By John Huggan
It was, amidst much doom, gloom and precipitation, a thing of beauty. Hitting shots the old-fashioned way, Tommy Fleetwood somehow manufactured a two-under-par 69 in vile conditions on Saturday to sit two shots off Robert Rock’s lead at the end of day three of the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club.

It was, quite simply a magnificent effort, full of the sort of imagination and flair many feared forever lost at the sharp end of the professional game. Employing his distinctive, “punchy” action to its best effect in the heavy rain and strong wind off the Firth of Forth, Fleetwood made five birdies and dropped only three shots.

“I think halfway back was just about as far as I could swing,” he said modestly. “And they turned out to be punch shots. You have to pick a shot and try to play it in conditions like that. Wherever it goes, it’s going to go. You have to accept that. For some reason that helps me accept shots. Because I know how hard it is. When it’s like this, there is still a massive emphasis on clubhead control. You have to hit a strong draw against a left-to-right wind for example. Downwind you have to launch it. So it’s all about clubhead control. And I had a really good day today.”

The final birdie came on the 483-yard par-4 18th, the difficulty of the challenge illustrated perfectly by Fleetwood’s thought process as he addressed his approach shot.

“Stood over the ball I was prepared for just about any scenario,” he said with a wry smile. “I could have topped it, shanked it or duffed it and I wouldn’t have been too surprised. Where it went (10 feet from the cup) was the most surprising thing. And from two feet out the putt was going in. I felt like I won the battle with the course today.”

Indeed, it was a fight that shifted more and more in the course’s favour as the rain grew even more intense and the breeze stiffened. Fleetwood’s one-under back nine picked up shots on all of those around him. Most significantly, it was three strokes lower than Robert Rock managed.

“I loved every minute of it,” Fleetwood insisted. “It’s golf isn’t it? I’ll play in that every day. I’m really happy and the birdie on 18 left me feeling really good. I was grinding all day. But an occasional look at the leader board helped. I saw everyone was doing the same. It was a day when three pars moved you up. And every birdie was like gold dust.”

The best of Fleetwood’s 34 inward blows both came at short holes. At the short 12th his 5-iron tee shot finished no more than four feet from the flag, a feat that impressed his hard-to-impress caddie, Ian Finnis. Fleetwood made par there, but an even better result came two holes later, when he birdied the next par 3.

“The tee shot there was interesting,” said Fleetwood. “Finno gave me the yardage but there was no point in even discussing what club it was. It was ‘pick a club and create something.’ I looked up and it was nice to see where it was going. Those two tee shots were the best shots of the day for sure. And they came at the good time. I’d missed a couple of putts not long before. But nothing was easy; everything was hard.”

Indeed, it was day for acceptance, for patience and for finesse. Fleetwood displayed all three.

“I consider my acceptance an asset,” he said. “Yes, the rain was pretty relentless. And normally when it’s like this you can’t play. The rain never stopped for even half a second. Then it just got progressively worse. But nothing out there phased me and Finno. The prize money we play for means even days like this has compensations. It was so bad near the end we were laughing about it. If you can handle yourself in these conditions you should be proud of yourself. And hold your head up. You have to give yourself a pat on the back sometimes. And I deserve one today. Besides, my ultimate dream is to win the Open and I might have to do it on a day like this.”

The post Every golfer can learn from Tommy Fleetwood’s attitude and play in brutal Scottish Open conditions appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
The European Tour has announced schedule changes to two of its premier events.

On Monday the Euro Tour moved up the BMW PGA Championship and the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open, which will be played in consecutive weeks at the start of October. Both tournaments jump one week on the Old World circuit schedule, with the Scottish Open starting on Oct. 1 at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, with BMW PGA at Wentworth Club in Surrey—the tour’s flagship event—sliding into Oct. 8.

As these events will follow the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open at Galgorm Castle Golf Club in Northern Ireland (Sept. 24-27), the Euro Tour has established a second UK Swing for its season, with the current six-week run ending next week at the Belfry.

The rest of the schedule, however, remains a bit of a mystery.

The Italian Open and Turkish Open have not been cancelled but are without dates, leaving a month gap between the BMW and the Masters. Additionally, the HSBC-WGC Champions is in danger of postponement or cancellation after China barred all international spectacles. The European Tour’s season finale, the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, is set for Dec. 13.

The post European Tour announces schedule changes to Scottish Open, BMW PGA appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Not all last-minute invites are created equal, in fact, sometimes they are preferable. Just ask Andrew “Beef” Johnston, who earned one of the more coveted last-minute invites in all of the professional golf on Sunday.

Johnston, who began the day 10 shots off the lead of Bernd Wiesberger, carded a final-round 62 at the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland. Through 15 holes the Englishman was at nine under, yielding a 59Watch hashtag on the Golf Channel broadcast. After he made birdie at the 16th, he put himself in position to pull off the improbable feat, needing back-to-back birdies to finish. He went par-bogey, settling for a nine-under 62 to vault 34 spots up the leader board and into solo third at the time.

Eventually, Beef finished in a tie for fourth, still good enough to earn one of the three remaining spots in the Open Championship next week at Royal Portrush. It will be his first Open Championship appearance since 2017, and his first major championship appearance since the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock.

Making the round and subsequent Open invite all the more special was the fact it came just a few weeks after Johnston revealed he had been struggling with his mental health in a player blog on the European Tour’s website. Johnston wrote about one low point in particular after the final round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge this past November.

“I came off the course on Sunday and couldn’t even bring myself to go get my clubs from the locker,” he said. “I just left them. I went straight back to the hotel and cried.”

Johnston quickly became a fan favourite when he burst onto the scene in 2016, picking up his first European Tour win at the Spanish Open and saying he couldn’t wait to get “hammered” afterwards. This made him very popular with American fans in particular, who showered him with chants of “Beeeeeef” everywhere he went. This, in addition to the added pressure he put on himself to perform, weighed heavily on him.

“You’ve got to remember, I’m a normal geezer from Finchley,” Beef wrote in the blog. “Next thing, I see a poll over in America asking fans, ‘who are you looking forward to seeing more?’ I finished above Tiger Woods. To get your head around that is very tough, and then came the pressure I put on myself to perform.

“The attention I got was just crazy. I want to take a picture with a kid, sign a ball and make their day, but it all happened so quickly.”

The good news is that Johnston appears to be in a much healthier mental state, which he credited to the help of psychologists and his fiancée Jodie Valencia. The couple announced they’ll be having a baby on Instagram in early June. Following his 62 at The Renaissance Club on Sunday, Johnston fought back tears talking about Valencia, only able to muster up a “Life’s good,” when speaking to Golf Channel’s Damon Hack. When Hack asked why he’s chosen to be so public about his mental health struggles, Johnston was as honest as he could be.

“It’s the truth, isn’t it? Why not? You can’t go wrong with saying the truth.”

Johnston also conducted an emotional interview with the European Tour. You can watch the full thing below, and you might need the tissues:

A final-round 62 brought out all the emotions for Andrew "Beef" Johnston.pic.twitter.com/sfuHFU78IE

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) July 14, 2019

There is no cheering in the press box, but it goes without saying that everyone in the golf world is thrilled to see Beef back and smiling again. Hopefully, there will be more smiling to come at Royal Portrush, where he’ll be joined by France’s Benjamin Hébert and Italy’s Nino Bertasio, who earned the other two exemptions that were up for grabs at the Scottish Open.

The post Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston earns last-minute invite to Royal Portrush with final-round 62 at the Scottish Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.