The post 1 thing pros pay extra attention to during their British Open prep appeared first on Golf.

The post 1 thing pros pay extra attention to during their British Open prep appeared first on Golf.

Each year when pros venture across the pond, they’re tossed far from the confines of their comfort zone.

Playing in the severe elements presents a new set of challenges when it comes to the way players prepare. Players’ fundamentals — their grip, posture, stance and ball position — are usually pretty locked-in. But during Open Championship week, that begins to change.

“The ball positions tend to creep further and further back, the upper part of their trunk starts leaning more towards the target, and they tend to get closer to the ball,” he says.

They tend to be subconscious changes, Ruggiero goes onto say in the video above, an instinctive result of players “trying to keep the ball down.” But left untended, the ball will start veering in unwanted directions.

So to succeed next week, a large part of players’ prep will be paying extra attention to those fundamentals to make sure they done drift off course. Keeping things balanced and centered at setup: That’s where players’ preparation will be focused at setup ahead of the Open.

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The post Check out the host courses for the next 3 Open Championships appeared first on Golf.

The post Check out the host courses for the next 3 Open Championships appeared first on Golf.

The Open Championship is one of golf’s greatest traditions for many reasons, but perhaps none more than its setting. The Open has built a reputation as a traveling advertisement for the game of golf at its roots, visiting many of the oldest and most historic sites in a subsection of the continent chock full of them.

Every year, the Open serves as a reminder of golf history, and its venues serve as a reminder of the way in which the game was first played — with undulating terrain, windy linksland and firm, fast conditions.

Years ago, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (or The R&A) doubled down on its efforts to harken The Open back to the history of the sport through the creation of the Open Championship rota. Rather than send the tournament to dozens of different locations throughout the British Isles, the R&A elected to create a list of 10 core courses they felt served as quintessential tests. Included among those 10 are the following:

– The Old Course at St. Andrews
– Muirfield
– Royal St. Georges
– Royal Liverpool
– Royal Troon
– Royal Lytham and St. Annes
– Carnoustie
– Royal Portrush
– Royal Birkdale
– Turnberry

The decision benefitted The R&A twofold: it allowed the governing body to invest more heavily in building tournament infrastructure at each of the locations, and it allowed fans to grow more closely attached to each of the hosts.

The Old Course at St. Andrews has hosted the most Opens (29), while Turnberry has not received an Open bid in more than a decade; Lytham hasn’t hosted an Open since 2012. Still, there are only three confirmed future tournament hosts — in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — all of which saw their timelines extended when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 Open.

As the sun begins to set on the 2021 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s, check out the list of the next three Open hosts below.

2022: The Old Course at St. Andrews

2023: Royal Liverpool

2024: Royal Troon

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The post 18 years later, Ben Curtis looks back at his historic Open win at Royal St. George’s appeared first on Golf.

The post 18 years later, Ben Curtis looks back at his historic Open win at Royal St. George’s appeared first on Golf.

Eighteen years ago, I wasn’t exactly ready to become Champion Golfer of the Year.

After all, you’re not supposed to think about winning The Open through 36 holes. Or 54 holes. Too many things can happen.

But when you shoot six under on the first 11 holes on Sunday at Royal St. George’s, like I did in 2003, life starts moving pretty fast. I held on tight to the clubhouse lead and suddenly three different cameramen were sticking their lenses in my face. It was a lot!

Did I ever think I was going to win a major? I don’t know. But I did always dream of playing and winning on the Tour. Then, wham, it happens on the biggest stage and I’m on the cover of every newspaper in the London airport. Days later, I am on a whirlwind media tour in New York City, and the next week my wife and I were guests at the White House.

A victory like that changes everything around you. I would make a milk run for my wife and come back an hour later with no milk, looking disheveled after being stopped for dozens of photos. Ohioans were excited about my victory, that’s for sure.

