Heavy rains all week – even by Scotland standards – shortened the DP World Tour pro-am event to 54 holes.
Heavy rains in Scotland over the weekend wreaked havoc on the schedule for the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
The annual pro-am event hosted across the Old Course at St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns was shortened to 54 holes and pushed to a Monday finish after the three courses were “water-logged” and unplayable.
The weather held off on the fifth day of play, where Matt Fitzpatrick shot a 6-under 66 on Monday at the Old Course at St. Andrews to win by three shots over Matthew Southgate (66/St. Andrews), Ryan Fox (65/St. Andrews) and Marcus Armitage (66/Carnoustie) who finished T-2 at 16 under. Sebastian Soderberg was the low round of the day at Kingsbarns, where he shot a 10-under 62 to finish fifth at 15 under.
As if a ninth European circuit win wasn’t enough, the 29-year-old Englishman played alongside his mother, Susan, in the pro-am event.
Matt Fitzpatrick of England poses on the Swilcan Bridge with his Mother and playing partner, Susan Fitzpatrick during Round Three on Day Five of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at the Old Course St. Andrews on Oct. 9, 2023 in St. Andrews, Scotland. (Photo by Octavio Passos/Getty Images)
In addition to his nine DP World Tour wins, Fitzpatrick has also won the 2023 RBC Heritage as well as the 2022 U.S. Open.
“With all my wins, aside from the major, you’ll forget about them in the future,” said Fitzpatrick, “but you’ll always remember the one you won with your mum.”
The announcement was made Sunday that, due to water-logged courses, the final round of the 2023 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship would be pushed to Monday, Oct. 9, and that the pro-am event would be reduced to 54 holes, with the top 30 teams and ties making the 36-hole cut. Matt Fitzpatrick currently leads at 13 under, with Grant Forrest and Nacho Elvira T-2 at 12 under.
Weather has been an issue all week for the unique event played annually at Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and St. Andrews, three of the best golf courses in Scotland. The tour reported that about 3.11 inches of rain had fallen since the end of play Friday.
Aside from its trio of stellar hosts, the event made headlines early last week when it was reported that Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s lucrative Public Investment Fund (PIF), would play the pro-am under the pseudonym Andrew Waterman. Not only that, the 53-year-old is alongside LIV Golf’s Peter Uihlein (T-10) and was in the same group as R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers. Fellow LIV players Laurie Canter (T-16), Louis Oosthuizen (T-40) and Talor Gooch (72) are also in the field as non-members playing on sponsor invites.
The 49th Walker Cup begins Saturday at the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.
The Walker Cup is here.
It’s one of the greatest men’s amateur golf competitions in the world, and it’s set for the Home of Golf. The 2023 Walker Cup begins Saturday at the Old Course at St. Andrews, as the best amateurs from the United States will take on those from Great Britain and Ireland. The Old Course has hosted eight previous Walker Cups, more than any other venue, most recently in 1975, when the USA defeated GB&I, 15½-8½.
The USA leads the all-time series over GB&I, 38-9-1.
StackaLine offers a hole-by-hole guide for the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.
The Old Course at St. Andrews – host of 2023 Walker Cup in Scotland – wasn’t originally designed so much as it evolved in the early 15th century. Architectural contributions were made hundreds of years later by Daw Anderson in the 1850s and Old Tom Morris a few decades after that.
Known as the Home of Golf, the Old Course ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of classic courses in the United Kingdom and Ireland built before 1960.
The Old Course will be stretched to 7,313 yards with a par of 72 for the 49th Walker Cup, the biennial match between amateurs from the United States versus amateurs from the United Kingdom and Ireland. The length of each hole for the Walker Cup is noted in the captions below.
The teams will play four foursomes matches Saturday morning, eight singles matches Saturday afternoon, four foursomes matches Sunday morning and 10 singles matches Sunday afternoon. (Foursomes is often called alternate-shot in the U.S., and each two-man side will play one ball, alternating shots until the ball is holed.)
