For the 11th time in the 163-year history of the Open Championship, golf’s oldest major will take place at Royal Birkdale in 2026, which is no surprise. Six years have already passed since Jordan Spieth won the most recent Open over the Southport links in the northwest of England.

And not since the first championship outside Scotland was held at Royal St. George’s in 1894 has the event been played outside England three years in succession. So, with Royal Troon (Scotland) in place for 2024 and Royal Portrush (Northern Ireland) set to host in 2025, the return to Birkdale for what will be the 154th Open was predictable.

“Royal Birkdale is a world-class championship venue and its outstanding links will once again provide the world’s best men’s professional golfers with a tough but fair test of their talents and capabilities as they compete for the claret jug,” said R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers in a statement. “It has produced many memorable moments that are woven into the story of this historic championship, including a dramatic final round in 2017 when Jordan Spieth won for the first time. We look forward to another special occasion in three years and it will be fascinating to see which player will emerge to join a list of renowned champion golfers to have won at Royal Birkdale.”

The 154th Open will be played at Royal Birkdale in 2026.

See you soon… @royalbirkdale ? pic.twitter.com/dRG7hYhWUR

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 11, 2023

Indeed, Birkdale’s previous champions—six of the nine American—are an accomplished bunch, boasting as many as 37 major victories between them. In addition to Spieth, Peter Thomson, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Ian Baker-Finch, Mark O’Meara and Padraig Harrington have all claimed the coveted title there. Of those, only Baker-Finch has not won multiple majors.

This year’s Open Championship is July 20-23 at Royal Liverpool.

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By Ryan Herrington
The R&A made official on Monday what had been presumed since announcing the cancellation of the 2020 Open Championship in the spring: Royal Liverpool in England and Royal Troon in Scotland are staying in line to host the oldest tournament in golf but will do so in 2023 and 2024, one year later than previously planned.

“We are grateful to everyone involved at the clubs and at our partner organizations for supporting our plans and showing flexibility to adapt their own schedules,” said R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers in a press release.

The moves complete the shift in venues brought on by the decision to call off this year’s Open at Royal St. George’s in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but use the course as the host site in 2021. The Old Course at St. Andrews was to host next year, but it pushed back its hosting duties until 2022, allowing it to continue to be the site of what will be the 150th playing of the Open.

The move by a year does dampen Royal Troon’s previous plan to host the championship 100 years after holding the Open for the first time in 1923. Keeping Troon as the 2023 venue, however, would have meant playing the Open in Scotland in back-to-back years, something the R&A prefers not to do.

Liverpool will be hosting the championship for the 13th time, Rory McIlroy having won when it was last played there in 2014. Troon last hosted in 2016 when Henrik Stenson held off Phil Mickelson in an impressive final-round duel. In 2024, it will be the 10th time the Open will have been contested there.

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By John Huggan
Although it has been 21 years since it last happened, it isn’t too unusual for two Englishmen to contest the 36-hole final of the British Amateur Championship. It’s a little more notable when both men hail from the same city, in this case Bristol, though. And perhaps even rarer when they share the same first name.

So it all came to pass at Royal Birkdale, where the championship was held after being postponed from its original June dates due to the coronavirus. Three weeks after the pair played together in a midweek medal at the Kendleshire club in their home city (first prize a £30 pro-shop voucher), Joe Long and Joe Harvey went head-to-head for a decided more significant prize. And it was Long who emerged victorious on a course where, curiously, no Englishman has ever won any of the nine Open Championships played over the challenging Lancashire links. Still, that Long would be the eventual 4-and-3 winner of the final at least made sense. He entered the championship ranked 102nd in the world; Harvey was a distant 897th.

With a 2-up lead through the morning 18, Long lost the opening hole of the afternoon but had restored his two-hole advantage by the turn. Two wins in succession thereafter, followed by four halves was enough to see Long, 23, become the first Englishman since Harry Ellis in 2017 to claim what was once one-quarter of golf’s Grand Slam. Those days are long gone, but Long can still look forward to exemptions into the 2021 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s and the U.S Open next June at Torrey Pines, as well as a likely invitation to next April’s Masters.

“It sounds amazing, 125th Amateur Champion has quite a nice ring to it,” Long said. “I was feeling nervous, we both were. My game plan was just to try and stick in the present as much as I could, forget about all the rewards and benefits that come with winning. I felt like I was pretty solid overall. This afternoon I was hitting driver well and holed a few nice putts as well, which was cool. I just had it in play all the time and felt in control. Joe is a really good mate, and when I win it is hard to see him lose. But it is all part of the sport we play and the match was played in great spirit, we enjoyed it out there.”

Richard Heathcote/R&A
Joe Long poses with the British Amataur trophy after beating Joe Harvey, 4 and 3, in the 36-hole final at Royal Birkdale.

For the record, Long is the 51st Englishman to win an event that has an illustrious list of past champions. Bobby Jones, Deane Beman, Jay Sigel, Frank Stranahan, Lawson Little, Joe Carr, Sir Michael Bonallack, Jose Maria Olazabal, Sergio Garcia, Matteo Manassero and Romain Langasque—winner of last week’s Celtic Classic on the European Tour—all have their names on the famous trophy.

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By Joel Beall
Sans the Masters—which, fun fact, is played at the same venue every year—the Open Championship is the most dependable, and parallelistic, of the travelling major championships. Its lineup is relatively limited, 10 links on the rota and anchored by five-year intervals at St. Andrews (save for a year delay in 2021 to accommodate the tournament’s 150th anniversary). That these courses share similar natures and constructions heightens a sense of uniformity, as does the work of the R&A, which doesn’t overly meddle in course set-up, subtracting a variable that occasionally plagues its U.S. brethren. Even the weather, fickle as it may be, is, well, expected.

