Lewis will have one eye on the Home of Golf this week as she competes in the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.
Stacy Lewis will have one eye on the Home of Golf this week as she competes in the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Midland, Michigan. As one of only two female professionals to ever win on the Old Course, with Lorena Ochoa being the first in 2007, Lewis considers it to be “the coolest place” in golf.
Lewis, of course, won the 2013 AIG Women’s British Open at St. Andrews and, in 2008, became the first player to go 5-0 in the Curtis Cup over the Old Course. That week also started a special relationship between the Lewis family and the famed Dunvegan Hotel, which used to be owned by Texas native Jack Willoughby and his wife Sheena, a native Scot.
Lorena Ochoa with the trophy after winning the Ricoh Women’s British Open at The Old Course, St Andrews, Scotland. (Photo by Martin Rickett – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
Ochoa’s celebration in 2007 was at the Dunvegan as was Lewis’ in 2013, though hers was more low-key back in the Claret Jug Restaurant with close friends and family. They watched a replay of the last three holes on television and ate pizza.
When the Women’s British went to Kingsbarns in 2017, Lewis again stayed at the Dunvegan. Last year, in between quarantine bubbles for the Scottish and British, she stopped by the famous pub with longtime caddie Travis Wilson. They walked around the 18th and reminisced.
“It truly is, it’s my favorite place,” said Lewis. “Any opportunity I have I’m going to stop back through there.”
Stacy Lewis of the United States putts for birdie on the 18th green during the final round of the Ricoh Women’s British Open at the Old Course, St Andrews on August 4, 2013 in St Andrews, Scotland. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
Which is why 37-year-old Lewis, a two-time major winner and former No. 1, was disappointed not to have been invited back this week for the 150th celebration of the men’s Open Championship. On Monday, the R&A Celebration of Champions included Tiger Woods, Lee Trevino and Rory McIlroy playing a four-hole loop around the Old Course. In all, there were 38 former R&A champions, including four LPGA players: Georgia Hall, Catriona Matthew, Laura Davies and Anna Nordqvist.
When Lewis won over the Old Course, she birdied the last two holes, including a spectacular 5-iron on the Road Hole that flew low and chased up the hill to 4 feet.
The women return to the Old Course in 2024, and for many players on the LPGA, like Lewis’ partner this week, Maria Fassi, it will be their first time on golf’s sacred ground. The men’s British Open has been staged at the Old Course 29 times, the first coming in 1873.
“I think the players will see how special it is,” said Lewis of what’s to come. “I just think we’ve only had two female winners there. Lorena and I are the only ones that have won at St. Andrews included with the list of all these guys.
“The tour is going there to add another winner to that list, so I think just that opportunity for the women is huge. We have an awesome opportunity at Muirfield this summer. So just the investment across the board, we’re giving our players lots of great opportunity to do things that have never been done.”
When we last visited with John Daly, he was (very briefly) leading the 2022 PGA Championship and showing off his usual wild sartorial choices.
And this week, at the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews, the 1995 British Open champion is back, getting ready to tee it up at the Old Course.
So far, on Monday and Tuesday, we’ve only seen a couple of his iconic fits, but they’ve been eye-popping with a pink-patterned pair of pants to go with a blue shirt, and a pair of black and white skull-and-flower shorts.
We’ll see what he’s got cooked up for later this week soon enough. Just enjoy what he wore so far:
Tiger Woods will take it easy before the start of the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – And now he will rest.
Until Thursday.
Tiger Woods, the 15-time major champion and three-time Champion Golfer of the Year, has played 58 holes in practice rounds and an exhibition ahead of Thursday’s start of the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews. In his only other two starts this year – the Masters and PGA Championship – Woods played 27 practice holes at each event.
But seeing as the Old Course is his favorite track in the world, Woods emptied his tank despite favoring his surgically repaired right leg, ankle and foot, with all three not close to being 100 percent and needing constant attention.
Woods chipped, putted and hit a few wedges over 18 holes on Saturday evening with Justin Thomas. He played 18 on Sunday with Justin Thomas, 9 holes more on Monday and 9 more on Tuesday. He also played in the four-hole Celebration of Champions exhibition on Monday.
“So that was going to be it for me,” Woods said Tuesday after his practice round. “I’ll take tomorrow off. I’ll practice, keep my feels. But I wanted to get a good sense of how the golf course is going to be playing but also conserve my energy, so that’s why I’m taking tomorrow off.”
Woods’ first encounter with the Old Course came in the 1995 Open Championship, when he tied for 68th as an amateur. He won his first Claret Jug in 2000 on the Old Course, completing the career Grand Slam, added another in 2005 at the Home of Golf and his third at Hoylake the following year.
