Tag: 152nd Open

This U.S. course most reminds PGA champ Xander Schauffele of a Scottish links

When the landscape is a links course, the mysteries are many, and the bounces good and bad, but rarely anything in between.

TROON, Scotland – Count PGA Championship winner Xander Schauffele among the American golfers who love crossing the pond to play some authentic links golf, that band of earth where land and sea come together, in the summertime.

Schauffele, 30, is set to make his seventh appearance at the British Open this week here at Royal Troon. His best result is T-2 at the 2018 Open at Carnoustie. When the landscape is a links course, the mysteries are many, and the bounces good and bad, but rarely anything in between.

“I think links golf, there’s a certain attitude that you need to have to play at a high level. That comes with playing links golf. That’s sort of the first thing I learned when I was here,” Schauffele said on Tuesday during the pre-championship interview. “When you play parkland golf a lot, you feel like you need to be perfect and on. Not that you need to be perfect or on, but on a typical links golf course, there’s always several ways to play a hole. If the weather gets really bad, you just have to, as always, take the bunkers out of play and really try and plot your way around the property. It doesn’t have to be super pretty. You don’t have to hit the center of the face all the time. When it’s 50 degrees and raining, center contact doesn’t even feel like it anyways.”

Schauffele was asked to describe his first experience playing links golf and recalled a visit he made to Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which is home to five of the top 25 modern designs on Golfweek’s Best Modern list.

The Open: Tournament hub | Thursday tee times | Photos

“That’s probably the closest thing to links that I’ve ever played. Maybe it’s a little bit better now since it’s a lot older. I played it – shoot, I’m old now – probably 15 years ago. Makes me feel really old saying that,” he said. “Bandon Dunes was rather new when I went. You played the ball down, and the ball was running and Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes were the two courses built. Now there’s 10.

Bandon Dunes
Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

“It was cold and rainy, and I remember playing every hole in the wind and rain. My rain gear was completely irrelevant at some point, and I just kept going. I was 13 or 14 or 15 years old-ish and had the time of my life. It was something that I’d never experienced. I just expect it when I go to play links golf. I expect bad weather for it to play tough and for people to complain and whine. If you have a good attitude, you get that edge.”

Indeed, Bandon is about as good as it gets on this side of the pond.

Schauffele, the world No. 3, is one of two players along with Bryson DeChambeau to finish inside the top 10 in the first three majors this season – he also finished T-8 at the Masters and T-7 at the U.S. Open to go along with his victory at the PGA at Valhalla. Schauffele’s fondness for links golf makes him an ideal candidate to share the sentiments of five-time British Open winner Tom Watson.

“I’ve always hoped,” Watson once said, “that the last day of golf I play before I die will be 36 holes on the links of Scotland.”

Tiger Woods barbecues Colin Montgomerie in war of words over retirement talk

“As a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt.”

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TROON, Scotland — Tiger Woods hasn’t been able to muster anything resembling his former brilliance this season, but he still has a stare that strikes fear in golfers.

On Tuesday at the 2024 British Open, he was asked whether it was time to consider retirement. Colin Montgomerie, the 61-year-old fellow member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, broached the ‘R-word’ in an interview last week, and suggested it was time for Woods to hang it up.

“Aren’t we there? I’d have thought we were past there,” Montgomerie told the Times of London. “There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it’s very difficult to tell Tiger it’s time to go. Obviously, he still feels he can win. We are more realistic.”

Woods, 48, has played just nine competitive rounds this season on the PGA Tour, withdrawing from the Genesis Invitational in February during the second round, finishing dead last of those players to make the cut at the Masters and missing the cut at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open. But Woods insisted better days may be ahead.

“I’ll play as long as I can play and I feel like I can still win the event,” he said.

Asked if his belief that he can still do so has wavered, Woods said simply, “No.”

And he stared stone-faced at the questioner. No more words were needed.

British Open: Tiger Woods at Royal Troon | Tournament hub

This has become standard practice at Tiger press conferences for the last several years as he has mounted various comebacks from various injuries, the most serious of which were the result of a single-car crash in February 2021.