The Walker Cup will be broadcast on Golf Channel in the U.S. at 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. EDT on Saturday, then 8 a.m.-2 p.m. EDT Sunday.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face this week.
The USA leads the all-time series over GB&A, 38-9-1.
It’s time for one of the greatest men’s amateur competitions in the world, the Walker Cup.
The 49th Walker Cup is set for Sept. 2-3 at the Old Course at St. Andrews. The Walker Cup is a 10-man amateur team competition between the U.S. and Great Britain and Ireland. The Old Course has hosted eight previous Walker Cups, more than any other venue, most recently in 1975, when the USA defeated GB&I, 15½-8½.
The USA leads the all-time series over GB&I, 38-9-1.
NBC Sports and the St. Andrews Links Trust have announced the inaugural St. Andrews Links Collegiate Presented by TopGolf and World Wide Technology, to be held at the historic Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland, from Oct. 23-25.
The signature three-day event will feature men’s and women’s golf teams from Georgetown, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt with two days of stroke play on the Jubilee Course followed by a day of medal match play on the Old Course at St. Andrews.
“We are honored and proud to partner with St. Andrews Links Trust on this new collegiate invitational at the Home of Golf,” said Tom Knapp, NBC Sports EVP, Golf. “The St. Andrews Links Collegiate elevates and enhances our already impactful college golf platform. We’re excited to have TopGolf and World Wide Technology join us as presenting sponsors, and we’re thrilled to showcase men’s and women’s student athletes from distinguished universities like Georgetown, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt this October in Scotland.”
NBC Sports will present live coverage of the St. Andrews Links Collegiate on Golf Channel and Peacock in the United States. Sky Sports will provide coverage in the U.K.
Added Neil Coulson, the CEO of the St. Andrews Links Trust: “We are delighted to partner with NBC Sports to bring the first collegiate event to the Home of Golf, creating a new invitational which will see some of the game’s brightest young stars from four distinguished institutions compete in the birthplace of the game. We firmly believe this event has the potential to evolve and develop over time, exploring the established U.S. collegiate system as well as institutions further afield to create one of the most anticipated events on the calendar.”
With the Walker Cup nearly two months away, the United States Golf Association announced Thursday its first three selections to represent the Americans at the Old Course at St. Andrews in September.
Gordon Sargent, Michael Thorbjornsen and David Ford, the top-three golfers in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, will don red, white and blue for the United States in the 49th Walker Cup, set for Sept. 2-3 in Scotland.
“Gordon, Michael and David are fantastic additions to the team,” U.S. captain Mike McCoy said in a release. “Not only have all three of these young men had impressive seasons, resulting in these automatic selections, but they are future stars of our game who bring immense talent, enthusiasm and camaraderie to the team. Having them included in the experience at the Old Course is something I am very much looking forward to both personally and as team captain.”
The USGA’s International Team Selection working group will name a second set of additional players to the 10-member team in late July and will name the final selections to the team and alternates immediately following the U.S. Amateur Championship. The winner of the 2023 U.S. Amateur, set for Aug. 14-20 at Cherry Hills Country Club in Colorado, and the recipient of the 2023 McCormack Medal, should they be American, will earn the final automatic spots onto the team.
The Walker Cup Match is a 10-man amateur team competition between the USA and Great Britain and Ireland. The Old Course has hosted eight previous Walker Cups, more than any other venue, most recently in 1975, when the USA defeated GB&I, 15½-8½, led by future U.S. Open champions Jerry Pate and Curtis Strange.
Sargent, a junior at Vanderbilt, won low amateur honors last week at the 2023 U.S. Open and has won five times in college. And if he participates in the Walker Cup (as he’s expected to), Sargent will be up to 18 points in PGA Tour University Accelerated, meaning he’s only two points shy of automatically securing a PGA Tour card.
