others, and this year it’s extra true. Royal Troon is as linksy as links golf gets. That Xander Schauffele won a PGA Championship in the wet heat of Louisville in May and in cool, brackish breezes here, on a royal course about a mile from a beachside Ferris wheel, tells you something about the nimble mind he has underneath his crewcut.

American golf, at the risk of committing the high crime of overstatement, is often soft and still, with tees and fairways and greens that are overwatered and overfertilized. Linksland golf is its opposite in every way. The British Open is the best kind of wild.

“Literally, everything we do [here] is completely different than what we do in the States,” Schauffele said an hour or so after giving the winner’s Claret Jug a first kiss. 

Right about then, Justin Rose, Schauffele’s fourth-round playing partner, was talking about the “magic” of Open golf, the dreamstate of walking up the 18th fairway, grandstands packed, marching toward a green protected by a cozy, low stone clubhouse, built to handle any wind. Rose is a realist’s realist, more golfing technician than artist, and not likely a person to use the word magic on a daily basis. But there he was Sunday night, his face lined and windburned, using the word. Magic. The English golfer has now, at age 43, played in 22 Opens. He had his coming out party at one, in 1998, at age 17. He tied for fourth.

Schauffele talked about how, as a kid growing up in greater San Diego, he went golfing on summer days that were still and warm. (Seventy-five degrees, five miles of wind, he said.) There was none of that this week. Schauffele played late on Thursday (with Tiger Woods and Patrick Cantlay) and early on Friday and their half of the wave got the worst of the weather.

Schauffele played through wind and rain on Saturday and wind and more wind on Sunday. Talking to reporters Sunday night, Schauffele used the word wind a half-dozen or more times. The Inuit people have a hundred words for snow. Do you know the word hoolan? Scottish for gale wind. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Wind breathes life into a golf course, and lights up a golfer’s head.

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Schauffele also mentioned Royal Troon’s fescue rough, her slow greens and deep bunkers, the fine sand in them. He said he liked links golf from the first time he played it and by that he meant his first trip to Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast. (Yes, links golf on the Oregon coast! It’s definitely a real thing.)

Schauffele tied for second in his second British Open, in 2018, at Carnoustie. He finished two strokes behind Francisco Molinari there, as did Justin Rose, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Kevin Kisner. (Talk about your notable golf countries! Italy, England, the U.S., Northern Ireland — and The South.) Carnoustie is on the east coast of Scotland, seven hours from here, by public transit. (Train, bus, train.) The Senior British Open is being played there this week, for golfers 50 and over. Schauffele is 20 years away from qualifying. In the meantime, he has an automatic exemption into this tournament for the next 30 years. He’s 30.

A dozen different people could have won this thing, from A. Scott to X. Schauffele. Every last one of them would have been worthy. When Thriston Lawrence — no u; not Thurston — turned on Sunday in 32 shots and at seven under par, he was the Open leader. The Open leader and in the day’s last twosome, with Billy Horschel. Thriston could have marched on in to the Sunday night party. Given that there was a three-day gabfest leading into the first round of this event and his name as a possible winner was never mentioned once, how funny is that? Like Nicole says, we need to laugh.

Scheffler hit a tee shot on 18 on Sunday that barely found his clubface and did not reach the fairway. Not a tragedy, of course, but from Scottie? Pretty damn weird. Dan Brown hit a shot from a fairway bunker that went forward, hit a bunker wall and bounced over his head and finished behind him. All together now: This game does weird well.

The Indian golfer Shub Sharma had a top-20 finish at Royal Troon and said, “Golf on a links course gives you a freedom you don’t have on other courses because there are so many choices. But also the opposite of freedom, because links golf makes you focus so intensely.”

Yes and yes. That good. That good! Justin Rose noted the freedom with which Schauffele played on Sunday. 

While we’re at it, the freedom that golf can give to any golfer, anywhere — to roam, to try, to connect with a piece of earth and a playing partner and yourself and rest of it — is tempered, beautifully, by the rules that govern your play. Without them, there would actually be no sense of freedom at all. Golf would just be . . . whatever, dude. Ms. Kidman’s statement on the AMC Theatre chain would have no application in our green corridors.

And on the subject of the rulebook: I’ve always liked this Russell Henley. One year, at a Tour event in Mexico, he called some wild number of penalty strokes on himself for realizing, after a round, that he had played some shots with a nonconforming ball. Only he would have known about the ball thing, but that was enough. He finished fifth at Troon and when he came in, I asked him to compare American golf with Open golf. He didn’t know where to begin.

“Every lie on every shot is just so different,” he said. “You have to be willing to play shots you’re not comfortable with. Sometimes the wind is blowing really hard right to left I have to feel like I’m hitting a slice, just to straighten it out.” A slice, not a fade.

You love that, right? That sense of freedom that shotmaking of that kind gives you? Well, Russell Henley does not. “I feel very uncomfortable here,” he said.

Is that a bad thing? I’d say not and maybe he would agree. In 40 majors, Henley has had only one finish better than his fifth here, a tie for fourth at last year’s Masters.

Billy Horschel was the leader by a shot through three rounds. (Rose and Schauffele were two twosomes behind him.) He’s as Florida as Florida gets. (Went to Florida, has lived in Florida forever.) Last week, he was a long way from Florida, in every way.

“I’ve always liked coming over here,” Horschel said Sunday night. “I like life here. In America, we’re always trying so hard to get ahead in our lives we sometimes forget to step back and enjoy what we have and live in the present. Here, people are enjoying the moment, enjoying the present. There’s a simplicity to it, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.” He was talking about Scottish life. Or was it Scottish golf? They’re pretty much the same. You’ll never hear a Scottish golfer use the phrase “green complexes.”

Forgive me, longtime readers, because I have trotted this one out a thousand times, but it captures what I feel about links golf better than anything I could come up with myself. It’s John Updike, from a short story called Farrell’s Caddie. Farrell is an American banker from Long Island playing golf in Scotland.

On Sunday night, I read this bit from it to Martin Slumbers, presiding over his final Open as the CEO of the R&A. He’s a former banker himself. From right off my phone, and the he is Farrell:

“He began to get pars, as the whitecaps flashed on one side of the links and on the other the wine-red electric commuter trains swiftly glided up to Glasgow and back. This was happiness, in this wasteland between the tracks and the beach, and freedom, of a wild and windy sort.”

Slumbers smiled and said, “When we moved the Open broadcast from BBC to Sky, I said to the fellow who ran it, ‘The Open is about one thing: the golfer trying to conquer Mother Nature.’”

We shook hands and off he went, into the Royal Troon clubhouse. Xander Schauffele was posing for pictures with the Claret Jug. It’s his — for a year. Fans were making the short walk to the Troon station and for the 40-minute ride to Central Station, Glasgow.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com