Tag: 151st Open Championship

Lynch: Softening bunkers at the Open is a lame attempt to legislate luck out of links golf

The timing of this change is as controversial as the change itself.

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HOYLAKE, England — Most of the 156 competitors in the field at the 151st Open Championship have an opinion about the 80-odd pot bunkers that litter Royal Liverpool like landmines, and few of them are effusive. The word “penal” hasn’t been used this often by a group of male jocks since autocorrect was invented thirty years ago.

Some players were sanguine about the challenges faced in the sand, including two whose misadventures on the final hole in the first round saw them either playing backward or pin-balling off the revetted sod walls.

“Proper penalty structures,” said Jon Rahm.

“You’re riding your luck,” said Rory McIlroy.

The trauma about traps owes to the fact that bunkers at Royal Liverpool aren’t maintained in a customary concave style, with sand slopes flashing up the walls to provide loft for escape and help balls roll toward the flat center of the hazard. Instead, bunker floors are flat or even slope slightly toward the walls, which are mostly perpendicular. This setup substantially increases the chances of a player finding his ball flush against the wall, or at the very least having to manufacture a body-bending stance seldom achieved by any athlete not working a balance beam.

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After multiple such occurrences on Thursday, the R&A lost its nerve and loosened the thumbscrews.

“Yesterday afternoon the bunkers dried out more than we have seen in recent weeks and that led to more balls running straight up against the face than we would normally expect,” Open organizers said in a statement Friday morning. “We have therefore raked all of the bunkers slightly differently to take the sand up one revet on the face of the bunkers. We routinely rake bunkers flat at most Open venues but decided this adjustment was appropriate in light of the drier conditions which arose yesterday.”

The timing of the change is as controversial as the change itself. Since the R&A admitted that conditions worsened during the first round, shouldn’t the same thing have been allowed to happen during the second round to ensure, as best as possible, that each side of the draw faced identical conditions? It’s almost enough to make one wish Sergio Garcia were in the field to lament injustice and favoritism.

The alteration is popular with competitors. “I hit a 4-iron into the 5th hole today and it pitched on top of the bunker and came back in,” McIlroy said, adding that he expected to find his ball against the face. “I didn’t know at this point that they’d made that little gradual rise up into the face, and when I got up there, I was pleasantly surprised that I had a shot. I wouldn’t say there’s one person in the field that wouldn’t welcome that change.”

Still, it’s tempting to wonder what a 68-year-old retiree in Japan thinks of it.

Tommy Nakajima was in contention at the 107th Open at St. Andrews in 1978 when he reached the green of the par-4 17th hole in regulation. His birdie putt caught the wrong side of a contour and fell into the infamous Road Hole bunker, a much more cavernous pit of despair then than it is today. He needed four shots to extricate himself and eventually made a nine. “The Sands of Nakajima” entered Open lore.

Nakajima didn’t bemoan the severity of the bunker or the slope that carried him to his doom. Nor did the R&A soften things for the next day’s play. He got there with the combination of a marginal shot and lousy luck, and the same is true of most shots that find the hazards at Hoylake. It’s not the function of the R&A to cushion marginal shots or mitigate bad breaks. Or it didn’t used to be. Luck cannot be legislated out of links golf. If anything, it’s the soul of the ancient game.

The PGA Tour is proud of the courses it presents every week in its feverish but futile effort to commodify conditions and eliminate unpredictability from the game. Most Tour members are grateful for that since it reduces things to a test of execution and lessens the demand for intangibles, like imagination, creativity and forbearance. The Tour will deny that is the philosophy governing its course set-up, but it’s the result.

Trying to minimize unpredictability is entirely at odds with the essence of links golf. And at the Open, fickleness encompasses everything — the weather, the bounce, the lie, even the water pressure in British showers, which in bygone years could be likened to being peed on without the warmth. Reducing the potential for cruel outcomes in bunkers diminishes the very character of the ground game.

Changes to course set-ups because of tepid player reviews are nothing new. Jack Nicklaus introduced rakes that gently furrowed bunkers at Muirfield Village in the 2006 Memorial Tournament, intent on presenting a greater challenge. Locker room griping led to the experiment being abandoned. At the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, the USGA dispatched lawnmowers to remove high fescue rough after complaints, despite the fairways being wider than Tiananmen Square.

The oldest battlefront in golf is where the desire to present a challenge meets the players’ determination to not to be embarrassed. Major championships should seek to advance that front in favor of the challenge while being careful to remain on the right side of goofy. Softening bunkers at Royal Liverpool is counter to that goal.