Thorbjornsen also qualified for the U.S. Open, his third time in the major championship. He won the Pac-12 Championship for Stanford last month and was named the conference’s Golfer of the Year. Ford, a fellow first-team All-American, was named ACC Player of the Year and led North Carolina to the semifinals of match play at the NCAA Championship in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Harrison likely won’t be hitting any trick shots onto Augusta National property from the Waffle House this week.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Harrison Crowe might be best known for hitting a shot off the concrete sidewalk near the famous Dunvegan pub onto the 18th green at the Old Course. Harrison likely won’t be hitting any trick shots onto Augusta National property from the Waffle House this week, but the 21-year-old amateur would like to get another crack at skipping the ball on the par-3 16thafter plopping one in the middle of the lake.
When filmmaker Erik Anders Lang went into the Dunvegan in search of someone who could recreate the shot he’d heard Ernie Els once hit in the wee hours of the morning, Crowe answered the call.
After his first shot off a tee went long, Crowe opted to hit another bright red ball directly off the paving stone, aiming over a chimney at the end of the block. His second shot found the green, and Crowe’s St. Andrews stunt now has nearly 300,000 views on YouTube.
The reaction since then, he said, has been mostly positive.
“A lot of people have really come to me, especially when I played the Australian Open at the end of last year,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the crowd support I had amongst playing with Cameron Davis and Adam Scott.”
Crowe, one of seven amateurs in the field at the 87th Masters, played his way into the field at Augusta National by winning the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship last fall by one shot over Bo Jin at Amata Spring Country Club in Thailand. Crowe trailed Jin by three at the turn but made four birdies in a five-hole span starting on No. 11 to turn the tide.
The victory also gave Crowe a start in the 151st British Open at Royal Liverpool.
Crowe spent Monday playing alongside fellow Aussies Jason Day and Min Woo Lee and was grateful for the advice. On Tuesday, he’ll tee it up with Adam Scott, Cameron Smith and Lee. It’s been 10 years since Scott became the first Aussie to win the Masters.
Day looks at the technology that’s now available to young players and finds the process of getting better to be much more efficient than his era.
“I think through just the accessibility of like social media and other forms of that,” said Day, “you’re able to view professionals and hit golf shots on the range and seeing what they are doing, how they are good, and then obviously that actually helps with the coaching as well, and that coaching aspect as well.
Caddie Andrew Tschudin watches as Harrison Crowe hits from the fairway on no. 15 during a practice round for the 2023 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Michael Madrid-USA TODAY Network)
“Back in the day, when I was growing up, you couldn’t FaceTime your coach. It was non-existent. We had, like, handheld camcorders that would take videos or cameras that would take videos. These days you can take a video on your phone and send it to your coach and jump on FaceTime.”
Crowe comes into this week not simply looking to make the cut, but to make serious noise, telling the Australian Associated Press that it’s setting the bar too low “if you don’t believe you can win.”
He’s certainly not afraid to put on a show, as demonstrated on the streets of St. Andrews.
“I think hitting that shot just kind of shows the person that I am,” said Crowe. “That I’m not really afraid to give everything a shot, and kind of shows a little bit more of the Aussie culture a little bit, as well; that we are pretty laid back and we are ready to do things.”
“We are conscious of our role in preserving this heritage” read a statement from the St. Andrews Links Trust.
It didn’t take long for St. Andrews Links Trust to reverse course. The stonework that was recently added to the famed Swilcan Bridge at the Old Course will be removed in the coming days. The pivot comes after golf fans took to social media with an avalanche of criticism.
St. Andrews officials said the move to add the stone “patios” at both ends of the bridge was done to mitigate the wear and tear of the turf from tens of thousands of visitors each year.
“The stonework at the approach and exit of the bridge was identified as one possible long-term solution,” the statement read. “However while this installation would have provided some protection, in this instance we believe we are unable to create a look which is in keeping with its iconic setting and have taken the decision to remove it.
“We have also taken on feedback from many partners and stakeholders as well as the golfing public and we would like to thank everyone who has been in touch for their contribution to the issue.”
The decision comes one day after St. Andrews released a statement explaining the decision to add the stones.