But like anything, those highs don’t last forever. Everyone’s expectations for me changed, including my own. I had earned an incredible five-year exemption for full status on the PGA Tour. Believe me, job security is an asset. But with all that guaranteed time comes an urgency to validate it constantly; to live up to the man who triumphed in southeast England.

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For two years, I missed as many cuts as I made, and it wore down my golf psyche. I was too worried about the outcome. My college coach, my caddie and my wife could see a difference, and they stepped in to help me reset mentally. The takeaway was simple: Get back to who I was before I won the Open. In short, to be me. It may have taken a couple years to understand what internal pressure had done to me, but eventually we straightened it out as a group. Sure enough, I was able to bag a couple more Tour wins before ending my competitive playing career in my early 40s.

Could I have played the Open this year and other Opens in the future? Definitely. I earned that right, and I know about 30 people who asked me to play just so they could caddie for me. But I’m content. I’d rather give back to the golf community at my academy just outside of Cleveland. I stay close as ever to the game that I love and pour all I’ve got into the youth of the game. With any luck, we’ll help craft the future of another Open Champion from Ohio.

Curtis, the surprise winner, at age 26, of the 2003 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s, now runs the Ben Curtis Golf Academy, in Hudson, Ohio, provides for children in need through the Ben Curtis Family Foundation and talks about his passion for wine on the podcast “Clubs and Corks.”

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The post Louis Oosthuizen is breaking records and leading at a major — again appeared first on Golf.

The post Louis Oosthuizen is breaking records and leading at a major — again appeared first on Golf.

Many years from now, someone will invariably tell Louis Oosthuizen’s 2021 major championship story.

They’ll start with the story of his throwback performance at a throwback PGA Championship, in which Oosthuizen, 38, went toe-to-toe with 50-year-old Phil Mickelson — bowing only on the final day when a comeback effort fell a single stroke short.

Or perhaps they’ll tell the story of the U.S. Open, when Louis firmly grasped his first win on North American soil at Torrey Pines, only to see it snatched away by a duck-hook at the worst imaginable moment and a charging Jon Rahm.

No, that’s not it. When the story of Louis Oosthuizen’s awe-inspiring major championship performance in 2021 is told, it will start with the Open Championship. It was here, at the same event where he claimed his first and only major championship to date in 2010, that Oosthuizen’s run on success reached a fever pitch.

On Friday at Royal St. George’s, Oosthuizen was not only better than his fellow competitors — as has become a fairly regular theme over the last eight weeks of competition — he was also better than anyone in the Open’s 149-year history. It was on Friday that Oosthuizen (-11) claimed the halfway lead by a two-stroke margin, giving him a two-round total of 129, the lowest 36-hole total in the history of golf’s oldest major championship.

“Front nine, I didn’t really do much, just plodded along,” Oosthuizen told NBC after his round. “Then the wind died down on us, and it was really good, perfect links golf weather on the back nine. Took advantage of that, and just kept patient. You know, I had a couple of bad shots coming in there, but other than that just solid golf.”

By a couple of bad shots, Louis is (we hope) being melodramatic. Even with the winds down and the sun shining, his performance over the opening two rounds at Royal St. George’s was nothing short of remarkable. Through two days, he has as many eagles as he does bogeys (one), the latter of which took him 34 holes to commit.

Still, Oosthuizen knows the level of precision required to win a major championship. He’s done it himself, and more recently been snakebitten by it, wilting on a pair of Sunday afternoons to a pair of runner-up finishes. He knows he’ll only get so many opportunities to truly contend for majors, and he may never get another opportunity this good — not that it changes anything.

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“I’m going to try not to think about the second [place finishes],” he said. “I know my game is in a good place and found strategically how to play this course. I’m taking a lot of drivers and I’m betting on myself for that. Hopefully in the weekend I’ll feel comfortable and I can do it again.”

Oosthuizen has seen this story enough times to know his outcomes are limited. But what’s the fun in skipping ahead to the end?

“You try not to think of it until you’ve done it,” he said. “Around this golf course, a lot of things can happen. I don’t think you want to think too much of it on a links course until you get to that 18th green, and hopefully you have a lead.”

