Brian Harman’s stellar performance to lift the Claret Jug and claim the 2023 Open Championship last week provided a break from the ongoing news surrounding the pending deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
However, during Sunday’s final round, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and associate Amanda Staveley met with R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England. The news was first reported by the Telegraph and confirmed by Golfweek, though R&A officials would not provide comment on a private discussion.
Al-Rumayyan and Staveley were secretly brought to the property with the help of an R&A sponsor, but reports state the meeting was more “symbolic than substantive.”
Slumbers spoke about Saudi money and its place in golf last week ahead of the opening round of the final men’s major championship of the year, saying he was “very open” to talk to “various potential sponsors.”
“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 (soccer). You’re seeing it in F1. You’re seeing it in cricket. I’m sure tennis won’t be that far behind,” said Slumbers. “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. We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.’’
Newcastle United’s chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan (L) and minority owner Amanda Staveley (C) and Manchester United co-chairman Avram Glazer (R) before a match at Wembley Stadium on February 26, 2023. (Photo by Glyn Kirk/AFP)
Due to the PIF being its primary and longtime sole investor, LIV Golf was criticized as just another way for Saudi Arabia to “sportswash” its controversial human rights record, same with the PIF’s purchase of Premier League team Newcastle United, of which Al-Rumayyan is the chairman and Staveley is a co-investor.
Brian Harman loves the outdoors and not just for playing golf. Long known as an avid hunter, Harman has some land that requires tending, and he’s got just the machine for the job.
“I had a nice week a couple weeks ago and I bought a new tractor for my hunting place, so I’ll get home and I’ll be on the tractor mowing grass in the next few weeks, so I’m excited about that,” Harman said Sunday in the media center with Claret Jug by his side, basking in the glow of his victory at the 2023 Open Championship.
The assembled media at Royal Liverpool peppered Harman with questions all week about hunting, one of his main off-course pursuits, but Sunday’s media session also included talk of his big new piece of equipment.
“So that’s going to be the reward, you’re going ride your tractor?,” one scribe asked.
“Yeah. Just put my phone away and go get on the tractor,” he said.
“Could you tell us a little bit more about your tractor, please?”
“I haven’t seen it yet,” Harman said. “It’s on order. It’s a 105 horse Kubota tractor and it’s going to be a pretty one.”
“What color?
“Orange.”
“How many acres will you mow?”
“Let’s see, we’ve got about 25 acres of food plots that need, and, gosh, I don’t know how many miles of roads, but I’d call it probably 40 acres total that needs to get mowed.”
“I’ve never known an Open Champion to celebrate by mowing grass on a tractor,” said a reporter.
“I’ve got a lot of layers, man. I’m like an onion.”
HOYLAKE, England — The Long and Winding Road is a favorite Beatles song from the beloved group out of nearby Liverpool but it could also describe Rory McIlroy’s pursuit of a major championship during the last nine years.
McIlroy, who won his third of four majors at Royal Liverpool in 2014, shot a final-round 3-under 68 to finish at 6-under 278 and tied for sixth place.
“Solid performance,” McIlroy said. “Improved on my score every day. Yeah, I missed a few putts yesterday. Felt like I putted a bit better today. It was just hard. I needed to go out and shoot something 63, 64-ish, but really hard to do that in those conditions.”
McIlroy raced out to three birdies in a row beginning at the third hole to mount a bit of a charge but a bogey at No. 10 and another at No. 16 were killers.
“I got off to a really good start but it’s just hard to keep that going,” McIlroy said.
McIlroy missed the cut at the Masters, finished T-7 at the PGA Championship and was second at the U.S. Open.
“Solid performance, not spectacular, but a lot of optimism going into the rest of the year,” he said. “I can’t sit here and be too frustrated. You think about my performances in the majors between like 2016 and 2019, it’s a lot better than that.”
While there were encouraging signs along the way, the winless draught persists.
“Never saw this coming,” said NBC’s Paul Azinger, winner of the 1993 PGA Championship. “When he won his fourth major, it looked like the sky was the limit, he might win nine or 10.”
