HOYLAKE, England – Don’t call Rickie Fowler a coward.
One of golf’s most popular players was heckled by a fan during Thursday’s first round of the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool over his decision to pull out of investing in British soccer team Leeds United.
“Plenty of people have given me the needle for not going through with it, but he went over the edge,” Fowler said on Saturday after shooting 4-under 67 in the third round. “I didn’t think it was needed.”
Two days earlier, a fan behind the ropes let Fowler know what he thought about his decision not to invest in Leeds United with the ownership group of the San Francisco 49ers as well as Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps and Fowler’s good friends Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, which agreed to pay 170 million pounds to take over a team that was relegated from the Premiers League this season.
In a video that went viral, the spectator heckled Fowler, calling him a coward.
Rickie Fowler not happy with a spectator calling him out after pulling plug on 49 er’s deal ! 😂 pic.twitter.com/O2SrVdr3hY
“That’s a first. Maybe he should put up his own money,” Fowler said on Thursday.
On Saturday he added, “other than maybe a ‘coward’ comment here or there, 99.9 percent (of the fans) are amazing. But you deal with that anywhere you go. Same thing in the States,” he said.
Asked if he might have a change of heart, Fowler said that ship has sailed. His financial team determined it was too much risk based on their schedule, but he wouldn’t be opposed to another deal down the road so he could have a vested interest in a team.
“I hope they play well and kind of get things turned around because I know JT and Jordan would be very happy with that,” he said. “It doesn’t change my interest at all. Yeah, there may be some other opportunities out there, and I would say football, as we call soccer, isn’t something that —obviously it isn’t as big in the States, but a lot of us that don’t follow it as deeply as everyone over here, we appreciate sport at the highest level.
“When opportunities like that come up, I would love to be a part of something. We’ll see what the future holds.”
Asked if he had a rooting interest in a certain team, Fowler said, “I don’t, but if there’s some sort of financial involvement, I’m sure they’ll have plenty of support from me. I can be bought.”
HOYLAKE, England — Nothing says the British Open like a Singha beer, right?
The Thai beermaker became an Official Supplier and the “Official Beer of The Open,” signing a deal that debuted this year and runs through 2025, an R&A spokesperson confirmed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
It made several spectators wonder, what in the name of Bass and Sam Smith is going on here? And truth be told, it seems odd to have “the original Thai beer,” as the beer of choice being sold at a tournament being played this year in England, next year in Scotland, and in 2025 in Northern Ireland (hopefully there’s room for a tap or three of Guinness). But never fear: it turns out there is a tie – or should we say Thai? – to the United Kingdom, after all.
Singha is brewed in the UK by Shepherd and Neame, Britain’s oldest brewer, who also supply the championship with other beer brands for the public bars and hospitality.
Thai beer Singha is the official beer of the British Open in a three-year deal. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
The Open previously featured European beers, with Stella Artois, the Belgium beermaker, designated as the official beer from 2014-18, and Dutch beer Heineken in 2019.
More than 290,000 thirsty spectators are expected to attend the 151st British Open. In addition to the Thai Lager, which Shepherd and Neame began brewing for the UK market in 2022, guests will be able to enjoy Whitstable Bay Pale Ale and Orchard View cider. Singha branding is ever-present in the concession areas.
“The Open is a world-renowned event and offers a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of our award-winning brands with new audiences,” Shepherd Neame chief executive Jonathan Neame told Beer Today. “We are particularly excited to showcase Singha at the Championship, which has a long history of supporting flagship sporting events in the UK and globally.”
Neil Armit, chief commercial officer at the R&A added: “We look forward to working with them during the next three years to offer our fans and guests a range of high-quality British-crafted products at the Championship.”
So, Singha, it is — just don’t try taking a cold lager to the grandstand (see photo below).
A sign informing spectators that beer is not allowed in the stands. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
It’s time for the weekend at the final men’s major championship of the year.
The first two rounds of the 151st British Open at Royal Liverpool are in the books, and it’s Brian Harman who leads the fieldBrian Harman who leads the field after opening in 10-under 132, including a 6-under 65 on Friday. The 132 total through two rounds is the same as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy had in the previous two Opens at Royal Liverpool. They both went on to win.
Harman’s lead is five after the second round, and he’ll be in the final group with Tommy Fleetwood, who shot even-par 71 on Friday and sits at 5 under. Sepp Straka carded eight birdies and moved into solo third at 4 under with a 67.