The R&A should simply have directed complainants to Rahm’s comment earlier this week when asked if the new 17th hole is too harsh.

“I would say if it is it’s fair, because it’s unfair to everybody,” he replied. “Like it’s golf, and it’s life. Simple as that.”

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Watch: Protesters attempt to disrupt British Open with minimal success

As Slumbers predicted, the environmental group “Just Stop Oil” attempted to make a mark at Royal Liverpool.

Prior to the start of play at the 151st Open Championship, R&A CEO Martin Slumbers admitted that activists had targeted last year’s tournament and although the threat was snuffed out, he conceded the same might happen this year.

“We have significant security procedures in place. We work clearly with the law enforcement agencies, and we’ll wait and see what happens,” Slumbers said. “You will have seen that we advised the players, please don’t get involved, and I stand by that. We have enough things in place to be able to deal with it.”

As Slumbers predicted, members associated with the environmental group “Just Stop Oil” attempted to make a mark on the activity at Royal Liverpool on Friday during the second round, although the group had little success.

“Just Stop Oil” organizers are pleading with the British government to stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects. The group has made appearances at cricket, tennis and horse racing events.

According to the coach, who asked to remain anonymous, a man was standing by a television camera structure behind the second green when he reached into his backpack and pulled on a bright orange baseball cap. The color orange is closely associated with a group that has disrupted numerous high-profile events in Britain this summer.

The witness said the man was immediately wrestled to the ground by a nearby police officer and other security officials quickly moved in. A photo taken by the coach shows a man pinned to the ground by an officer while a pair of security team members assist.

Golfweek asked the R&A to comment on the incident and was referred to a statement issued Thursday by Merseyside Police, which said a man had been escorted from Royal Liverpool after he entered the Open without a ticket. ”Officers were made aware of the incident and a male was identified but tried to run away. He was detained under the Section 1 pace order and escorted off the grounds,” the statement said.

“So you rugby tackle people to search them for a ticket?” the coach who witnessed the event told Golfweek. “He didn’t look to be running anywhere to me. No way they tackle you for a ticket violation.”

The color orange is closely associated with Just Stop Oil, a British environmental group that has used orange paint and powder in direct action protests to draw attention to the climate crisis in an effort to force the U.K. government to move away from fossil fuels. The group has targeted high-profile sports events, including disruptions to two matches at Wimbledon earlier this month. An incident at the Open has been widely anticipated.

And Billy Horschel walked a protester off after an orange flare was fired in the air on the 17th green. Horschel was playing with Alex Noren and Corey Conners.

The R&A released a statement that indicated four arrests were made.

“Play was not disrupted and we would like to thank marshals, players and other spectators for their vigilance and understanding as the protesters were removed,” the statement read.

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At Wimbledon two weeks ago, two protesters were arrested after running onto one of the courts and disrupting a match by throwing orange confetti.

 

See Brian Harman’s golf equipment at The Open

A complete list of the golf equipment Brian Harman is playing this week at Royal Liverpool Golf Club during the 151st British Open

Here is a complete list of the golf equipment Brian Harman is playing this week at Royal Liverpool Golf Club during the 151st British Open:

DRIVER: Titleist TSi2 (9 degrees), with Graphite Design Tour AD IZ 5 S shaft

[afflinkbutton text=”Shop Brian Harman’s driver” link=”https://pga-tour-superstore.pxf.io/21aKPA”]

FAIRWAY WOOD: Titleist TS2 (13.5 degrees), with Fujikura Speeder 661 Evolution 2 S shaft

IRONS: Titleist U•500 (3-5), with Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black 90HY 6.0 shafts, Titleist 620 CB (6-PW), with True Temper Dynamic Gold S300 shafts

WEDGES: Titleist Vokey Design SM9 (50, 54, 60 degrees), with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts

[afflinkbutton text=”Shop Brian Harman’s wedges” link=”https://globalgolf.pxf.io/OrY17z”]

PUTTER: TaylorMade Daddy Long Legs

BALL: Titleist Pro V1

[afflinkbutton text=”Shop Brian Harman’s golf ball” link=”https://globalgolf.pxf.io/e4yGXX”]

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Bunkergate? Sand at 2023 British Open raked differently over night

Much had been made about how grounds crews had flattened the bunkers in advance of the tournament.

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HOYLAKE, England — Players voiced their displeasure with the Royal Liverpool bunkers at the 151st British Open on Thursday and the R&A has responded by making an adjustment for Friday’s second round.

