The Old Course hasn’t been this golden for an Open in 20 years.
There’s all the livery of the 150th everywhere. The star quality shining from the past champions pottering around the Old Course on Monday and then attending a memorable dinner in the R&A clubhouse on Tuesday night.
The celebrations recall 2000
Fife farmer Peter Forster, in his scarlet finery as captain of the Royal & Ancient, was sat with Jack Nicklaus on his left and defending champion Collin Morikawa on his right.
Tiger Woods was one place along. John Daly was in his own scarlet jacket. 28 champions in all, Morikawa the youngest, the 1963 champion Sir Bob Charles the eldest.
There’s been honorary citizenships to a tearful Jack, honorary degrees to the great and good, including Sir Bob. The unpleasant aspects of golf in 2022 have mostly – but not entirely – held back behind the blue canvas awnings separating the Old Course from the streets that surround it.
All this recalls the celebrations for the 2000 Open, which really hanselled in the age of Tiger. It was his first of his three Open wins, and he was 2-1 favourite in a field of 156. Ludicrous, but indicative of how far he was ahead at the time.
That week the Old Course roasted. It was 20-25 degrees every day – a young friend from Texas who got my guest ticket got sunstroke sitting in the 17th green stands.
The Old Course resembles 2000 as well
✌️ @TheBig_Easy#The150thOpen pic.twitter.com/iKT5VQ1GcU
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 13, 2022
And the course was a golden hue. Although we had a shower or two on the eve of this championship, it’s that way again.
This is entirely by design. Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said it had been three years in the planning.
“You need two things to be happening in Open week (for course planning)” he said.
“One is very skilled and hard-working greenkeeping staff, and we’re privileged to have that team here. And the second luck with Mother Nature.”
“The golf course is exactly where we want it to be. We’ve been holding the greens back because we had very hot weather early part of this week, and we wanted to make sure that the grass was good come Sunday.
“The fairways are firmer than the greens, and they’re running really hard. Mother Nature is not destined to give us any rain and probably not going to give us as much wind as we like. But we’ve got other ways of being able to set up the golf course.
“My philosophy has always been I want to set up the golf course fair, challenging, and let these guys show us how good they are.”
The fear of 59 – the R&A are sanguine about it
“There is no such thing as a free lunch."
R&A's Martin Slumbers takes a stance against LIV Golf at #TheOpen: https://t.co/a324wYlDV9 pic.twitter.com/PqkHD6dIwn
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) July 13, 2022
The fear has been that if winds are not strong – and they’re forecast to be no more than 15 mph – the Old Course is vulnerable to extreme low scoring.
A score of 59, the benchmark where a course begins to appear obsolete, is thought to be attainable by today’s athletic players with their 21st century technology.
It’s possible, but unlikely, as Slumbers says.
“59 is 13-under par around this golf course,” he said. “There’s 7,300 yards. Greens that are running at 10 1/2 to 11 (on the stimpmeter, which measures green pace).
“It’s got fairways where the ball is bouncing 50 yards if it’s hit and more if it catches the downslope.
“13-under par around that? I’ll tell you what, if someone shoots that, I will be the first person on the 18th green to shake their hand because they have played outstanding golf.”
Those low scores so feared are usually to be found in September and October’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. It’s a different course then – softer, more holding, with pins in easy spots for the pro-am.
Rory McIlroy can’t see -20 winning. The trap has been set for the longer hitters, he said. Hit it too long, you’ll have no shot to get close to the flag. Mid-teens (-15 won in 2015, 2019 and last year) is his estimate.
‘It’s a completely different golf course’
Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre, who has played the course multiple times in amateur and pro golf, almost doesn’t recognise it.
“Someone is going to get hot this week and run up a good score,” he said. “But it’s going to need a lot more feel, a lot more imagination.
“I’ve played here so many times now, and we used to throw balls at the pins and they would stop. When I played amateur stuff and the Dunhill.
“This week it’s a completely different golf course. You’ve got 170 yards and you only pitch it 100, because it will just take off.”
Strategy, not power, is going to win this week. Tip-toeing between the bunkers and nailing the long two-putts.
Like Tiger did in 2000. That turned out to be an Open for the ages, although to my memory it didn’t feel much like it at the time.
This should be one to sit squarely in the Open’s treasured history as well.