There’s at least one more chapter in Louis Oosthuizen’s 2021 major championship story. Maybe even one for the history books.

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The post Watch the heart-warming Open Championship tribute to the legendary Peter Alliss appeared first on Golf.

The post Watch the heart-warming Open Championship tribute to the legendary Peter Alliss appeared first on Golf.

For so many of us, Peter Alliss and the Open Championship are one and the same. Alliss is the man we grew up experiencing, learning and laughing about the game with. The voice of golf, who sadly passed away late last year at the age of 89.

His presence was felt on Friday at the Open Championship when the R&A paid tribute to “the great Peter Alliss.” With members of his family watching from the stand, including wife Jackie, Alliss was celebrated with some kind words and a minute-long applause.

“Peter brought us so much joy, humor, and insight to the millions of us watching on television,” the announcer said. “As a player and a commentator, Peter made an indelible mark on The Open. We all miss his wise and witty commentary.”

A heart-warming moment, which you can watch for yourself below:

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The post Padraig Harrington had the perfect description of good vs. great golfers appeared first on Golf.

The post Padraig Harrington had the perfect description of good vs. great golfers appeared first on Golf.

If you want an honest, incisive analysis of your golf game, spend some time around Padraig Harrington.

Harrington played the first two rounds at this year’s Open Championship alongside Aussie Brad Kennedy and Englishman Sam Forgan. Harrington shot two-under 68 on Friday to get to even par for the tournament, earning himself a trip to the weekend. That bettered his playing partners by five and 10 shots, respectively.

Afterward, he was asked to break down their showings.

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Kennedy is an experienced pro, 47 years old and a consistent presence in golf tournaments across Australia and Asia over the last two decades. Harrington knew his bio well, and knew that his four-over Friday 74 doomed him to a missed cut.

“Brad Kennedy is a seasoned player, 12 years on the Tour in Japan, nine wins,” Harrington said. “He was unlucky, actually, I would think to miss the cut. He had a number of three-putts that I would suggest were surprising to him today.”

But he saved his more insightful commentary for Forgan who had opened with 73 but struggled to four bogeys and two doubles en route to a second-round 77. Forgan is a 31-year-old who qualified for the Open via Regional and Final Qualifying, both at the Prince’s course, which abuts Royal St. George’s.

“Very good ball striker. Like a lot of these guys, lacks a little bit of belief in his game,” Harrington said. “Good solid game, but that’s really the difference. He hits it as well as anybody — or a lot better than a lot of players — out there, but it’s just a belief in his game.”

Like any proper analysis, it’s hard to know whether this is complimentary or disparaging.

For Forgan, it was a dream just to make the field — and it turned into a dream to be there. He was emotional after finishing out on the 18th green, covering his face with his cap as he embraced his caddie and his wife.

“I don’t think it was because I played badly. I don’t know. I just loved it. I guess you don’t know when it’s going to happen again,” he said.

The former Louisiana Tech golfer spends much of his time coaching; he’s an assistant professional at Felixstowe Ferry Golf Club. But he clearly has plenty of game, too, a game he put on display in qualifying. And while he beat just a handful of players in the field, Harrington said he was impressed with Forgan’s ball-striking. But ball-striking on its own is not enough.

“We always say that in any range you can find loads of guys out there, and it’s the ones that believe that do the scoring,” Harrington said. “For him, he should take away from this that he’s well capable of doing it, it’s just a question of believing, being comfortable in this position.”

He didn’t just speak about Forgan’s game to the media, though. Harrington gave an encouraging word post-round with the man himself.

“I mean, Padraig was great,” Forgan said afterward. “He was speaking at the end and he was saying, ‘You’re good enough and hit it far enough, you’ve just got to believe in yourself a bit more.’ That’s great to hear.”

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That is, of course, easier said than done. Forgan has thought about giving up the full-time pursuit of a playing career.

