Thursday’s opening round at the Open Championship delivered a full day of demanding golf and fantastic viewing. The wind. The drizzle. The bunkers. The variety. Those of you who watch this tournament every year know the drill: when the world wakes up on Thursday morning of Open week we hope for challenging links-golf conditions and this year, at least on Day 1, we got ’em.
The challenge for the players is navigating said conditions. The challenge for golf writers is describing what makes this type of golf different, special, preferable. But World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is better at playing golf and better at describing it, too, so let’s lean on his words to get us there.
Scheffler entered Thursday’s round off a three-week break from tournament golf. That’s significant, though hardly insurmountable, especially given the golf he’s put on display this year under far more trying circumstances. Scheffler bogeyed No. 1, and the overreactors among us were immediately curious if links golf would again prove to be the only golfing riddle that Scheffler can’t solve. Two of the favorites, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, had each just shot 76 or worse. Any chance he’d join them?
But Scheffler’s mind never went there. Instead it went to the task at hand, one shot after the next, and he ultimately delivered two birdies in his final three holes to grind out a round of 1-under 70, putting him squarely in the center of contention. Post-round, though, he was asked about the challenge of the wind, and his mind wandered back to the second hole and a 165-yard approach shot. Is it confusing when the wind switches on a course this tough?
“I don’t know if confusing is the right word, just challenging, especially when you get the rain involved,” he said. “When you get a wet ball into the wind, it’s amazing how short it goes.” A wet ball into the wind. You can feel it when he says it — your own ball sent on the wrong trajectory into a stiff breeze, ballooning up into the air and coming up well short of your intended target.
But back to No. 2 and a more proper player. Scheffler had 165 yards to the pin off a slight upslope. “I hit a hold 5-iron, which for me usually goes about 205,” he said. “It went probably 155 at the most. Probably carried 150 and ended up 155, and I striped it.”
A 150-yard carry with a 5-iron. What a beautiful thing. In other words, a 50-yard difference?
“Yeah, the slight upslope had something to do with that, but I mean, I flighted it down pretty good, and it’s my 205 shot, and it went 155.”
How cool is that? Obviously judging the wind is not a golfing exercise restricted to the U.K., but the World No. 1 making a 50-yard adjustment on just a medium-breezy day is the sort of creativity we don’t see week in, week out at most American PGA Tour events. Over the decades some Americans have embraced the challenge and others have expressed their distaste. Scheffler falls in the former category.
What does he like about this style of play in particular? Scheffler discussed the ways in which he varies his ball flight depending on what the course requests. Because he’s so dominant, there’s a misconception that Scheffler’s golf is boring; it’s anything but. And it gets even more interesting over here.
“I would say my stock shot is high, but I feel like I can hit it as low, if not lower, than anybody,” he said, referencing the worm-burning stinger shot we see him break out now and again. “One of my best strengths is being able to shape and hit the ball and hit all kinds of different shots when they’re appropriate.”
There’s a perception that the best links players just hit the ball low all the time but Scheffler explained that that’s not really true, either.
“Even on days like today, typically you would have thought if it’s blowing into the wind on 1, 2 and 3 that I’d be hitting a [tee] shot really low,” he said. “But the best shot for me actually to hit was a higher 3-wood because if I hit a low 3-iron it wasn’t going to chase out there very far and if I hit a low 3-wood it could chase into the bunkers. So for me the play was hitting a higher shot with the 3-wood.
“I think more of it is the ability to hit all types of different shots out here. The play is not always necessarily a really low shot just because it’s firm and it’s links golf.”
Links golf is played in extra dimensions. If every shot is a equation, these ones have more variables involved. They’re more fun to watch players solve. Whether they’re actually more fun for players to solve? That depends on the pro, and on the day, and whether your ball flies the bunker.
A wet ball into the wind goes crazy short, after all. Club up.