Jack Nicklaus predicted that McIlroy, 25 at the time, was on track to win 18 majors. Yet, nine years later, for all his successes, he’s still stuck on four. Who would’ve thought he’d go 34 majors without a major during his prime – all the while winning 15 Tour titles, including the Players Championship, two FedEx Cup titles and multiple stints at world No. 1. He’s recorded 20 top-10 finishes at the majors, including seven of his last eight.
McIlroy said he won’t dwell on this being another lost year at the majors and is focused on what is still to come.
“I think about trying to go and win a fourth FedEx Cup here in a couple weeks’ time, go try and win a fifth Race to Dubai, go and win a fifth Ryder Cup,” he said. “I just keep looking forward.”
In 266 days, he can start all over and resume his majors quest at the Masters.
HOYLAKE, England — Sunday afternoon at Royal Liverpool brought weather as persistently disagreeable as a drunk at a Saturday night bar, but only for competitors. For spectators, it was a minor annoyance. And for hardcore fans, it was a welcome 11th-hour arrival of authentic Open conditions, weather in which you’d think twice about leaving even Brandel Chamblee outdoors.
As morning mist turned to steady rain, it summoned the holy trinity of attributes that have been required on foul days at golf’s oldest major since Old Tom Morris first wrung out his tweed suit: attitude, aptitude and fortitude.
Attitude: a positive mindset before a shot is struck, a determination to push forward and not retrench.
Aptitude: learning from and adapting to varying conditions; forgetting stock shots and yardages and letting the inner artist – heck, the inner survivor – take over.
Fortitude: gut punches are coming, whether through missed putts, crappy bounces or ill-timed gusts; absorb them, move on.
Each individual trait is necessary, but useless without the other two.
If these elements were fed into Chat GPT with a request for an identikit image of someone who embodies them, it might generate a weathered face with an unmistakeable flintiness, and with a gleam in the eye. In short, you’d be looking at Tom Watson.
Watson says he didn’t truly appreciate links golf until 1981. It speaks volumes about his attitude, aptitude and fortitude that he’d already won three Claret Jugs by that time – more than the two he added after he learned to love the ground game. His resolve didn’t just show up in the British Isles. It produced one of the greatest rounds in golf history, though one often overlooked. In the rain-soaked second round of the 1979 Memorial, with a wind chill hovering at 13 degrees, 42 of 105 players didn’t break 80. One didn’t crack 90. Watson shot 69, missing only two greens and making no bogeys.
On Sunday, I reached out to Watson to ask how he approached final rounds at the Open in detestable weather. “Frankly, bad weather reduced the number of people who could win,” he said. “Some just couldn’t deal with and adjust to the bad conditions.”
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That’s the essence of a hall of famer, and the greatest links golfer of the last half-century. While others looked despairingly at the sky, his eyes never left the prize.
As the final round trudged on through growing puddles at Royal Liverpool, there was a degree of correlation between a player’s disposition and his score.
“It’s kind of sadistic to play in this kind of weather.” Thomas Pieters, 80.
“It was pretty brutal. Didn’t really have the mindset of it’s going that wet for that long.” Min Woo Lee, 75.
“These are not my conditions. I’ve always struggled a little bit in the rain. I fight grip slips and water balls off the tee.” Ryan Fox, 74.
“The umbrella to the glove to the yardage book to the umbrella, it just gets tiring holding the dang thing and shuffling it around… But if that’s the worst part of the day, it’s not so bad.” Max Homa, 69.
“I like it because a lot of people are going to complain about it, so you just have to accept it and be ready for it more mentally than physically.” Adrian Meronk, 67.
Vowing to be positive, adaptable and resolute is easy until a peg goes in the turf. Delivering on the intention is quite another. I asked Shane Lowry how he readied himself for the final round at Royal Portush in 2019, which he entered with a four-stroke lead knowing that lousy weather was coming.
“I felt going out that I had to be aggressive, that if I made four birdies I wouldn’t be beaten,” he replied. “And if I got in trouble to make bogey at worst. That’s pretty much the way it is for Harman today.” Lowry went on to win by six and Harman basically mirrored his game plan at Hoylake. A smattering of bogeys, but nothing worse, and enough birdies to offset any damage.
Harman is 5-foot-7 and on this day, in these conditions, joined an illustrious list of golfers of shorter stature who proved to be all grit. Like Gary Player, Ian Woosnam and Corey Pavin. He proved anew what all of them did before, that nothing is out of reach if you have the right attitude, not even the greatest trophy in the game.