“It’s one of those things where you obviously get a taste for it and that’s nice, but for me — strange time in my life really, I suppose. I’ve got a kid on the way and that sort of thing,” he said. “So, yeah, I kind of said this year might be my last year playing anyway, so I guess we’ll kind of look at that when I get home. Talk with the wife and that kind of stuff and see what’s going on. Yeah, we’ll see.”

As for Harrington? He’s quite good at taking his own advice, and his belief is strong as ever.

“I just scored as bad as I could,” he said post-68. “Yeah, look, mixed emotions. I am delighted. It does look like that will make the cut. I would like to be a few shots better. I would like to be five, six shots — hey, look, if we’re on a wish list, I’d like to be 10 shots better and have the lottery numbers.

“But you know, it is what it is. It’s good to be there at the weekend. Happy to be there for the weekend, but a little bit disappointed with my own expectations.”

There you have it, golfers. Four lessons: Work on your game. Believe in your game. Keep expectations high. And listen to Padraig Harrington. Shoot for the stars, as they say, and even if you miss, you might still make the weekend at the Open Championship.

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The post ‘I was feeling it’: Collin Morikawa vaults up Open Championship leaderboard with blistering second round appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I was feeling it’: Collin Morikawa vaults up Open Championship leaderboard with blistering second round appeared first on Golf.

Collin Morikawa might not be fully running away with the Open Championship on Friday morning, but he’s jogging.

In his first-ever Open Championship start, the 24-year-old wunderkind nearly tied the course record at Royal St. George’s — coming only a stroke shy — and was just two strokes off The Open and major record of 62 set by Branden Grace in 2017. Morikawa’s six-under 64 vaulted him into a three-stroke lead at nine under, good for the lowest opening 36 holes in Open Championship history.

For a while on Friday, it seemed he might be on the verge of going even lower. He stood on the 14th tee at seven under for the day with two of the easiest four holes on the course still to come. A single-round major championship record of 61 stood firmly in sight.

Instead, his game fell marginally back to earth. He played his last four holes at one over, recording a bogey on the 15th, to fall out of position for the single-round record.

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“To be honest I had no idea that 63 was low. I was just trying to make a lot of birdies,” Morikawa told Golf Channel after the round. “When you put yourself in the fairway like I did for the most part of the day, I was able to attack pins. I had good numbers and had irons in my hand. When I’m feeling it I feel like I can be aggressive to certain spots, and I was feeling it today.”

While Morikawa’s game does seem a natural fit for the other side of the Atlantic — where shotmaking and precision are at a premium over distance — his start at Royal St. George’s still qualifies as something of a surprise. He struggled mightily in his first European start at last week’s Scottish Open, finishing T71, near-dead last. But after his second straight sub-70 round at The Open, he credited his performance at the Scottish for serving as the catalyst for a significant tweak.

“Without the Scottish I don’t think I would be here today,” he said. “I was not hitting my irons well, I had to literally change my irons earlier this week and just find the center of the face.”

The club change has worked wonders at Royal St. George’s. On Friday, Morikawa hit 83 percent of his greens in regulation — a stat that tells only half the story, as the overwhelming majority of the approaches left him with little more than kick-ins for birdie.

Of course, there are still two-plus days of competition left (plus Jordan Spieth teeing off in the afternoon wave on Friday) and Morikawa is anything but a lock as a player competing in his first-ever Open. But as he thought his way around Royal St. George’s on Friday, that much was hard to believe.

“For the past few years we’ve been showing up to courses and that’s what we do,” he said. “You figure out the course on Monday through Wednesday, how do you prep for Thursday. And everything I’ve done through college, I’ve learned how to prep, and that’s one of the biggest things. For major championships, I’m ready to play. I see these guys every week. If I can just continue the play, then hopefully I’m coming down the stretch on 18 on Sunday.”

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The post Royal St. George’s well-coiffed greenskeeper has lit Twitter on fire appeared first on Golf.

