Irishman Paul McGinley is always good for a few strange Irish terms, and now he has introduced us to “Fun and Crack.” But the meaning is not what you think!
“I think what we saw in 2019 is the Irish ingredient of fun and crack, we call it over here,” McGinley said about The Open Championship won by Shane Lowry in Northern Ireland at Royal Portrush.
In the transcript of the NBC conference call with announcers for the British Open, it was spelled crack, but apparently, it’s really “craic,” which to the Irish means fun and good times, not an illegal drug! (Leprechaun humor?)
While that may be McGinley’s best memory, what the rest of us recall was Rory McIlroy playing so poorly that he missed the cut, and that Shane Lowry will never have to buy another drink in Ireland in his life.
It’s doubtful McIlroy will miss the cut this time around, but as McGinley also said, “I think it’s a very difficult tournament to try to pull a winner on.”
Take Scottie Scheffler’s chances for instance.
“He’s still finding his way around,” McGinley noted. “He’s not the outright favorite, in my mind, the way he would be on an American golf course because of obviously the different style of golf that links is.”
According to Brandel Chamblee, Scottie Scheffler is so much better than anybody else that not picking him to win is ridiculous because he’s just plain the best player in the game right now.
Having said that, he added the problem with picking Scheffler is that there’s too much luck of the bounce, luck of the draw, luck of the wind, and luck in general that tends to mess up normal picks.
“Luck plays a bigger factor than any other major championship at The Open,” Chamblee said. “Because of the slow greens, you get bizarre things like a 10-shot comeback from Paul Lawrie in 1999.”
Chamblee suggested that the only thing consistent about the British Open is that the winners tend to be a little bit older.
“The average age is the oldest on average winner,” he said. “So, you can begin to look at guys sitting in their mid-30s and late 30s and even early to mid-40s with a little bit more optimism than you otherwise would.”
One player that neither Chamblee nor McGinley believes will be at the top of the leaderboards is Bryson DeChambeau. The reason, according to Chamblee, is that he has still not learned to control his irons.
“It’s just so important to have control on the fairway at Portrush,” he said. “Maybe he goes out there and attacks it with the iron play because his length coming into the green means he’s coming in there with shorter clubs, et cetera.”
McGinley then talked about DeChambeau’s trajectory.
“I think the high ball flight doesn’t play into his strengths. He struggles to knock the ball down and play three-quarter shots,” he pointed out, adding that DeChambeau has “limitations” in his game that keep him from becoming a good British Open player.
While Paul McGinley didn’t evaluate McIlroy’s game, Chamblee didn’t hesitate.
“There’s 174 players that are ranked in terms of finding the rough,” Chamblee added. “Rory is 172nd out of 174. He may drive the ball beautifully by today’s standards with strokes gained data, but by Portrush data, he’s got to find a way to find more fairways.”
They were asked about Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley’s chances at Portrush, and neither believed they are particularly good.
“He’s played in 11 Open Championships,” Chamblee noted. “His best finish is 15th. He’s missed the last five cuts. He missed the cut at the 2019 Open at Portrush.”
Ball flight is a problem for Bradley, too, as far as Chamblee is concerned.
“He’s got the highest ball flight on the PGA Tour. He sends it into orbit,” Chamblee said. “I’m not sure that he fully appreciates or understands how to play links golf and to work his way around these golf courses. So, he would not be amongst my top 10 picks.”
While they had trouble complimenting some of the top PGA Tour players, there is one player that both Chamblee and McGinley believe has a great chance to win the British Open, that being LIV Golf's Jon Rahm.
“He’s won two Irish Opens on Irish golf courses,” McGinley said. “He’s got a three-quarter swing, as we know, and three-quarter swingers are great at knocking the ball out of the air. With his short game as well too, he’s got all the skill sets.”
He added that he’d be surprised if Rahm didn’t win a British Open or two before his career was over.
“He’s done very well in the Irish Open as Paul has just documented,” Chamblee noted. “A second at The Open, a third at The Open, a seventh at The Open, he was 11th in 2019 at Portrush.”
He likened Rahm to Lee Trevino but with more power.
McGinley said the weather forecast is supposedly benign, with predictions of sunny skies, but the course is located in the northernmost part of Northern Ireland. It’s so far north that look west and it’s Labrador, and look east, and it’s equal with Denmark and southern Sweden.
Chamblee said it best when he noted, “We can handicap this thing in the obvious ways, but Mother Nature will throw us a curveball very likely next week, or the golf course and the fates will throw us a curveball next week.”
While the weather forecast is supposedly not challenging, difficult conditions for someone who plays in Ireland or Scotland can be weather that cause normal people in the U.S. to run for the clubhouse.
Remember the 2002 British Open that Tiger Woods lost because he got a round with bad weather? That day included howling wind and sideways rain with piercing cold temperatures, and play was not stopped! One has to wonder if one bad weather day in Northern Ireland could ruin someone's chances to win the world's oldest golf tournament.