“This is where it all began for me as an amateur. My first chance to play in the Open Championship was here. I’ll never forget I played with Ernie Els and Peter Jacobsen the first two days,” he said. “We had a chance to play with some greats in practice rounds – Freddie (Couples), Raymond (Floyd), (Jose Maria Olazabal), Bernhard (Langer). I had a great time as a young little kid, and they showed me the ropes of how to play this golf course and how many different options there were. It was eye opening how this golf course can play as easily as it can be played and also as difficult it can play just by the wind changing.
“This is my sixth Open Championship here. Just to have that experience and have the ability to play here at the Home of Golf is always quite special.”
So he had a little extra adrenaline pushing him through.
“I’m just trying to get used to the speed of the fairways and getting used to hitting the ball down and also giving more wide berth on shots, allowing for more drift on the wind,” Woods said. “The ball just gets eaten up here when you play on links courses and seaside courses. The air is heavier, and you’ve just got to give it more room. And sometimes it’s just hard to see that and hard to understand. You’ve got to give it a little more 30 yards because obviously it’s going to bounce, it’s going to roll and then it’s going to roll out another 40 yards once it lands. And that’s just with a 7-iron in your hand.
“So trying to get my mind right for that, I’ve been trying to do that, but the only way you can truly do it actually is to get out here and experience it.”
As for his body, it’s good enough to give it a go.
“Well, my body certainly can get better, but realistically, not a whole lot,” he said. “It’s been through a lot, and at 46 you don’t quite heal as well as you do at 26. So it is what it is. Just lucky enough to, in our sport, to be able to play as long as we are able to play late into the 40s, especially on links golf courses like this, you can continue into your 50s.
“It just takes a lot of knowledge and understanding of how to play this type of golf. And with the fairways being fast and firm, it allows players who are older to run the ball out there and have a chance.”
Good luck getting the ball on the tee Thursday, Max.
Every once in a while, old tweets resurface. Sometimes they’re bad takes, sometimes they’re miraculous predictions that somehow come true, and sometimes they’re heartwarming things like this.
In 2013, Max Homa, a then collegiate golfer at Cal, sent out a tweet asking Tiger Woods for a practice round at that year’s U.S. Open (Homa qualified for the event at Merion).
Like many professional golfers in this era, Woods was Homa’s hero.
Fast forward to 2021 and the California native took home the hardware at the Genesis Invitational, an event hosted by Woods and his foundation. So, after receiving the trophy, Homa took a picture with the 15-time major champion to mark the victory.
@TigerWoods just won PAC 12s, NCAA championship, and qualified for the us open. Any chance I can get a practice round with u?? #hero
Now, 507 days later, it was announced the four-time Tour winner will tee it up with Woods and Matthew Fitzpatrick for the first two rounds at the Old Course for the 150th Open Championship.
The threesome with tee off at 9:59 a.m. ET on Thursday and 4:59 a.m. ET on Friday.
Homa was asked about the dream pairing: “Unreal times a million.”
In 2018, the then Korn Ferry Tour player went on the No Laying Up podcast and discussed the 2013 tweet.
Here's @maxhoma23 in 2018 talking about trying to track Tiger down for a practice round.
This was when he was playing on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Now he's gonna tee it up with Tiger f'n Woods at the Old Course in The Open Championship. pic.twitter.com/YQ4ojyuJRF
Everything you need to know for the first round of the 150th British Open, including Tiger Woods’ tee times.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Tiger Woods will begin his pursuit of a third Open Championship title at St. Andrews at 2:59 p.m. (local time) Thursday when the oldest championship in golf begins on the Old Course.
Woods, who won on the Old Course in 2000 and 2005, has played 58 practice rounds holes on his favorite golf course in the world – he played just 27 before the Masters, 27 before the PGA Championship. He made the cut in both, his only two starts of the year.
Woods is out with Max Homa and reigning U.S. Open champion Matthew Fitzpatrick.
Paul Lawrie, the 1999 Open Championship winner, will hit the first shot of the tournament at 6:35 a.m. The final tee time is 4 p.m.
Following the Woods group at 3:10 p.m. is the threesome of 2017 Open champion Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm and Harold Varner III.
(Streaming will include featured groups, featured holes and full coverage. Featured groups and featured holes will also be available on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.)
Friday, July 15th
TV
USA: 4 a.m.-3 p.m.
STREAM
Peacock: 1:30 a.m.-4 a.m. Peacock: 3 p.m.-4 p.m.
(Streaming will include featured groups, featured holes and full coverage. Featured groups and featured holes will also be available on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.)