The post Royal St. George’s well-coiffed greenskeeper has lit Twitter on fire appeared first on Golf.

At their core, the major championships are a breeding ground for golf’s greatest characters. With so much history tied into the outcome of golf’s four elusive championships, it’s easy to understand why it seems the finest characters have a habit of appearing when the lights shine brightest.

On Wednesday at the Open, a new major championship hero was birthed. His name is Paul Larsen.

Larsen is head greenskeeper at this year’s Open Championship host, the famed Royal St. George’s. He is also owner of one of golf’s most aspirational looks, as he proved in an interview spot on Golf Channel during Wednesday’s practice round. The greenskeeper rolled into his interview rocking blackout sunglasses, long, dark hair and the energy of a man who’s spent far too much time obsessing over grass types, and social media loved it.

Larsen’s social media accounts say he has been head greenskeeper at Royal St. George’s since 2010, meaning he was in charge when the Open last made its way to Sandwich, Kent in 2011.

It’s possible, and perhaps even likely, that Larsen was around to enjoy his Twitter star explode this morning. He is an active user of the platform, sharing videos and photos from his work on the course ahead of the final major of the 2021 golf season.

In a video interview with Golf Digest, Larsen broke down the process of preparing for a major championship and explained his role in bringing the course into peak conditions.

“It started seven years ago really,” he said. “Since 2018 leading into 2019 and even 2020, we’ve been working so hard trying to get the fescue grass coverage back. The one question that always comes back to me is that we want to see the rough thick, we want to see it tough. So really, the secret will be you’ve got to keep it straight. If it all comes down to the weather, and you think it’s going to be quite windy, we’ll guard against getting the greens too fast.”

From his perspective, there are a few elements of the golf course to keep in mind as you tune into this action at Royal St. George’s later this week.

“The tees are to die for. Pure fescue, so I love them. The greens are very good, we’ve got a combination of fescue and [bentgrass], though probably a bit more bent than I’d like,” he said. “The fairways, when I think how they were in 2018 to how they are now, it’s amazing, it’s mind blowing. And then the semi-rough is fantastic. I’m very proud of the guys, we did it the old-fashioned ways of hand-dressing and seeding. So really, I need to buy them a glass of champagne to say thank you.”

It’s still too soon to tell how the best players in the world will fare against Paul Larsen’s masterpiece in the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s, but this much is clear: at least one hero has emerged from the men’s final major of the year.

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The post Patrick Reed and Cameron Smith’s Open Championship pairing reignites old drama appeared first on Golf.

The post Patrick Reed and Cameron Smith’s Open Championship pairing reignites old drama appeared first on Golf.

It’s been a very long time since we last held an internationally significant golf tournament on international soil. With much of the 2020 golf season wiped out to the rearing head of the pandemic, golf fans weren’t treated to their typical international delights. The Open Championship was canceled and the European Tour schedule existed without the star-powered help it typically gets from mid-season PGA Tour entrants.

Yes, it’s been a while since the last significant event on international soil. In fact, if we were to go back and pick the last moment that captured the golf world’s attention prior to this week’s Open Championship, it might be the Presidents Cup. That event — held at Royal Melbourne in Australia — seemingly took place in a different era (in the faraway time of December 2019), complete with a vintage Tiger Woods performance, an all-time American comeback, and some decidedly un-Presidential drama. And on Tuesday at the Open Championship, that drama resurfaced in a meaningful way.

But first, back to Melbourne in 2019, where no player on either side was more involved in the drama than Patrick Reed. Throughout the week, Reed drew the ire of both International team players and fans for the previous month’s sand-altering fiasco at the Hero World Challenge. At one point, Reed made a mock shovel gesture after draining a long putt. At another, fans were ejected from the crowd for hurling insults in his direction. At another, Reed’s caddie, Kessler Karain, got into a physical altercation with a group of fans and was subsequently banned from the tournament.