Harman is the ninth player in the last 40 years to hold a 36-hole lead of five strokes or more in a major championship. Each of the previous eight went on to win.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for the third round of the 2023 British Open at Royal Liverpool.
All times listed are ET.
2023 British Open Saturday tee times
1st tee
Tee time
Players
3:55 a.m.
Robert MacIntyre, Rickie Fowler
4:05 a.m.
Adam Scott, Scottie Scheffler
4:15 a.m.
Brooks Koepka, Patrick Cantlay
4:25 a.m.
Padraig Harrington, Scott Stallings
4:35 a.m.
Andrew Putnam, Christo Lamprecht
4:45 a.m.
Victor Perez, Ryan Fox
5 a.m.
Richie Ramsay, David Lingmerth
5:10 a.m.
Danny Willett, Sami Valimaki
5:20 a.m.
Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele
5:30 a.m.
Cameron Smith, Matt Fitzpatrick
5:40 a.m.
Kurt Kitayama, J.T. Poston
5:50 a.m.
Louis Oosthuizen, Patrick Reed
6 a.m.
Rikuya Hoshino, Hurly Long
6:15 a.m.
Brandon Robinson Thompson, Tyrrell Hatton
6:25 a.m.
Jon Rahm, Sungjae Im
6:35 a.m.
Zach Johnson, Corey Conners
6:45 a.m.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Gary Woodland
6:55 a.m.
Ramain Langasque, Brendon Todd
7:05 a.m.
Zach Fischer, Alex Fitzpatrick
7:15 a.m.
Jordan Smith, Joost Luiten
7:30 a.m.
Thomas Pieters, Adrian Meronk
7:40 a.m.
Byeong Hun An, Oliver Wilson
7:50 a.m.
Thomas Detry, Abraham Ancer
8 a.m.
Alex Noren, Marcel Siem
8:10 a.m.
Hideki Matsuyama, Viktor Hovland
8:20 a.m.
Tom Kim, Alexander Bjork
8:30 a.m.
Laurie Canter, Richard Bland
8:45 a.m.
Antoine Rozner, Nicolai Hojgaard
8:55 a.m.
Wyndham Clark, Henrik Stenson
9:05 a.m.
Stewart Cink, Matthew Jordan
9:15 a.m.
Michael Stewart, Guido Migliozzi
9:25 a.m.
Max Homa, Rory McIlroy
9:35 a.m.
Thriston Lawrence, Matthew Southgate
9:45 a.m.
Cameron Young, Jordan Spieth
10 a.m.
Emiliano Grillo, Adrian Otaegui
10:10 a.m.
Jason Day, Shubhankar Sharma
10:20 a.m.
Min Woo Lee, Sepp Straka
10:30 a.m.
Tommy Fleetwood, Brian Harman
How to watch
Streaming available on Peacock, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app. All times Eastern.
Saturday, July 22
USA Network: 5-7 a.m. NBC: 7 a.m.-3 p.m.
Sunday, July 23
USA Network: 4-7 a.m. NBC: 7 a.m.-2 p.m.
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When the week began, there were 16 golfers who played for LIV Golf that teed it up at Royal Liverpool for the 151st British Open.
However, not all of them are going to play 72 holes.
There aren’t any LIV golfers in contention – only three are under par after 36 holes – but there are a handful who earned tee times for the weekend, including three past Open champions.
The low 70 players and ties made the cut at the British Open, with 76 advancing to the weekend. Brian Harman holds the lead at 10 under, five clear of the field.
Take a look at which LIV golfers advanced to the weekend at Royal Liverpool and which ones are packing their bags.
If you had Brian Harman running away with the Claret Jug and four top-20-ranked pros heading home on Friday, well, congratulations.
Royal Liverpool is living up to the hype as a tough, old-school links layout that has stood the test of time. Defending champion Cameron Smith closed with an eagle to jump to 2-over 144 and move to the right side of the cutline — which came at 3-over 145 — and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler needed to produce a sublime bunker shot at 18 to make birdie and make the cut on the number (extending his streak of consecutive made cuts on Tour to 22, the third-longest active streak).
All told, these 12 players made the cut in all four majors this season: Patrick Cantlay, Tommy Fleetwood, Ryan Fox, Tyrrell Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Brooks Koepka, Hideki Matsuyama, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed, Xander Schauffele, Scheffler and Smith.