The very next questioner got straight to the point and asked Woods, a three-time British Open champion, about what Montgomerie, who grew up a stone’s throw from Royal Troon but never won the Claret Jug, had said and he didn’t hold back. “Well, as a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt. So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”

The questioner asked, “You feel like you’ve earned that? You deserve that?”

Tiger Woods of the United States putts on the 18th green prior to The 152nd Open championship at Royal Troon on July 15, 2024 in Troon, Scotland. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

Woods ignored the question and simply continued piling on Montgomerie. “So when I get to his age, I get to still make that decision, where he doesn’t.”

Woods smirked in delight.

That round goes to Woods, who barbecued Monty. But can Woods salvage what appears to be another lost year in his quest to win a 16th major and 83rd career Tour title? Woods said he’s been able to train a lot of better and insinuated that could make a difference in his performance.

“We’ve been busting it pretty hard in the gym, which has been good. Body’s been feeling better to be able to do such things, and it translates on being able to hit the ball better,” he said. “Can’t quite stay out there during a practice session as long as I’d like, but I’m able to do some things that I haven’t done all year, which is nice.”

One observer who jumped to Woods’s defense was Hank Haney, one of Tiger’s former coaches. “A lot of people thought Augusta was Tiger’s best chance to ever win again, it’s wasn’t, it was always the Open Championship for multiple reasons,” wrote Haney on X, responding to a social media post on Woods’s swing. “He can hit shots like this, slower greens mean fewer 3 putts and no one has more knowledge about playing links golf. Based on what he’s done so far this year it’s kind of looking like now or never. His swing looks really good in practice.”

Woods also noted he has made or is considering making the following changes to his bag for the test at Troon.

“I’m monkeying around with the bounce on my 60. I got a couple 60s I’m kind of experimenting right now, one with a little bit less bounce for the chipping areas,” he said. “I bent my 3-iron yesterday one degree stronger just to be able to hit it off the deck and get that thing down and flighted and running. And I added lead tape to my putter just because the greens are so slow.”

Woods is returning to Troon for the first time in 20 years. He finished T-24 here in 1997 and T-9 in 2004, but was sidelined with injury in 2016. He hasn’t been called Champion Golfer of the Year since 2006, but said he’s always enjoyed the challenge of Troon.

“It’s one of those courses where you’re going to get it on one of the nines,” he said. “It’s either going out it’s going to be downwind, or coming home it’s going to be into the wind or vice versa. Half of the holes are going to be playing really difficult, and the other ones are definitely gettable.”

R&A hosting inaugural African Amateur Championship in 2024 at Leopard Creek

An invitational event for 20 elite women from the region will also be held at the venue.

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HOYLAKE, England — The first African Amateur Championship will be played at Leopard Creek, South Africa, from Feb. 21-24, 2024, the R&A announced Wednesday.

The championship will feature 72 men from the African region competing in a 72-hole stroke play format, with the winner receiving an exemption in the 152nd Open at Royal Troon.

An invitational event for 20 elite women from the region will also be held at the venue during the week of the championship.

“It’s a hugely exciting initiative for African golf, and it’s the last part of the continent around the world where we don’t have our own championships that we now do,” said Martin Slumbers, CEO of The R&A, said during a press conference.

The introduction of the championship complements existing amateur championships jointly organized by The R&A in Asia-Pacific and Latin America and will enable players from Africa to play at the highest level, as well as creating a pathway for African golfers to develop and become an inspiration for others to follow.

The championship will also build on an Africa High Performance Program established last year by The R&A and delivered to players and coaches in African countries as part of a wider effort to develop golf and provide support to players aspiring to reach elite levels of the sport.

“We are creating a world-class platform for the most talented amateur golfers in Africa to compete against each other and realize their ambitions in the sport,” Slumbers said in a press release. “We have already seen talented players emerge from the continent with three recent winners of the British Amateur Championship, including Christo Lamprecht at Hillside last month, and hope that in the years to come we will see golfers follow in the footsteps of Bobby Locke, Gary Player, Nick Price, Ernie Els, Louis Oosthuizen and Ashleigh Buhai who have won The Open and AIG Women’s Open.

Leopard Creek has hosted the Alfred Dunhill Championship since 2004 and winners there include major champions such as Ernie Els and Charl Schwartzel, who has won the event three times at the venue.