HOYLAKE, England – Brian Harman skipped football practice one day when he was 11 years old. His mother, Nancy, drove him from their home in Savannah, Georgia, to Sea Island, Georgia, where he took an hour-long lesson from Jack Lumpkin, a fixture on every list of top golf instructors. Growing up on a golf course, Harman had picked up the game on his own and showed raw potential, but he wanted to find out what one of the best teachers thought of his ability.
“He didn’t tell me to get lost,” Harman recalled. “He told me I was doing well and come back in a few months and he’d check me again. For me, that was like a rite of passage.”
Harman passed his biggest test on 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).
At 5-feet-7, Harman is one of the shorter players on Tour, but it hasn’t stopped him from beating competitors that are bigger and stronger. All his life he’s been told he’s too small, but Harman’s never paid attention. Instead, it served as motivation to prove them wrong. Asked once how long he’s played with a chip on his shoulder, Harman, said, “I think since my dad dropped me off at football practice and told me to not be disappointed if I didn’t get to play at all. I played a lot.”
Gifted with an all-around game and a silky-smooth putting stroke, he’ll never be confused for one of the game’s long knockers, but his hard work and bulldog mentality helped him win two previous PGA Tour titles heading into this week. He proudly noted that this will be the 12th straight year that he’s qualified for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, something only eight other players can stake claim to and only five of them are on track to do so this season. World Golf Hall of Famer Davis Love III has watched Harman blossom over the years and has been one of his biggest cheerleaders.
“He’s a lot like Jeff Sluman. He has that mentality of, I may not be the biggest guy out here, but I’m going to be the toughest,” Love said.
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?”
Asked on Friday after he built a five-stroke lead with a bogey-free 65 to explain why he hasn’t won more often, Harman said he wished he knew.
“I think about it a lot, obviously,” he said. “I don’t know why it hasn’t happened, but I’m not going to quit.”
After a sluggish start on Saturday, Harman tacked on a third-round 69, his first 54-hole lead at a major since the 2017 U.S. Open, where he faltered on the final day. Harman learned from that experience, where he felt as if the day moved too quickly and he let his mind wander. Likewise, it took several years but Harman, who played his first British Open at Royal Liverpool in 2014 and then missed the cut four consecutive times, figured out how his game could translate to the linksland.
Brian Harman’s performance in his 3rd&final round of the @TheOpen , we witnessed a fantastic example of a strong @PGATOUR player breaking through his mindset barrier—staying present—not getting ahead of himself as he spoke of on Friday is not easy
On Sunday, with the sky a milky gray that made it difficult to see the Dee Estuary from the 11th hole let alone the north of Wales in the distance, Harman made an early bogey at the second and another at the fifth after he drove into a gorse bush. After Masters champ Jon Rahm made birdie ahead of him, Harman’s lead was trimmed to three.
That’s when Harman proved his toughness. A round earlier when he stumbled with his second straight bogey at the third hole, he passed a spectator who said, “Harman, you don’t have the stones for this.”
“It helped snap me back into I’m good enough to do this, I’m going to do this,” Harman said.
That he did. He settled his nerves and responded with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 6, where he struck a 5-iron to 14 feet, and 7 where he sank a 23-footer.
Harman led the field in fairways hit and avoided the dreaded pot bunkers. But thanks to using a training aid to fix his tendency to cut putts, his putter was his sword and his savior in becoming the Champion Golfer of the Year. He led the field in putting for the week, his 106 putts the fewest by a winner in the last 20 years. On one of the few occasions when he missed at No. 13 and made bogey, he buried a 37-foot birdie putt one hole later and an 8-foot birdie at 15 for good measure as his lead stretched back to five shots. He signed for a 72-hole total of 13-under 271 and his third career PGA Tour title and first in his last 168 starts.
“He’s a gritty player,” NBC’s Paul Azinger said. “The kind of guy if you handed him a pocket-knife and a book of matches and sent him off into the jungle, you’d find him a month later doing just fine.”
Harman, who hunts for elk and nine-point bucks with a bow and arrow in his spare time, detailed how after missing the cut at the Masters in April he blew off steam over the weekend by hunting for turkeys and pigs. Harman’s prowess with a bow and arrow drew the following question from a reporter on Friday: “I take it the sheep and the cows are safe around here at the moment, are they?”