Championship organizers changed the way the bunkers were raked overnight.

“Yesterday afternoon the bunkers dried out more than we have seen in recent weeks and that led to more balls running straight up against the face than we would normally expect,” the R&A said in a statement released on Friday morning. “We have therefore raked all of the bunkers differently to take the sand up one revet on the face of the bunkers. We routinely rake bunkers flat at most Open venues but decided this adjustment was appropriate in light of the drier conditions which arose yesterday. We will continue to monitor this closely for the remained of the Championship.”

Much had been made about how grounds crews had flattened the bunkers in advance of the tournament, a move that didn’t allow wayward shots to settle comfortably in the middle. The result had been an array of difficult lies for players, some in fairway bunkers and others while cozying up to the greens.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler discussed on Wednesday how penal the bunkers can be, how they made him nervous and how unusual he found them to be in comparison to what he experienced in 2021 at Royal St. George’s in England.

“I feel like at St. George’s a lot of the bunkers had a tiny bit of an upslope before you got to the wall face, and here it seems like the faces of every bunker is almost a downslope going towards it,” he said. “I don’t think that’s something I particularly like in a golf course. I think it doesn’t reward the good shots as much. If you’re closer to the green you end up closer to the lip, and if you get a worse shot and barely get into the bunker you actually have a play.

“So I would prefer if there was a little bit of slope there, but that’s what’s so special about the majors. Every golf course is different and it’s a challenge, and I’m just going to do my best to stay out of them this week.”

Added Rory McIlroy after the first round: “When you hit it into these bunkers you’re sort of riding your luck at that point and hoping it’s not up against one of those revetted faces.”

But thanks to the adjustment made by the R&A, McIlroy said he had a better chance to make

“I hit a 4-iron into the 5th hole today, and it pitched on top of the bunker and came back in, and I thought it was going to be — like I didn’t know at this point (about the change) that they’d made that little gradual rise up into the face, and when I got up there, I was pleasantly surprised that I had a shot,” McIlroy said. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s one person in the field that wouldn’t welcome that change.”

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Wyndham Clark hits fan’s iPad at British Open, forced to hack out of thick fescue

Clark took a major hack out of some thick fescue only to see the ball go about two feet.

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There’s nothing like the British Open, and there’s nothing like true links golf.

“There’s some great American links courses, but it’s not the same,” said Jordan Spieth after his first round of the 2023 Open Championship. “You don’t have the fescue grass, and that’s what makes it.”

If you were watching U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark on the 14th hole during Thursday’s first round of the Open Championship, you saw a major champion taking a major hack out of some of that thick fescue.

Choking up on his club, Clark swung about as hard as humanly possible, only to see his ball pop up, advance about two feet and then disappear again.

From there, his third shot landed greenside, and then he got up-and-down to save bogey on the par-4 hole, his lone bogey of the day in which he shot a 3-under 68 to put himself in contention.

“That was huge. A little unfortunate off the tee, obviously hitting the guy is never good, but it really went into a bad spot. If I didn’t hit the guy, probably would have been in fine grass and I would have been able to hit it up near the green,” Clark said. “Then I had an awful lie and hit it about two feet. Then got very fortunate I didn’t go in the bunker.”

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Wait, his ball hit a fan?

“Yeah, it hit his iPad, didn’t hit him,” Clark clarified. He was then asked if the iPad was ok. “Well, I don’t care now. It screwed me up.”

Clearly not enough to throw him off his round. He birdied the next hole, parred Nos. 16 and 17 and then closed with a birdie. The pair of 4s on the two par 5s down the stretch was huge, but escaping real trouble on 14 was perhaps even bigger.

“Getting up-and-down and making about a 20-footer really is a round saver.”

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Why Royal Liverpool’s flatter bunkers are giving players fits at British Open

The result has been an array of difficult lies for players.

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A flatter series of bunkers along with the multitude of the sandy deterrents has some players struggling to figure out where to play tee shots and approaches at Royal Liverpool with the 151st Open Championship underway.

Much had been made about how grounds crews had flattened the bunkers in advance of the tournament, a move that doesn’t allow wayward shots to settle comfortably in the middle.

The result has been an array of difficult lies for players, some in fairway bunkers and others while cozying up to the greens.

Shane Lowry, who finished his opening round with a 1-over 72, was one of those who said the prospects are daunting.

“You stand on every tee and almost every bunker is in play. You’re standing there and you’re kind of trying to figure out what to do because if you lay back, long way in, it’s quite tricky, and you’re just playing for pars,” Lowry said. “If you take it on and hit a bad shot and end up in a bunker, it’s a penalty shot basically.”