Saturday, July 16th
TV
USA: 5 a.m.-7 a.m. NBC: 7 a.m.-3 p.m.
STREAM
Peacock: 7 a.m.-3 p.m.
(Featured groups and featured holes will be available all day and will be available on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.)
Sunday, July 17th
TV
USA: 4 a.m.-7 a.m. NBC: 7 a.m.-2 p.m.
STREAM
Peacock: 7 a.m.-2 p.m.
(Featured groups and featured holes will be available all day and will be available on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.)
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This week’s field of 156 players features 33 who made the cut the last time the Open was held at St. Andrews.
This week the home of golf is playing host to a milestone major.
The world’s best players are bound for the Old Course at St. Andrews for the 150th playing of the Open Championship, the final men’s major of the year. This year’s Open is the 30th to be played at the Old Course and the first time since 2015, when Zach Johnson won a four-hole playoff against Louis Oosthuizen and Marc Leishman.
The field of 156 players features 33 who made the cut the last time the Open was held at St. Andrews. If you’re looking to place a wager or two this week, this might be a good place to start.
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Here are several photos of the best merchandise at the 2022 British Open.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — It’s time for the final men’s major championship of the year.
The best golfers in the world have ascended upon the home of golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews, for the 150th edition of the British Open. It’s the 30th time the Old Course has hosted the championship, the latest coming in 2015, when Zach Johnson won in a playoff.
Check out the best photos of the early-week festivities at St. Andrews.
It’s time to crown the next Champion Golfer of the Year.
Collin Morikawa has handed over the Claret Jug but is primed to defend his title at the 2022 Open Championship, the final men’s golf major championship of the season. This year’s event is the 150th playing of the Open, and it’s being held at the home of golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The course will play 7,189 yards with a par 72.
Take a scroll and check out the best photos from the early-week festivities and practice rounds at the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews.
From the castle and cathedral to the golf courses, there’s just something special about St. Andrews.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – No matter the direction one looks in this ancient, gray seaside town on Scotland’s east coast, which was founded in the 12th century on the legend that the bones of the Christian apostle St. Andrew were brought here, the eyes explode with lasting reminders from centuries past.
The ruins of St. Andrews Castle, built around 1200 A.D. and rebuilt several times during the Wars of Scottish Independence, still stand proud. The remains of St. Andrews Cathedral, established in 1158, continue to successfully battle harsh elements off the North Sea. The University of St. Andrews which was founded in 1413 continues to be a force in education.
There are markings on cobblestones scattered throughout the city indicating where executions took place. On the pleasant outskirts of the city by the massive beach is where Witch Hill resided, the unpleasant local where accused witches in the 16th and 17th centuries were taken down to the water and, with their thumb tied to the opposite toe, were submerged. If they drowned, they were deemed as witches. If they survived, they were deemed as witches and dragged to Witch Hill and burned at the stake (the odds were not in their favor).
Witch Hill is now Martyrs’ Hill, where the imposing Martyrs’ Monument commemorates the Protestant martyrs who were burned at the stake for purported heresy between 1520 and 1560.
“You go back in time when you are in St. Andrews,” said three-time Open Championship winner Sir Nick Faldo.
The journey into the past reveals history has a mighty ally to form the fabric of the Auld Grey Toon – golf. Just a few stones’ throws from Martyrs’ Hill is the headquarters of the Royal & Ancient, which was established in 1754 and lays down the rules of golf for all the world except in the USA and Mexico. In a small corner of the ancient ruins of the Cathedral of St. Andrews, golf royalty Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tom, lay side by side in rest.
This is the Morris’s section of the cemetery at St. Andrews. Off the west wall, left of St. Rule Tower, is where Old and Young Tom are buried.
More than 30 golf shops are scattered across this town of roughly 20,000 year-round residents. There are seven public golf courses controlled by St. Andrews Links, including the New Course next to the Old Course. The New Course, incidentally, opened in 1895. Numerous pubs speak to the game with historic golf paraphernalia, vast collections which can be found at places such as The Dunvegan and Number 1 Golf Place.
And the jewel of the city, and the junction of Links Place and Golf Place, is the Old Course of St. Andrews Links, where some form of the game created in the 12th century has been played across the barren stretch of rumpled turf for hundreds of years – except in the 15th century when the parliaments of three successive Scottish kings prohibited the game.
“The hair on the back of your neck stands up when you are here, no matter where you are in the town,” said two-time Open Championship winner Padraig Harrington. “Everything that has happened here in the town, the game was born here, it’s spine chilling. There is no other place in the world like it.”
Aussie and 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy realized that on his first visit.