“Sheep don’t taste as good as the turkeys do, I would imagine,” he said.
Harman was tabbed the “Butcher of Hoylake,” by one British tabloid, a nickname, which he said he approved.
“That made me chuckle,” he said. “Someone texted me that yesterday. That’s funny.”
The hunter became the hunted, but nobody could get him in their crosshairs. He simply carved up the field and Royal Liverpool with his combination of accuracy off the tee and a red-hot putter.
“If everything else is good, then (his game) can be pretty lethal,” Zach Johnson said.
Brian Harman celebrates after putting on the 14th green during the final round of the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England. (Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)
Harman began working with instructor Justin Parsons in recent years but always kept Lumpkin, who died last year at 86, involved as a member of his team.
“Brian can’t replace Jack as a friend or mentor,” said Love III, who won a major under Lumpkin’s watchful eye. “But Justin has really made a difference for him, an overall golf coach not just a swing coach.”
That initial lesson all those years ago with Harman was equally as meaningful for Lumpkin, who knew talent when he’d seen it and from Harman’s very first swing knew he’d seen something special.
“He had a look in his eyes that he wanted to be a great player,” Lumpkin told Golfweek a few years ago. “After that first lesson, I couldn’t wait to see him again. His mom used to bring him down twice a year in the early days and I used to wait to see his name in my lesson book because I just knew how good he was going to be.”
Take a scroll through the Open Championship host courses through 2026.
Royal Liverpool was a superb host of the 2023 Open Championship, the 13th time the venue hosted the oldest major in golf.
There are but three future golf courses scheduled to host, with the 152nd playing of the tournament coming in 2024.
The R&A, which runs the Open, calls the tournament “nature’s test of character”, stating on its website:
“Links golf is nature in all its unforgiving force – and The Open is where nature is pitted against the very best of the very best. It’s where champions must set aside what came before. Alone, skill and years of diligent preparation are not enough.”
Take a look at the next three Open Championship host venues.
“You’d be foolish not to envision, and I’ve thought about winning majors for my whole entire life.”
HOYLAKE, England — Brian Harman said Friday you don’t get to pick your nickname, but he approved of a British tabloid tabbing him “The Butcher of Hoylake.”
“I like that one better than the Harmanator,” said Harman, who enjoys hunting for animals in his spare time. “That made me chuckle. Someone texted me that yesterday. That’s funny.”
On Saturday, Harman, 36, continued to carve up Royal Liverpool, signing for 2-under 69 to maintain a five-stroke lead over Cameron Young heading into the final round of the 151st British Open.
Harman overcame a shaky start, making bogeys at the first and fourth hole. Just like that, his five-stroke overnight lead was trimmed to two strokes over Jon Rahm, who shot a bogey-free 63. But Harman bounced back with birdies at the fifth and ninth to return to double-figures under par and shoot even-par 35 on the opening nine.
Brian Harman's 5-shot lead is the largest through 54 holes at The Open by an American since Tiger Woods in 2000 (6 shots).
“It would have been really easy to let the wheels start spinning and really kind of let it get out of control, but I just kind of doubled down on my routine and knew I was hitting it well, even though I hadn’t hit any good shots yet,” he said. “Really proud of the way that I hung in there.”
He continued hunting for birdies, sticking his approach at the par-4 12th to 5 feet and rolled in the birdie putt. Harman complained that his TaylorMade Daddy Longlegs putter was misbehaving not long ago and he considered benching it, but it has been more friend than foe — he’s 44-for-44 from inside 10 feet this week. He drained a 20-foot birdie putt at the par-3 13th and finished with five straight pars to card a 2-under 69 and a 54-hole total of 12-under 201.
Harman enjoyed a celebrated junior and amateur career, including playing on a winning U.S. Walker Cup team, and has won twice on the PGA Tour, but when asked to name his biggest achievement in the game, he noted that he has qualified for the FedEx Cup playoffs the last 12 straight years, an accomplishment achieved by only eight other players. (Harman is one of five on track to make it again.) It speaks to his consistency, but also to the fact that he has never really won any of the biggest events in the game. He slept on a 54-hole lead at a major once before at the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, but he didn’t have a five-stroke lead that time. This is unchartered territory.