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On the other side of the debate was Cameron Smith. Smith, at the time an ascending star for the International side and hometown favorite in his native Australia, stirred controversy with a series of heated comments in Reed’s direction.

“If you make a mistake maybe once, you could maybe understand but to give a bit of a bulls— response like the camera angle … that’s pretty up there (inexcusable),” Smith said at the time. “I don’t have any sympathy for anyone that cheats. I hope the crowd absolutely gives it to not only him, but everyone (on the American team) next week. I know Pat pretty good and he’s always been nice to me, so I don’t want to say anything bad about him. But anyone’s cheating the rules, I’m not up for that.”

Shortly thereafter, Reed responded in typical fashion.

“There’s not really anything that’s going to be said or done that’s going to really derail me at the end of the day when I go out there to play golf, especially next week,” Reed said. “I’m playing with my team and for the whole country, and at the end of the day nothing’s going to get in my way.”

So, why are we re-airing the pair’s dirty laundry ahead of a golf tournament being held a long way from Smith’s native Australia and Reed’s native Texas — the Open Championship? Well, because the two players were just grouped together.

Yep — that’s right. In both the 10:21 a.m. ET (Thursday) and 5:20 a.m. (Friday) groupings, both Reed and Smith play together (along with Rory McIlroy) at the Open.

While it’s unlikely we see any fireworks between the two, it’s perhaps likely the pair won’t be sharing dinner after their round. As for the rest of us? Well, that’s just one more thing to watch when the Open Championship returns for the first time in two years come early Thursday morning.

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The post Monday Finish: Rory’s club thief, golf vs. lightning and Barkley’s $100k bet appeared first on Golf.

The post Monday Finish: Rory’s club thief, golf vs. lightning and Barkley’s $100k bet appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to the Monday Finish! This is where we’ll tally this week’s scores and get you ready for the golf week to come. This Monday that means gearing up for The Open Championship and looking back at a series of strange incidents from the week that was.

FIRST OFF THE TEE

Caddies taking action.

This week’s strange fan incident involving Rory McIlroy‘s headcover (and iron) reminded us just how fragile the relationship can be between golfer and gallery. It sparked a debate about who was at fault for a strange man walking uninhibited onto the 10th tee. In short: Why was this man there and who should have stopped him?

First, a few notes on the details of the story: McIlroy’s playing partner Jon Rahm said after the round that the man smelled of alcohol but that “it didn’t put anyone off,” and “If anything, it put a smile on our faces.” McIlroy himself, who missed the cut, said he was “surprised” and that “everything was handled okay” but didn’t elaborate. And tournament officials told the AP that the man had been taken to the hospital in Edinburgh and that Police Scotland were handling the matter.

I wasn’t at the Scottish Open, but I did spend several days last week at the American Century Championship. The only two things it had in common with the Scottish Open was that 1. It was a golf tournament and 2. It was a star-studded field of golfers in an area not fully used to dealing with the sorts of crowds that come along with star-studded fields. You want some facetime with Steph Curry? Early week at the ACC might be your best chance to get it — unless, of course, he ends up playing in the Scottish Open. Golf courses are large, open spaces. They’re terrific places to watch your favorite players. But if those players start to fear the people who might be watching them, well, that sounds much less enjoyable from their end.

Whether McIlroy’s club thief was a curious, harmless moment or symptomatic of a disturbing, pressing issue of golf security is a debate I’ll leave to others. Instead I figured this was a good moment to dive into the archives of a caddie who might have handled things differently than McIlroy’s, who hung back and waited for security: Longtime Tiger Woods looper Steve Williams.

Williams’ interview with Graham Bensinger a few years ago summed things up pretty well. Here’s the exchange about Williams’ rap sheet, followed by the video itself:

Bensinger: “I want to read off a couple things: You once kicked a camera out of the hands of a New York Daily News photographer. You once grabbed a camera from an off-duty police officer. Another time you took a spectator’s camera and allowed it to roll in the pond. [Chuckling] It’s kind of funny, but how would you explain, justify the reasoning behind those actions?”

