NBC, USA Network, and Golf Channel will be at The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale to bring us the crazy shots, the seaside weather forecasts, the wild clothes UK fans wear, and more facts and trivia than we can remember about British Opens from years gone by.
We’ll start off the week's golf festivities with a mention of the single-round British Open scoring record, which was set at none other than Royal Birkdale in 2017. That’s when Branden Grace shot a 62 in Round 3 to become the first to post that low a number in any major. Then, of course, not to be outdone, he was tied by Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele in the 2023 U.S. Open and by Schauffele and Shane Lowry in the 2024 PGA Championship . It’s always something, isn’t it?
However, no one starts a British Open conversation with a prediction of low scores. Usually, they start with a prediction of the winner and talk of the weather. And Golf Channel and NBC Sports announcers gave some direction on those topics in a recent conference call with the media.
“When I think about Birkdale, one, I look at the list of winners there, an amazing list, highlighted by Peter Thompson winning twice (including) in his fifth and final,” said Jim Furyk who will be an analyst for USA Network, which is handling Thursday and Friday coverage. “The golf course is listed as basically being firm, fast. I've seen the word crispy used.”
The weather in Europe this summer has been very hot, so hot that those who have come to the U.S. for World Cup games, apparently many of whom have hated us for years, now love us for our air conditioning. Whatever makes friends, I guess.
When comes to a crispy golf course, Furyk said he was reminded of the year that Tiger Woods won at Royal Liverpool. The course was baked a nice, warm, toasty, light brown.
Sergio Garcia wore a final-round yellow outfit, head to ankle, and the British tabloids referred to him as a banana or a lemon. Furyk didn't remember the clothing faux pas or wasn't willing to mention it. You have to have guts to be a pro athlete in Europe. Their newspapers and magazines can be just monumentally rude. The New York Times and USA Today referred to the color as canary yellow. Garcia later just said it was a fashion mistake. Furyk didn't remember the clothing faux pas or wasn't willing to mention it.
He did say he was interested to see the course renovation at Royal Birkdale done by Mackenzie & Ebert. Apparently, the goal was to modernize it with bunker reconfigurations, changes in the contour of some fairways, and modifications to certain holes.
“They've added some more difficult angles and difficult approach shots and recovery shots around the green, so I'm excited to kind of see the renovations. Always loved the golf course, and I'm expecting big things from this event,” he added.
Paul McGinley, he of the tournament forecasts, said they anticipate temperatures in the 70s with light winds.
“When I say light winds, they're not expecting them to get higher than 15 mile an hour,” McGinley predicted. “I know the golf courses don't get as runny as they might have done 10 years ago because of irrigation systems that they all have now that the R&A insists of. They do keep it relatively green and not too fiery.”
That means it’s unlikely we will see a redo of conditions like the Tiger-Sergio year.
When it came to guys they expect to win, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee said to consider Viktor Hovland.
“I obviously knew that Viktor Hovland was enormously popular globally, but what we saw at the Travelers was on another level. Everybody loved the guy,” Chamblee pointed out. But he added, “I don't know how you could top Rory McIlroy winning from a global standpoint.”
“I think Rory and Scottie are kind of expected every week to be in contention,” Furyk suggested. “Maybe the expectations are often way too high, but Justin Rose, you have to add Justin to the conversation, an Englishman. His career started there in 1998 when O'Meara won.”
Justin Rose got noticed for his strong play as a 17-year-old, but what was completely memorable was his chip-in from the left rough on the 18th hole in the final round. He turned pro that week.
When it comes to the weather, Jim “Bones” MacKay, who was on Phil Mickelson’s bag for 25 years, has probably seen everything but tornadoes on a golf course. He vividly remembers the year Mickelson and Henrik Stenson went toe-to-toe.
“Half the field that week was basically eliminated, given the disparity of the weather and the tee times there Thursday and Friday,” he explained. “There will be a lot of very nervous guys checking out the wind forecast early in the week there hoping they don’t have a similar situation.”
Another example was the 2002 playing of championship when Tiger Woods had, for the first time anyone could remember, the wrong side of the weather. He had already won The Masters and the U.S. Open and was going for a calendar-year grand slam. Woods got sideways rain and wind and shot an 81, and Ernie Els went on to win.
“From a player’s standpoint, I think the cold is the most significant,” said Kevin Kisner. “The more clothes you put on, the harder it is to swing, the less power or swing speed you have. Once you get into an Open Championship where you combine those two, it’s ‘hold on for dear life’ most of the time.”
If he had to pick, Kisner said he would pick rain and no wind over sunshine and blowing 30.
Brandel Chambell thinks everyone gets carried away talking about great players winning on great golf courses.
“As if somebody who's 100th in the world wins there, it impugns the historical architecture of the place,” he said. “What makes great players great players is that they have a knack for being able to win anywhere.”
Leave it to Chamblee to come up with a Hogan example. He can’t help it. He’s long ago a transplant to Texas.
“I think Hogan said that if you put 18 holes in a gravel pit, you figure out a way to beat everybody,” he offered. “I don’t think, whoever wins this next week, if it's not a top-50 player in the world or a top-25 player in the world, that it would impugn the architecture. I'm not sure I'd buy that.”
However, he said he reserved the right to change his mind on that topic. He cited Royal St. George’s, which he noted many people politely call quirky, has produced high-quality winners including Walter Hagen, Harry Vardon, Bobby Locke, Henry Cotton, Sandy Lyle, Greg Norman, Darren Clarke, and Collin Morikawa. And he pointed out that St. Andrews has given us Louis Oosthuizen and Zach Johnson, who were not favorites at the time.
“Nobody had heard of Louis Oosthuizen when he won there. Zach Johnson certainly wasn't on the list of favorites to win there in 2015,” Chamblee noted. “So, I don't know about this whole winners make a golf course or break a golf course.”
Despite the weather issues, luck of the draw, the bouncy ground, the slower greens, the layered sod bunkers, there’s a lot to like about the British Open.
As Chamblee said, “The phrase Champion Golfer of The Year, that originated back in the early days of The Open Championship, before there was a U.S. Open, before there was a Masters, before there was a PGA, it sort of has the impact of a sort of a rhetorical green jacket.”
If for no other reason, that title alone sets the British Open apart from all the rest.
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