“Yeah, it does ask a lot of questions, this golf course, but it’s the most well-bunkered golf course that we play. They’re everywhere, and they’re very penal.”

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Lucas Herbert found this out the hard way as he came to the new 17th hole at 3 under par, but had a heck of a time with the par 3 as he found one of the greenside bunkers. He left the hole with a 6 and relinquished his short-lived lead.

Matthew Jordan, who finished in the thick of things with a 69 on Thursday, said the difficulty of the hazards was unfamiliar.

“I haven’t seen the bunkers like this at all. I don’t know who’s annoyed the green keeper, but yeah, to have them — they’re just so flat and they’re so penal. You just can’t hit it in any bunkers whatsoever.

“We know how penal fairway bunkers are, but even the greenside bunkers this week you can drop two shots just like that.”

Scottish star Richie Ramsay got into more detail on the bunkers, saying they will add a full stroke to each player’s total over the course of the tournament.

Connor Syme plays a shot from a bunker on the 15th hole during the first round of the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. (Photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)

“It’s heavily, heavily underrated how much of a difference that makes,” Ramsay said. “If the ball goes up, it’s obviously giving you loft straight off the back, but when the ball comes down it obviously will feed in more into the middle of the bunker.

“I got caught today on one sort of leg, knee up on the side. It’s just part of links golf. You’ve got to take it on the chin. But you’re very wary of hitting into a bunker knowing that you could be like a foot from the face with seven feet in front of you.

“So you’re going to see a lot of guys, like I say, maybe right up against the face trying to hit it as hard as possible. Matt had one today where he did well to get out, and it just popped out with a bit of forward spin and it got over the lip of the bunker, but he wasn’t far off playing that out sideways.

“I think over the course of a tournament, it’s worth at least an extra shot, make it harder. I would say definitely.”

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Standing at 6-foot-8, Christo Lamprecht is using unique clubs at 2023 Open

Here’s Lamprecht’s golf equipment at the 2023 Open.

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South African amateur Christo Lamprecht carded seven birdies Thursday to take the early lead at the 151st British Open, which is being played at Royal Liverpool Golf Club. The Georgia Tech standout who earned a spot in the field by winning last season’s British Amateur Championship truly stands out in the field because he is 6 feet, 8 inches tall.

The golf equipment you see on pro shop walls is designed to be ideally suited to a person of “average size,” but golfers who are taller or shorter often need clubs made at non-traditional sizes. Lamprecht, who is the tallest player to ever compete for Georgia Tech, falls into that category.

Lamprecht uses a 9-degree Ping G430 LST that has an actual loft of 7.5 degrees, and that is fitted with a Mitsubishi Kuro Kage XT 70 TX shaft. The club’s finished length is 46 inches, which is the maximum legal length for non-putters. The combination of Lamprecht’s long arms and that long driver helps him create enormous clubhead speed and distance, and on Thursday, his average tee shot went 325 yards, which was 33 yards longer than the average drive of the golfers in the morning wave of tee times. His longest drive of the day was 363 yards.

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Lamprecht’s fairway woods, irons and wedges are all 1½ inches longer than standard clubs, while his Ping 2021 Harwood Armlock putter is 43 inches long and has 4.5 degrees of loft.

Below is a list of the clubs he is using this week at Royal Liverpool:

DRIVER: G430 LST (9 degrees adjusted to 7.5 degrees), with Mitsubishi Kuro Kage XT 70 TX shaft

FAIRWAY WOOD: Titleist TSR2 (15 degrees), with Project X HZRDUS Black shaft

IRONS: Ping i230 (3), Blueprint (4-PW), with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts

WEDGES: Ping Glide Forged Pro (50, 54, 60 degrees), with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts

PUTTER: Ping 2021 Harwood Armlock

BALL: Titleist Pro V1

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Lynch: The majors should make a statement on golf’s cash arms race — pay players nothing!

The PGA Tour is delivering financial windfalls not seen since Bernie Madoff was the toast of Wall Street.

HOYLAKE, England — The organizations that run golf’s major championships share a common mission — foundational for some, adopted more recently by others — to grow the sport while preserving its values. This shared mandate distinguishes those bodies from the professional tours, which use similar platitudes as window dressing on their actual objectives of rewarding members and executives.