Half the fun is over, but half the fun is still to come. The bad weather, which is expected over the weekend, should make whoever is destined to be the Champion Golfer of the Year to have earned the moniker in spades.
The field has been trimmed to the top 70 and ties, with 76 players advancing to the weekend and within 13 strokes of the lead. Let’s take a closer look at some of the notables who were sent packing from the 151st British Open.
Christo Lamprecht got the full British Open experience Friday.
The amateur, a rising senior at Georgia Tech who earned his way into the field via his victory at last month’s Amateur Championship, held the co-lead after an opening round 5-under 66.
Come the second round, it was the exact opposite from his incredible start. Lamprecht bogeyed five of his first seven holes, going out in 5-over 40, and he didn’t record any birdies in a 8-over 79 at Royal Liverpool, 13 shots worse than his Thursday score.
Lamprecht struggled off the tee Friday, his opening tee shot going nearly 50 yards right. From there, it was a battle for 18 holes as he went from T-1 to making the cut on the number.
However, for his first major start, Lamprecht will get invaluable major experience. And he’ll also get something else: a Silver Medal.
The 6-foot-8 Lamprecht is the only one of the six amateurs in the field who made the cut, so he will earn low amateur honors and the Silver Medal come Sunday evening in Hoylake.
On top of his senior year ahead at Georgia Tech, Lamprecht also has invitations waiting to the 2024 Masters and U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.
We’ll see whether Lamprecht can find recreate some of his first-round magic over the weekend.
Driving irons can be a smart club to use on links courses
Links golf courses like St. Andrews, Carnoustie, Royal St. Georges and Royal Liverpool, the site of this week’s Open Championship, are built on sandy, wind-spect ground that would not be good for agriculture or almost anything other than golf.
The sandy ground allows water to drain quickly, so the fairways tend to be firm and bouncy, and strategically-placed pot bunkers can be extremely challenging to play from, but the main defense for any true links course is wind. Elite golfers are not bothered by playing in rain because it tends to soften the course and make approach shots to the green stop quicker, but wind bedevils them. When it swirls, gusts and shifts, wind adds unpredictability to the game, and that drives control-hungry golfers crazy.
To battle the wind and take advantage of the firm fairway conditions, many golfers take out high-lofted fairway woods before the start of events like the Scottish Open and the British Open, then add a driving iron or two in their place.
Modern fairway woods have a low center of gravity that is typically pulled back, away from the face, to encourage higher-flying shots that maximize carry distance. In windy conditions, hitting a 5-wood or a 7-wood low can be challenging. Even with the same amount of loft, driving irons have a higher center of gravity and it is positioned closer to the face, so they produce lower-flying shots that tend to roll out. Nearly all players also fit their driving irons with graphite shafts, typically designed for hybrids, so they can generate more speed and create the spin rate and launch angle they desire. As a result, fast-swinging golfers can use driving irons can keep the ball below the fiercest winds, adding control off the tee, without sacrificing too much distance.
The players listed below are some of the competitors trying to win the Claret Jug this week at Royal Liverpool who have added driving irons to their bag this week.
Rory McIlroy believes he still has a chance of winning the 151st Open despite failing to make a serious move in his second round at Royal Liverpool.
The world number two did not build significantly on his level-par opening round as he shot a one-under 70 on Friday.
That left him nine shots off the clubhouse lead held by Brian Harman but, even though he has much ground to makeup, he is not writing off his chances.
“I might be nine back, but I don’t think there’s going to be a ton of players between me and the lead going into the weekend,” said the 34-year-old, who is bidding to end a nine-year wait for a fifth major title by winning for a second time at Hoylake.
“It depends what the conditions are tomorrow and obviously depends what Brian does as well.
“Right now it’s not quite out of my hands. I think if I can get to three, four, five under par tomorrow going into Sunday, I’ll have a really good chance.”
McIlroy produced a strong finish on Thursday by saving par on the par-five fifth after hitting bunker trouble.
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.
“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.”