Williams: “Well, a couple of those actions actually came before the Tour provided decent security. The very best players, the ones who attract the most galleries, the PGA Tour does an incredible job now of providing their own security that look after these players and provide a detailed team to help them. But when I first started out a couple of these tournaments didn’t have those people. It can become very frustrating when a guy has a camera and you tell him once, twice, three, four, five times that you can’t use a camera while these guys are playing. And sometimes your actions at the time, I’m an aggressive person and you take things into your own hands, but y’know the camera that went in the water we were playing in the Skins Game and the guy that was a sponsor, he was walking inside the ropes and he continually used a camera and he took a shot right on the downswing of a bunker shot, a delicate bunker shot. Tiger was trying to get the ball up and down to stay in the hole in a skins game, and consequently he hit a very poor shot because he flinched, and the frustration got the better of me.”

“Tiger was playing at Shinnecock in the U.S. Open and this guy was continually taking a roll of film of his swing, a swing sequence. And he was doing it on the range, and we told him three or four times on the range that that’s not permitted while players are warming up, and then he got on the first tee underneath a billboard behind the first tee and took a swing sequence shot right on the first tee, one of those [mimics camera shutter]. It blows your concentration and that was incredibly frustrating. When a professional is playing in silence and there’s something that you’re not expecting to hear, it just takes your mind off for that split-second and invariably you don’t hit the shot that you’re trying to hit. And it can be very costly at the wrong time.

It’s not random, there’s always something behind every incident that leads to the actions that you take.”

They don’t make ’em like they used to. And, as far as I can tell, no video exists of the above incidents, which will have to live on in protective-caddie mythology instead.

WINNER’S CIRCLE

Who won what?

There were about three dozen intriguing golf tournaments happening this weekend so let’s buzz through a few of ’em.

On the PGA Tour, Lucas Glover birdied five of his final seven holes to win the John Deere Classic and secure his first victory in a whopping decade.

“I remember that was my biggest takeaway when Tiger won his last Masters, is that his kids got to see him as a champ,” Glover said. “That was a goal of mine, too.”

On the LPGA, Nasa Hataoka‘s six-shot 54-hole lead at the Marathon Classic turned into a six-shot victory when Highland Meadows Country Club was doused with rain on Sunday and an uncertain forecast loomed Monday, too. All week, Hataoka used a ball marker from the Olympic Club, where she lost in a playoff, as a prompt to stay aggressive.

“Every time I look at it, it reminds me to just keep going and go for a win,” she said. “That’s what I use it for.”

On the PGA Tour Champions, Jim Furyk took down the U.S. Senior Open in Omaha, winning in his event debut and becoming the eighth player to win both the U.S. Open and U.S. Senior Open.

On the European Tour, Min Woo Lee triumphed at the Scottish Open; the 22-year-old Aussie made six birdies in a row en route to a Sunday 64 to earn a spot in a playoff against Matthew Fitzpatrick and Thomas Detry. Lee holed a 15-footer for birdie on the first hole of sudden-death and won his second European Tour title.

And at the American Century Championship, Vinny Del Negro took down John Smoltz with a birdie on the first playoff hole to beat the world’s most famous field of celebrity golfers.

ALMOST-WINNER’S CIRCLE

Who came up just short?

A few intriguing non-winners:

At the John Deere, Cameron Champ interrupted a streak of MC-MC-WD-MC-MC with a promising T11, his first top-25 finish of the Tour season.

At the Marathon, Mina Harigae was only one shot back with (what turned out to be) nine holes to play before Hataoka pulled away.

Retief Goosen and Mike Weir were Furyk’s closest challengers in Nebraska, finishing T2 at four under, three shots back.

In Scotland, Lee earned an Open Championship berth as did runner-up Thomas Detry and Englishman Jack Senior, who finished T10.