“You’d be foolish not to envision, and I’ve thought about winning majors for my whole entire life. It’s the whole reason I work as hard as I do and why I practice as much as I do and why I sacrifice as much as I do,” he said. “Tomorrow if that’s going to come to fruition for me, it has to be all about the golf. It has to be execution and just staying in the moment.”
Will the butcher’s blade run dull by the end of the championship?
“I feel like he’s not someone to back down,” Young, his closest pursuer, said. “With the lead he has right now, it’s not necessarily going to be up to me tomorrow. It’s just really time for me to focus on myself and see where that gets me.”
Harman is the 12th player in the last 40 years to hold a 54-hole lead of five strokes or more in a major championship; the leader has converted to victory nine times in the previous 11 attempts. NBC’s Curt Byrum noted Harman showed Saturday he has the mental toughness to stand up to whatever adversity he may face in the final round.
“Today may have been as big a hurdle as tomorrow might be. As hard as it is going to be for him with the expectations and the big lead to go on and win,” he said, “I think he’s going to be really tough to catch.”
Here are four more things to know about the third round of the British Open.
It’s time to crown the Champion Golfer of the Year.
Moving day is complete at the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, and Brian Harman remains on top after a third-round 2-under 69 to keep his lead at five heading to Sunday. Harman hasn’t won in 6 years, but he’s in pole position at 12 under with 18 holes separating him from hoisting the Claret Jug come Sunday evening in England.
Cameron Young, who finished runner-up at the 2022 Open at St. Andrews, shot 5-under 66 on Saturday to move into solo second at 7 under and join Harman in the final game. Jon Rahm, with the round of the tournament at 8-under 63 on moving day, is in third at 6 under overall.
Tommy Fleetwood was unable to get anything going Saturday in the final group, finishing even-par 71 and sitting T-4 at 5 under overall.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for the final round of the 2023 British Open at Royal Liverpool.
All times listed are ET.
2023 British Open Sunday tee times
1st tee
Tee time
Players
2:45 a.m.
Christo Lamprecht, Danny Willett
2:55 a.m.
Scott Stallings, Zach Fischer
3:05 a.m.
Bryson DeChambeau, Andrew Putnam
3:15 a.m.
Padraig Harrington, Robert MacIntyre
3:25 a.m.
Adrian Otaegui, Adrian Meronk
3:35 a.m.
Gary Woodland, Brandon Robinson Thompson
3:45 a.m.
Brooks Koepka, Scottie Scheffler
3:55 a.m.
Thriston Lawrence, Marcel Siem
4:10 a.m.
Kurt Kitayama, Richie Ramsay
4:20 a.m.
Victor Perez, Adam Scott
4:30 a.m.
Matthew Southgate, Christiaan Bezuidenhout
4:40 a.m.
Zach Johnson, Hurly Long
4:50 a.m.
Louis Oosthuizen, David Lingmerth
5 a.m.
Laurie Canter, Alex Noren
5:10 a.m.
Abraham Ancer, Oliver Wilson
5:20 a.m.
Thomas Pieters, Joost Luiten
5:35 a.m.
Jordan Smith, Rikuya Hoshino
5:45 a.m.
Sami Valimaki, Ryan Fox
5:55 a.m.
Brendon Todd, J.T. Poston
6:05 a.m.
Guido Migliozzi, Michael Stewart
6:15 a.m.
Stewart Cink, Henrik Stenson
6:25 a.m.
Wyndham Clark, Richard Bland
6:35 a.m.
Alexander Bjork, Byeong Hun An
6:45 a.m.
Corey Conners, Tyrrell Hatton
7 a.m.
Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith
7:10 a.m.
Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay
7:20 a.m.
Rickie Fowler, Min Woo Lee
7:30 a.m.
Jordan Spieth, Max Homa
7:40 a.m.
Hideki Matsuyama, Romain Langasque
7:50 a.m.
Sungjae Im, Matt Fitzpatrick
8 a.m.
Emiliano Grillo, Rory McIlroy
8:10 a.m.
Matthew Jordan, Nicolai Hojgaard
8:25 a.m.
Tom Kim, Thomas Detry
8:35 a.m.
Shubhankar Sharma, Alex Fitzpatrick
8:45 a.m.
Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka
8:55 a.m.
Jason Day, Antoine Rozner
9:05 a.m.
Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm
9:15 a.m.
Cameron Young, Brian Harman
How to watch
Streaming available on Peacock, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app. All times Eastern.
Sunday, July 23
USA Network: 4-7 a.m. NBC: 7 a.m.-2 p.m.
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HOYLAKE, England — Golf is a sport in which a chap might be celebrated as non-conformist simply for wearing outré shades of khaki pants, and where tournaments on the weekly hamster wheel can blur together like the revolving door “family” partnerships of grifting influencers. There isn’t much left that retains a distinct identity, one unbartered to presenting sponsors nor hostage to discommodious interviews in which CEOs position products from financial instruments to shave foam as bettering humankind. Amid all of this commercialization and homogenization (not to mention politicization), major championships are golf’s safe haven.
Each of the big four owns a particular character, formed over decades and impervious to whatever branding concepts are dreamed up by a marketer with more ambition than awareness.
The Masters is about perfection: in the presentation of the course, in the choreography of the tournament, in the control of the broadcast, in the nomenclature that gives the week its own language. The U.S. Open is the veneration of challenge, or more accurately, difficulty — the desire to exert a vice grip on the world’s best golfers until all but one cry out in surrender. The PGA Championship represents the most compelling case against the Players Championship being a major because the players already have one. This is it, a tournament that prides itself on a set-up that doesn’t upset competitors, even at the cost of sometimes struggling to distinguish itself from other stops on the schedule.
And the Open? It’s defined by a multitude of elements that combine to make it the greatest championship in the game. Why?
Because of the history, for starters. The first shot was struck in the Open three weeks before Abraham Lincoln was elected president and every single great in the annals of the sport has contributed their share since.
Because its the original DNA of a game that morphed into a global sport, essentially unchanged as the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible over wild contouring land set hard by the sea.
Because the Open doesn’t try to protect players from the capriciousness at the heart of links golf, at least it didn’t until the R&A softened bunkers at Royal Liverpool. Good shots aren’t guaranteed good results and poor shots are often saved by a fortuitous carom off a contour. Vagaries are a virtue, not something to be mitigated.
Because it not only tests execution — which every man in the field has mastered — but also imagination, an asset lacking in many. Forget the video game golf familiar to the professional tours, where balls drop and stop with the precision of drone strikes. Here, routes to the target are foraged along the ground, negating wind and navigating hazards. Even if range finders were permitted, they’d be useless. Raw numbers are as meaningless at the Open as they are in a Russian election; it’s all about how you process them to an acceptable outcome.
Because it presents in abundance the one requirement to make golf interesting: options. Particularly in encouraging a tremendous variety of shotmaking around the greens. Nothing is uniform, which allows competitors to play to their strengths or around their weaknesses, whether lobbing wedges or bunting fairway metals. It’s a beguiling upgrade over the standardized test so prevalent on professional tours these days.
Because the conversation on Sunday night focuses on what might be consumed from the Claret Jug, not on how much honey is in the prize pot.
Because it’s a necessary reminder that golf is an outdoor sport, where the turf is hard and the rain moreso. The other three majors are held in locations and seasons where rain is frequently accompanied by electricity, sending everyone to shelter. It’s a rare Open that doesn’t see wind barrel in from the sea, bringing nasty squalls and taking the dreams of many. Golfers, like livestock, are expected to work in all weather at this major, and there is no better means of separating contenders from pretenders than golf on a filthy day along the British coast.
Because it stands as an annual reminder to golfers, superintendents and greens committees the world over that courses need not be lush lawns and floral extravaganzas, that brown doesn’t equal decay. The motto of the 151st Open — Forged in Nature— ought to be a guiding principle everywhere.
Because of the delightful incongruity between the reputation of the venue and the reality of the surrounding area, usually charmless seaside villages whose luster, such as it was, faded shortly after the Wright Brothers created an alternative for vacations. St. Andrews is the exception that proves the rule, but every Open mixes the stuffy air of an elite club with the faint whiff of fish and chips on the breeze.