Against that goal, the PGA Tour has exceeded expectations, and perhaps good taste. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler has played 19 events this season, won twice, and averaged north of $1 million per start, with the fertile fields of the FedEx Cup playoffs still to be plowed. Granted, Scheffler has produced consistently high finishes during this campaign, but the Tour’s benevolent new economics are less trickle-down than tsunami. Patrick Cantlay hasn’t won this season but his prize money through July 20 exceeds Brooks Koepka’s haul in 2019, when his three wins included a major. The average on-course earnings on the PGA Tour currently stand at $1.8 million, with seven events and bonuses still to count. Why? Because of events like the Arnold Palmer Invitational. In 2021, the API’s purse was $9.3 million. A year later, it was $12 million. This year? $20 million.

In an effort to keep pace with the PIF, the PGA Tour is delivering financial windfalls not seen since Bernie Madoff was the toast of Wall Street.

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The same upward trend is apparent in major championships. Two years ago, the average prize fund at a major was $11.875 million. In 2022, it was $15.375 million. Now it is $18 million. The purse for the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool is $16.5 million, a bounteous sum to be sure, but last among the big four and reflective of the R&A’s status as the most threadbare body in men’s golf. This is probably why the organization’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, bemoaned the money arms race Wednesday at Royal Liverpool.

“Significant increases in prize money in the men’s professional game has resulted in the long-term reassessment of the business model for professional golf. As custodians of the game, we have to balance the prize fund at The Open with ensuring the appropriate investment in grass-roots and new golf initiatives, ensuring pathways are in place from elite amateur golf to the professional game, and most importantly, promoting women and girls’ golf, both amateur and professional,” Slumbers said. “There’s no doubt that our ability to achieve this has been impacted by the much more rapid acceleration in men’s professional prize money than we had anticipated or planned for.”

Golf’s sustainability debate has shifted from the environment to green of another kind.

No sooner had Slumbers lamented the very existence of a money race than he pulled on his skates and tried to cut in at the head of the pack. Asked if the R&A will accept largesse from the Saudis, he offered this: “We have a number of large corporate partners that help us make this thing happen. I think the world has changed in the last year. It’s not just golf. You’re seeing it in football. You’re seeing it in F1. You’re seeing it in cricket. I’m sure tennis won’t be that far behind.”

Not by accident did he cite sports in which the Saudi sportswashing enterprise is established or currently circling.

“The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis,” added Slumbers, who has the mien of an aging Harry Potter. “We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.”

Translating Slumbers, it’s unpalatable that the R&A allow others to burrow into the Saudi trough without donning a napkin of its own. It ought to be a jarring juxtaposition to hear an industry leader talk in one breath about promoting women and girls, then in the next breezily signal his willingness to cash a check from a misogynistic regime to finance that mission. To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson’s observation on Richard Nixon, it’s the equivalent of chopping down a redwood and then mounting the stump to deliver a conservation speech.

There is a way in which the R&A – like the Masters, PGA of America and USGA — can underwrite the noble work at hand without resorting to putting a cash value on their proudly-held values.

There’s never been a more pronounced divide between legacy and lucre at the elite level of golf, a gap that’s sure to grow as yet more money pours in from either the Saudi Public Investment Fund or from private equity, depending on which faction on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board carries the day. The fixation on money diminishes players and the platforms on which they compete, but it elevates the majors, cementing their status as the events upon which legacies are built. Which is why the majors should not try to keep up in the cash competition but rather abstain entirely.

Make the prize fund zero. Not a dime.

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Instead of being just another lucrative payday for players, let majors be an opportunity for them to give something back to the game that is enriching them. A stipend can be provided to cover costs, otherwise the $72 million paid out at majors this year can be redirected to growing the game, a cause for which every organization professes passion. Winning a major has never been about the size of the check and nor would it be diminished by the absence of one.

A few disgruntled players might choose to stay home every April because the Masters says no mas, but not many. Every player knows that the long-term career value of winning one of the sport’s premier titles far exceeds the amount earned on the day. Professional golfers have never enjoyed more opportunities or greater rewards. Their present day is plenty good enough. Let the majors be a vehicle to invest in golf’s future.

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Christo Lamprecht ‘the Lamp Post’ leads the way with 66 at 2023 British Open

Everyone in the field is looking up at the 6-foot-8 South African in more ways than one.

HOYLAKE, England — Christo Lamprecht stopped in the 18th fairway at Royal Liverpool Golf Club on Thursday and took a mental photograph of his name on the famed yellow leaderboard at the 151st British Open.