At the ACC, John Smoltz first reminded us just how good a former pro pitcher can be at golf and then also reminded us that pro pitchers may not have the on-course closing ability of a pro golfer (and yes, that goes even for former closers). Smoltz finished with three bogeys in his final five holes and then found the woods and the water on his first playoff hole. Tony Romo and Annika Sorenstam were the next-closest competitors.

BETTING BIN

$100k on a…top-70?!

Del Negro earned $125,000 for his victory at the American Century Championship. But that number paled in comparison to the amount fellow competitor Charles Barkley would have won had he finished inside the top 70 in the 88-player field.

News

Barkley took the action on himself after hearing about the bet offered by the local bookmaker at William Hill, which was initially offered as high as 17-1 but had fallen to 5-1 when Barkley got in on the action. The odds fell even further after his wager.

After a disappointing opening round in which he shot 96 (no score worse than double bogey is recorded) and finished with -16 points (yes, that’s negative 16), he battled with back-to-back 90s including three consecutive pars to finish on Sunday, an effort that saw him climb to T76 but nonetheless fall nine points short of a winning wager.

Still, if you’re a fan of swing revamps you’ll agree that the tournament marked an impressive step in the right direction for Barkley’s swing and his game, which was famously terrible for decades but is showing signs of improvement thanks to a new swing coach and fresh approach.

STRATEGY WATCH

Grip change!

Earlier this summer, Xander Schauffele surprised the golfing public by announcing that despite a top-tier putting game, he had switched to an arm-lock approach. According to Schauffele, he’d tested the style and it was undoubtedly better — to the point he suggested it was an unfair advantage to putt that way. Unfortunately, his putting stats in subsequent starts told a different story, holding him back from potential contention at the Memorial and the U.S. Open.

Now? It appears the experiment is at least temporarily on hold. Schauffele shot a final-round 67 using his standard-length putter at the Scottish Open and appeared to be practicing with the same putter on Monday at Royal St. George’s.

(Also I won’t make any promises but Schauffele is your best bet to win this week.)

WD List

Who’s still playing this thing, anyway?

These are uncertain times, and the WDs from the Open Championship include the voluntary (Sungjae Im and Si Woo Kim, prepping for the Olympics) the understandable (Zach Johnson testing positive for Covid-19) and the frustrating (Bubba Watson, who won’t be able to bring his strong form to Royal St. George’s despite being vaccinated and not testing positive). The list of WDs from the Open has stretched well into the double digits by this point, and includes the following players as of this writing:

Hideki Matsuyama

Sungjae Im

Kevin Na

Matthew Wolff

Si Woo Kim

Bubba Watson

K.H. Lee

Zach Johnson

Ryan Moore

Danny Lee

Louis de Jager

Juvic Pagunsan

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

I’ve begun a mild swing reconstruction in pursuit of more speed. Pray for me.

Related: I won’t be traveling to this week’s Open Championship. That’s devastating because apart from the food poisoning and the cold showers (two stories for another time) the two weeks I spent in Northern Ireland and Ireland around Portrush in 2019 were among the favorites I’ve spent on the job.

But never fear! I’ll be eagerly tuning into early-morning and late-night coverage from the States, tweeting plenty (from here) and writing plenty more (from here). Come along for the ride!

WHAT’S NEXT

Three things to watch this week.

I’ll admit I was mildly surprised to see Topgolf itself posting this video of a Topgolfer’s ball sailing out into the range and being struck by actual lightning, for fear of encouraging other copycats. But I’ll also admit I can’t stop watching the video, either.

2. Rory McIlroy off a missed cut.

Two of Rory McIlroy‘s most recent four victories have come the week after a missed cut, and he missed the cut at last week’s Scottish Open. Just so you know.

3. Jon Rahm being Jon Rahm.

He’s won one major championship in a row and is playing unquestionably the best golf in the world. Does Jon Rahm have further up on the mountain to climb?

We’ll see when we talk to you next week!

The post Monday Finish: Rory’s club thief, golf vs. lightning and Barkley’s $100k bet appeared first on Golf.