“It is the perfect place for a golfer,” he said. “I fell in love with the town before I fell in love with the golf course. At other great golf courses in the world, they might have a nice clubhouse but then you leave. Here at St. Andrews, it’s the town first, and then the course. You leave this course and you walk straight into this magical place.
“The first time I came here in 1993, people were walking the streets with metal spikes. It was just unbelievable to me. For a golf nut like me, it was the perfect place. All the golf shops with old and new equipment. The pubs, the restaurants, the buildings that have been here for centuries. When you’re here it’s hard to not love everything about the game.”
Or as three-time Open champion Tiger Woods put it: “This is as good as it gets.”
St. Andrews and the Old Course are the proper place – the only place, really – for this week’s 150th Open Championship, the oldest tournament in the world; the inaugural was held when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning to become president of the United States.
The celebration of the milestone will be marked by numerous festivities. The tournament is expected to lure record attendance.
“I’ve watched the Open Championships here at St. Andrews, and I don’t think there’s anything more special in golf than playing an Open Championship at the Home of Golf,” 2017 Open champion Jordan Spieth said. “I have vivid memories of the Old Course. It’s one of those courses you play where you don’t really forget much. There’s only a couple of those maybe in the world. I think here and at Augusta National are my two favorite places in the world.
“Playing in the town is so cool. On a daily round day, not in the Open, it’s pretty unbelievable when you have people walking their dogs on the course. It’s just a casual day, a great place to go for a nice walk. There’s nowhere else like it.”
Phil Mickelson, Open champion in 2013, said St. Andrews is a spiritual place.
“You can’t help but feel emotion come over you as you play, knowing that this is where the game began,” he said.
That’s one of the things that gets to Adam Scott.
“This is where it all began,” he said. “And generally Scotland has embraced everything about the origins of the game and St. Andrews, the town itself is pretty special. It’s a really fun, fun town. And you can feel the history.
“There are so many things about the golf course that are unique. But everyone loves playing it. It has some features that are hard, or almost impossible to replicate and not be criticized. It all works really well here.”
The Old Course is home to a puzzling collection: 14 holes share greens, some of the double fairways are 100 yards wide, there are 112 bunkers (by all means stay out of the ones called Strath, Hell, Spectacles, Principal’s Nose and the Road Hole bunker, which is located on the par-4 17th where a gravel road runs against the back edge of the putting surface and is in play. And there’s the deep depression fronting the 18th green called the Valley of Sin.
Tiger Woods chips onto the green on the road hole during his third round on day three of the British Open at St Andrews in Scotland, on July 17, 2010. (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Legend holds that many of the pot bunkers were carved out of the Earth by animals seeking shelter from harsh winters — and even summers.
The roster of winners in St. Andrews includes Jack Nicklaus (twice), Woods (twice), Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bobby Locke, Peter Thomson, Sam Snead, Bobby Jones and James Braid.
Nicklaus played the Open in St. Andrews eight times, the final in 2005.
“When I came here in 1964, I couldn’t believe that St. Andrews was a golf course that would test golfers of that time. Now, that’s, what, 60 years ago? It still tests the golfers at this time. It’s a magical golf course.
“The conditions, the weather, where you actually choose to put the pins, whether the golf course gets dry, whether the golf course gets wet, all those things that make St. Andrews a magical place.
“The game of golf essentially started here, and it just absolutely is mind-boggling to me that it still stands up to the golfers of today.”
On Tuesday, in a special ceremony, Nicklaus will be honored as an honorary citizen of St. Andrews. Only two other Americans have been so recognized – Bobby Jones and Benjamin Franklin.
Jack Nicklaus weighed in on Greg Norman’s role with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman are going to have to agree to disagree on the state of men’s professional golf.
When asked to comment on the R&A’s decision to not invite Norman, a two-time winner of the Claret Jug in 1986 and 1993, to the Celebration of Champions and the Champions’ Dinner and golf exhibition to be played on Monday, Nicklaus at first demurred.
“I don’t know much about it, to be honest with you,” Nicklaus said.
But eventually he weighed in on Norman’s role with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, which continues to make waves in the world of golf.
“Let me just sum this up with a couple of words,” Nicklaus said. “First of all, Greg Norman is an icon in the game of golf. He’s a great player. We’ve been friends for a long time, and regardless of what happens, he’s going to remain a friend. Unfortunately, he and I just don’t see eye to eye in what’s going on. I’ll basically leave it at that.”
The R&A released a statement over the weekend that read: “The 150th Open is an extremely important milestone for golf and we want to ensure that the focus remains on celebrating the championship and its heritage. Unfortunately, we do not believe that would be the case if Greg were to attend. We hope that when circumstances allow Greg will be able to attend again in future.”