If you’ve travelled halfway around the world for your bucket list round at St Andrews, would you rather leave with a bit of historic dirt on your shoes or a few cement mix scraps? 😱 pic.twitter.com/O1NWIHbIKt
From the Scottish Highlands around to St. Andrews, a series of true links astonish with variety, playability and charm.
Where to begin?
That is not a rhetorical question. When laying out a bucket-list golf trip to Scotland, it’s a very serious query, part of a series of such questions that will follow you around the country. Where to begin? Which course next? Toughest of all: Which courses can I bear to skip?
Headed to St. Andrews? There’s a lot more on tap than the famed Old Course, 30 times the site of the British Open – ahem, Open Championship, thank you very much. Will you play the New Course, which seems a misnomer, seeing how it was built by Old Tom Morris in 1895? How about the Jubilee? The Castle, which having opened outside town in 2008 is the newest of the seven courses managed by the St. Andrews Links Trust? Maybe sample a handful of the other layouts not far from the Home of Golf?
Headed into the Highlands for a dream round at Royal Dornoch? Everyone on other courses, on the way and on social media will tell you that you can’t skip nearby Brora (I didn’t) or Tain or Golspie (I missed both, but I already am planning to return). Scouting a classic links trip to Aberdeen? You can’t miss classic links such as Royal Aberdeen, or Murcar Links or Cruden Bay or a handful of others. The options are lined up along the coast. All the coasts of Scotland, actually.
Cabot Highlands, formerly known as Castle Stuart, in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Headed east? You’ll be told not to miss the courses to the west. Looking north? Don’t miss those gems to the south. Whichever point of the compass you choose and whatever address you plug into Google Maps, there will be dozens of opportunity costs – all those suggestions are correct, even if they create a totally unmanageable itinerary for a traveling golfer on a weeklong holiday.
Weeks after my recent trip, when playing with a group of Golfweek’s Best course raters in California, I barely could finish a sentence about where I played before the questions poured in: Did you play this one, and what about that one? We all process the world through the lenses of our own experiences, and that’s especially true when judging the courses somebody else is, or is not, playing.
The 18th green of the Old Course at St. Andrews sits close enough to the street and town that the afternoon shadows of old buildings stretch across the putting surface. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Such was the quandary when I started planning this trip to Scotland. I was lucky, because I knew where I would begin. American course designer Tom Doak is building a new course at Castle Stuart near Inverness, which is being rebranded as Cabot Highlands after its recent acquisition by Canadian company Cabot. I would begin there to hear Doak discuss his plans as well as to sample the original course at the resort.
But from there? I had options. Too many options. The names of famous Scottish links courses roll on and on, and it would take months to see even half of what I had in mind. I had only 12 days on the ground, so I enlisted the help of course booking provider Golfbreaks and the local experts at VisitScotland.com to help set up a trip that would venture high into the Highlands before swinging back down the coast, east to Aberdeen and eventually into St. Andrews.
Scotland, of course, is where the game as we know it was invented, and the best of it is all about links golf in particular. Firm, fast and sometimes almost entirely natural – I coveted the links experience. Of the 550 or so total golf courses in Scotland, fewer than 90 might be classified as true links, depending on one’s given definition – there is great debate among academics and clubhouse drunks about what constitutes a proper links. On this trip I was lucky enough to experience 11 examples. Each was distinctive, and don’t dare think of links golf as some uniform game, because it is the definitive opposite of that. The conditions might be similar, but each layout shines on its own, each bouncy shot promising something unexpected.
Street view in St. Andrews (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
I played courses that are famed worldwide, and several that are less known outside Scotland. I played in sunshine and rain, wind and calm. I played well, and I played poorly. The only constants were the courses, the terrain and coastlines flashing through my exhausted head each night in whatever accommodations I had scheduled. The trip included planes, trains, buses, shuttles and a blue Skoda SUV – “Keep left, keep left, keep left,” I had to remind myself at the start of each drive on skinny, winding roads, because I couldn’t bear the thought of missing my next round of golf due to something so mundane as a car crash.
There were a lot of miles, a lot of different beds, a lot of nerves in the car. So many good courses, too many bad swings. And it was all perfect.
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