HOYLAKE, England — When Brian Harman missed 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, 36, is hunting for one thing and one thing only this week – a Claret Jug, the prize awarded to the Champion Golfer of the Year – and through 36 holes, the Georgia grad is doing it better than anyone else. On a sunny Friday with the wind blowing gently off the Dee Estuary, Harman carded four straight birdies starting at the second hole and capped off his 6-under 65 at Royal Liverpool with a 15-foot eagle at the last. It gave him a five-stroke lead over England’s Tommy Fleetwood, who shot 71. Harman improved to 10-under 132, matching the lowest 36-hole score in British Open history, a mark previously set by Tiger Woods in 2006 and tied by Rory McIlroy in 2014. Both of those 36-hole leaders posted their record-low figure at Royal Liverpool, too, and went on to victory.
“I’ve had a hot putter the last couple days so try to ride it through the weekend,” said Harman, who used his short stick just 49 times. “Thirty-six holes to go, so try to rest up and get ready.”
Harman made his British Open debut here in 2014, qualifying at the 11th hour by winning his first PGA Tour title at the John Deere Classic the Sunday before the championship.
“Had the 4:45 tee time on Friday, finished at 10:15, made the cut, loved the golf,” he said.
But then he packed his bags early in his next four trips across the pond for the major and couldn’t figure out why his game didn’t translate here. He finished T-19 in 2021 but after a slow start last year, he wondered, “Golly, I love coming over here but I’m getting my teeth kicked in.” He rallied to finish T-6 at St. Andrews and that gave him confidence. He played well the rest of the season, just missing a spot on the U.S. Presidents Cup and had two runner-up finishes in the fall.
“Then I just hit this odd sort of wall at the beginning of the year and I couldn’t claw my way out of it. Just kind of doubled down on my process and started playing some really good golf here of late,” said Harman, who also noted that his putter spent some time on double-secret probation. “There was a time middle of this year to where we were seriously thinking about going to the bullpen and pulling out something different. It’s been a good putter, but she’s been misbehaving a lot this year. Last few weeks I found a little something on the greens that I felt like gave me a little better roll.”
Prodigious.
Brian Harman signs off with an eagle for a superb 65.
Harman, who plays left-handed but does everything else right-handed, has been a top-10 machine – 29 since the start of the 2017-18 PGA Tour season, the most of any player without a win in that span – but hasn’t won since the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship. Asked why he hasn’t won more, Harman said he wasn’t sure.
“I think about it a lot, obviously. I’m around the lead a bunch. It’s been hard to stay patient,” he said. “I felt that after I won the tournament and had the really good chance at the U.S. Open in 2017 that I would probably pop a few more off, and it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been right there, and it just hasn’t happened. I don’t know. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened, but I’m not going to quit.”
His caddie, Scott Tway, the brother of major winner Bob Tway, echoed that sentiment.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe that is going to change.”
Harman had one good chance to win a major, holding the 54-hole lead at Erin Hills in 2017. Brooks Koepka vaulted by him to claim that title and Tway called it “a heartbreaker” for Harman, but said if he learned anything it was that he can do it.
“When I held the 54-hole lead at the U.S. Open, I just probably thought about it too much,” Harman said. “Just didn’t focus on getting sleep and eating right. So that would be my focus this weekend.”
Brian Harman plays a shot from a bunker on the 12th hole on Day Two of The 151st Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club on July 21, 2023 in Hoylake, England. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
Harman’s eagle at the last lifted his lead to five over Fleetwood, six over Austria’s Sepp Straka (67) and seven over a trio of players including former major winner Jason Day.
“I made probably my two best swings of the day,” Harman said of his driver-5-iron to 15 feet.
That lifted him to double digits and the largest lead lead at the British Open since Louis Oosthuizen in 2010. Harman became the ninth player in the last 40 years to hold a 36-hole lead of five strokes or more in a major championship; each of the previous eight went on to win. But Harman is winless the five previous times he’d held the 36-hole lead or co-lead on Tour.
“This could be a serious moment for him,” said three-time British Open champion Nick Faldo, who was commentating on Peacock. “He’s got to live with that. Suddenly, that big of a lead? It puts a lot of expectations on your shoulders.”
And it means the hunter is going to be the hunted. For someone who loves the strategy involved in hunting, Harman likely knows that over the weekend his biggest challenge may not be the forecasted wet weather but rather to stay in the present.
“I have a very active mind,” Harman said. “It’s hard for me. I’ve always struggled with trying to predict the future and trying to forecast what’s going to happen. I’ve just tried to get really comfortable just not knowing.”
