by It’s a common cliche that golf is a solitary game, and the course is the only opponent. If that’s the case, Royal Troon and Mother Nature got in the film room this week and came up with a Bill Belichick-level defensive game plan. On Thursday, it was good enough to throw unexpected looks at the world’s best and knock them completely off their reads. We know this era of golf has left courses more defenseless than ever before thanks to the equipment-induced distance boom. Adding length does nothing in this pace-and-space/fun-and-gun era, but there are still a few things that work, weather chief among them. Troon can be a challenging course, but it needs the elements for that challenge to be actualized.
The wind is expected at Troon, but it’s how it arrived that completely flummoxed the field. The prevailing winds are typically down and off the right going out on the front nine, and then into you and off the left coming back to the clubhouse on the more brutal back nine. That flipped on Thursday, with winds coming out of the south and southwest, making some of the easier opening holes much longer and creating even more crosswinds on what’s supposed to be the more gettable stretch.
A look at the Southwestern wind that blew around Royal Troon on Thursday
Justin Leonard, winner of the 1997 Open at Troon, said he couldn’t recall that wind direction in any of his prior Opens here.
As challenging as the winds are on their own – forcing players to walk a mental tightrope and hit holding shots, or even to start balls out of play in a crosswind in order to hit some of these already small corridors – was the new defensive formation schemed up that caught players with almost no game plan. We could copy and paste quotes from about 25 players here as evidence. Let’s start with the man many picked to win:
“You play your practice rounds, and you try to come up with a strategy that you think is going to get you around the golf course,” said Rory McIlroy. “Then when the wind is like that, you start to — you know, other options present themselves, and you start to second guess yourself a little bit. I guess when that happens, you play your practice rounds, you have a strategy that you think is going to help you get around the golf course, but then when you get a wind you haven’t played in, it starts to present different options and you start to think about maybe hitting a few clubs that you haven’t hit in practice. Yeah, just one of those days where I just didn’t adapt well enough to the conditions.” Rory, who has truly figured out and gameplanned well for links golf and “strategic” major championship tests in recent years, shot 78, his worst since the opening round at Portrush.
His fellow Holywood member Tom McKibbin, also out early, illuminated some of the impacts this new environment presented, both on the tee and also on approach. “For it to be in off the right and down off the left was just very different,” he said. “A lot of different clubs off tees.Then guessing the release on the greens was very hard. Downwind, some of the bounces were 15, 20 yards really.”
Adam Scott, as much of a veteran as anyone in the field, said he treated his back nine almost like a “practice round” as he tried to figure out his spots. The challenge was partly the conditions, but partly their novelty, as well. This is the good stuff, so absent on the week-to-week PGA Tour. Challenge the best and do so in a way that has no one shouting about some manufactured man-made setup choice. By the way, this is arguably the easier wind for this course, if you’re prepared for it. We don’t want a sport that rewards system quarterbacks or players who can only perform in domes. Obviously you can’t create a day like today in a lab and turn a switch, but you can at least go to more environments where such outcomes are possible. It made Thursday’s first round a pain for the players, but much more interesting and instructive for all of us watching.
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For more coverage of the Open Championship, visit our Open hub.