Because of the spectators. British golf fans have been progressively deprived of upper-tier golf since the European circuit set out for warmer pastures and despots’ dollars, but the Open has the permanence of Dover’s white cliffs, at least when pandemic insurance payouts aren’t a preferred option. Crowds never disappoint, the number of spectators in shorts inversely correlated to the horridness of the weather. And they possess a deep appreciation for links golf, applauding shots that finish far from the pin because they understand how good that result actually is.
Because of the characters particular to Opens, past and present. Like the longtime first tee starter Ivor Robson, whose advancing years belied bladder control that was marveled at for four days every July. Like retired R&A chief Peter Dawson, who — jaw squared like a navvy shovel — summoned forth the Champion Golfer of the Year with the authority of a field marshal in Arnie’s Army. Like Maurice Flitcroft, the infamous gadfly who gatecrashed Open qualifying five times despite being banned after his first foray, during which he shot 121 (“Does that mean he’s won it?” his mother asked a reporter). Like the gaggle to be seen peering from the clubhouse, white-haired members with teeth like toppled tombstones and dandruff on their lapels, bursting with pride yet faintly irked at the inconvenience of the world’s finest golfers interrupting their weekly four-ball followed by G&Ts.
These are the inseparable components of the Open, each contributing to a potpourri that encapsulates everything that makes up the greatest championship in golf. It’s a list that has remained largely unchanged for most of the century-and-a-half they’ve been playing this thing. Long may it continue.
HOYLAKE, England – Kelley Rahm waited by scoring to give her man a hug and a kiss after he shot 8-under 63 at Royal Liverpool on Saturday, breaking the competitive course record by two strokes at a British Open venue hosting its 13th men’s major.
She wore a ski hat with a yellow happy face on its front, but it paled in comparison to the wide smile on her husband’s face.
“Today was one of those days where I felt invincible,” Rahm told the media after rocketing up the leaderboard with seven birdies in his final 10 holes.“Yes, that’s the best round I’ve played on a links golf course ever.”
It was a stark contrast from the first two rounds, where Rahm lost focus and became frustrated and dug himself a hole by shooting 3-over 74 on Thursday and stood T-89 in the 151st British Open. He still made too many unforced errors during Friday’s 70 and began the day 12 strokes behind the leader Brian Harman.
The only comeback of 12+ shots after 36 holes to win any men's major was George Duncan at the 1920 Open Championship (13 back). Rahm was 12 behind Harman to begin today.
But not on this day at England’s second-oldest seaside links. Not on a day when the wind weakened and the course played softer after overnight rain and morning showers took some of the fire out of the firm ground. Determined to play more aggressively, he shot his lowest round at a major and the 14th round of 63 or lower in Open history.
“The job today was to come out and give myself the best opportunity I could,” Rahm said. “Whenever you get a birdie, just thinking about one more. That’s simply all you can do.”
Rahm was skating along with a birdie at the par-5 fifth and all pars before he caught fire with four straight birdies beginning at the ninth. He showed great patience until he reached the stretch of holes between Nos. 11 and 14, which played downwind.
“The wind conditions is what made the course change a little bit,” he said.
Rahm also trusted his game. He knew it was sharp and that he just had to minimize his mistakes.
“I knew what I was capable of,” he said. “I was frustrated because the shots that — it was basically mistakes that I made. That was it. I gave up the shots at major championships that are very costly, and that’s mainly it. There’s nothing different between the player that was there yesterday and today. Not one difference.”
Well, it didn’t hurt that the putts started to drop. After cashing in an 8-foot birdie at the par-5 15th, he rammed in a 34-foot birdie putt that he said may have gone three feet past the hole if it didn’t hit the bottom of the cup. Then he finally cleaned up at the par-5, 18th, where he had made bogeys in both of the first two rounds. It had left him fuming but this time, he overcame a below-average chip to 11 feet by sinking the birdie putt as if there was never a doubt. Home in 30 and a historic effort on moving day that shot him all the way to second place and three strokes back of the lead when he entered the clubhouse (and six back and solo third by end of day).
Rahm knew that the previous competitive course record had been 65, shot a day earlier by Harman, and he blitzed Hoylake in 63, a score that not even his Spanish hero Seve Ballesteros had ever done during his great championship record. But that’s not the piece of British Open history that Rahm is so desperate to write.
“I’d rather win three times,” he said, referencing Ballesteros’s Claret Jug haul, “and never shoot 63.”