Everyone in the field was looking up at the 6-foot-8 South African, who is believed to be the tallest player ever to compete in golf’s oldest championship, but not for the usual reason. Lamprecht, a 22-year-old ranked third in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and playing collegiately at Georgia Tech, carded seven birdies and shot an opening-round 5-under 66 to grab a share of the lead with Englishman Tommy Fleetwood and Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo. Lamprecht, who is the first amateur to hold the lead or co-lead after any round on the PGA Tour since Paul Dunne in the third round at the 2015 Open Championship, smiled after the round as he described how the view from the top of the leaderboard suited him just fine.

“It’s nice to see a lot of work behind the scenes pay off,” he said. “It’s something I haven’t dreamt of yet, but it’s pretty cool.”

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Lamprecht is hard to miss, and as he surged to the top of the leaderboard, his height became a topic of conversation in the gallery. Lamprecht is as lean as a 1-iron and as light as a lamp post, which might make for a good nickname (Lamprecht the Lamp Post or simply the Lamp Post has a good ring to it.)

He only sports a size 13 shoe, but he can certainly send it off the tee, noting that his stock driver carries 320-325 yards. Still, he can bust it 340 yards in the air if need be.

“But I don’t want to. Not in this weather. Not in links golf,” he said. “It rolls far enough, so I kind of keep it in front of me.”

Color long-bombing Bryson DeChambeau impressed. He stopped to take a look at Lamprecht’s action.

“He just wished he had my length, I guess,” Lamprecht cracked.

Don’t we all. Stewart Cink, the 2009 Open champion and a Georgia Tech alum, has hit balls next to Lamprecht on several occasions at the school’s practice facility in Atlanta and offered this assessment:

“As a 50-year-old golfer seeing a guy like him, he is pretty much like your basic nightmare, watching a guy like him coming up,” Cink said. “He’s got a lot of really good potential in front of him.”

At 6-foot-4, Lamprecht’s father, an accountant by trade, is shortest of the past five generations. His great grandpa measured an even 7 feet. Lamprecht played on South Africa’s junior national team but gave it up to pursue golf early in high school. That’s also about the time he went through a growth spurt.

“Everything golf-wise was everywhere,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on. I was changing clubs every six months.”

Almost as surprising as his gangly build is his lack of a South African accent.

“Apparently I’m a full-blown American now, which I don’t like,” he said. “Yeah, it’s bad. I don’t know why it’s changed. I can’t change it back. I don’t know what’s happening.”

As a junior golfer in South Africa, Lamprecht participated in Louis Oosthuizen’s golf academy for four years. After Lamprecht became the youngest winner of the South African Amateur in 2017, he said, “I hope Louis is really proud of me.”

Lamprecht earned a berth in the British Open field last month by winning the British Amateur, and got paired with Oosthuizen, the 2010 Open champion, for the first two rounds. He called Oosthuizen, who is nearly a foot shorter than him, “someone I’ve looked up to.”

“It was kind of a nice draw,” he said. “I thought they rigged it by some means, but no, I loved it.”

Yet Lamprecht said he still experienced a case of nerves at the first tee. On Wednesday afternoon, he had a lousy range session. Then he had another poor session before his first round and snap-hooked his drive at the first. That’s when his caddie, his assistant coach at Georgia Tech, Devin Stanton, told him, “Listen, you’re playing The Open as an amateur; no need to stress.”

From there, the birdies started falling, including three in a four-hole stretch on the front nine and a chip-in from about 40 yards at the difficult 14th hole.

“That was a big steal,” he said.

Oosthuizen, who shot, 74, was asked if Lamprecht had ever beaten him before when they played.

“Never by eight strokes,” Oosthuizen said.

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2023 British Open updates: Leaderboard and more from Royal Liverpool

It’s the final men’s major of 2023.

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HOYLAKE, England — The final men’s golf major of the year is in the books, as Brian Harman has won the 2023 British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club.

Harman passed his biggest test Sunday, enduring a typical English summer day of a steady rain and a rocky start to shoot 1-under 70 at Royal Liverpool and win the 151st British Open by six strokes over Tom Kim (67), Sepp Straka (69), Jason Day (69) and Jon Rahm (70).

Harman, however, had been the leader of a dubious distinction: he’s been a top-10 machine but hasn’t won since the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship, recording 29 top-10s since the start of the 2017-18 PGA Tour season, the most of any player without a win in that span.

“It’s been hard to deal with,” he said. “That’s a lot of times where you get done, you’re like, ‘Dammit, man, I had that one.’…Like when is it going to be my turn again?”

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