It’s partially why Open winners are the oldest of any major championship. Compared to other golf events, it’s a different rodeo. But after a few rides, you know how the bull is going to buck its head.

At least, that’s usually the case. For the first time since 1951, the claret jug is visiting Royal Portrush. The Emerald Isle gem—perhaps not as subtle as most Open venues, its dune landscape offering dramatic scenery—hosted the 2012 Irish Open, so it’s not a complete unknown to the professional world. Nevertheless, without much of a track record, there’s a tad more intrigue, and uncertainty, on how the proceedings at Portrush will shake out.

But when digging into past, an answer emerges, an emphatic one at that.

The question was simple: Who wins when the U.S., British or PGA is held at a new venue? For our analysis, what constituted “new” was a course that hadn’t hosted a major in the previous 20 years, thereby offering a different field (save for a handful of leftovers) from its last go-around. There are exceptions, which will be noted below.

We then used Official World Golf Ranking data from 2000 to the present to paint a profile of each major winner, 79 tournaments in total. Why 2000? That year Titleist’s Pro V1 and Nike’s solid-core Tour Accuracy golf balls were introduced, which from an equipment perspective is viewed as the segregation in how the game was played, and how it is today. Plus, manually charting this out became time-consuming, and keeping things in this millennium seemed apropos. We pulled a player’s OWGR the week before their major triumph, giving us a snapshot of their pre-victory stature. OWGR does have its critics, but it’s the best barometer available (strokes gained didn’t come into fruition until 2003 and it’s mostly been restricted to PGA Tour events) to illustrate the idea of a player’s standing.

Ross Kinnaird

With that equation in mind, there were 12 instances of a major visiting a “new venue” since 2000. The number in parentheses is the player’s OWGR the week before his win:

2018: Brooks Koepka (4), Bellerive Country Club
2017: Justin Thomas (14), Quail Hollow Club
2017: Brooks Koepka (22), Erin Hills
2015: Jordan Spieth (2), Chambers Bay
2013: Justin Rose (5), Merion Golf Club
2012: Rory McIlroy (3), Kiawah Island
2008: Tiger Woods (1), Torrey Pines
2006: Tiger Woods (1), Liverpool
2004: Vijay Singh (2), Whistling Straits
2003: Jim Furyk (10), Olympia Fields Country Club
2002: Tiger Woods (1), Bethpage State Park
2001: David Toms (23), Atlanta Athletic Club

Nine of the 12 were ranked inside the World Top 10 before their triumph, with only Koepka and Toms outside the Top 15. That Koepka has turned into his era’s premier player underlines the list’s firepower. (Ditto Thomas, who eventually earned World No. 1 within the calendar year.) The group’s pre-win OWGR average is 7.33.

Mentioned above, there are caveats, and that regards Torrey Pines and Quail Hollow. Yes, Quail Hollow made its major debut in 2017, but the Charlotte course annually hosts the tour’s Wells Fargo Championship. Ditto Torrey with the Farmers Insurance Open. If we subtract Thomas and Woods from the list, that OWGR remains basically unchanged, dropping to 7.30. In essence, save for Toms—who was certainly no Cinderella at No. 23—these champions are the game’s elite.

This is especially true when contrasted with other major winners’ OWGR averages. The first number is the raw tournament average, the second is the aggregate minus the “new course” winners.

PGA Championship: 30.25 OWGR, 39.71 OWGR
U.S. Open: 21.35 OWGR, 25.86 OWGR
The Open: 41.11 OWGR, 43.33 OWGR

The British numbers are elevated solely off Ben Curtis’ out-of-nowhere conquest at Royal St George’s in 2003. If we remove Curtis and his No. 393 ranking, the Open’s OWGR figures drop to 21.56 and 22.77.

Still, the disparity between the new venue (7.33) and other winners (36.75) is substantial and significant.

Koepka shared his belief at this year’s PGA Championship that only 35 players in the field have a shot at a major. If historical trends hold, that number can be cut by a third for Portrush.

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By Dave Shedloski
They’ve already had their rematch. It occurred in upstate New York in front of only a handful of witnesses instead of a global audience. But no matter. Matt Kuchar wasn’t going to lose to Jordan Spieth again. He was determined. He knew he what he was doing and that he had a secret weapon. He would get his revenge.

“Oh, yeah, I got him back,” Kuchar all but bragged, smiling that mischievous Kuchar smile.

Less than six weeks after Spieth summoned a transcendent rally to stun Kuchar in last year’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, the two men had it out in a different venue. No major title was on the line, but each brought the same intensity reminiscent of their duel for the claret jug. Two of the nicest men in golf got nose to nose. Things got heated. Before anyone knew it, there ensued a lot of kicking and screaming.

And then a lot of trash talking. And laughter. Lots of laughter. And, yes, the tables had turned. This time there would be no rally for the young Texan. Kuchar owned him. He was king of the foosball table.

This is how it is in golf. This is how sportsmen comport themselves. They compete with jangled emotions and under withering pressure that only ratchets higher during a major championship. But when it is over, they put aside the outcome. Golf might be a global game, but it’s a small world at the highest level. No room for petulance. Neither for conceitedness.

Aside from once engaging in an actual kicking contest, Arnie and Jack tried like hell to beat each other on the golf course and then later would play bridge together with their wives.

Thrown together with several other PGA Tour players at a charity golf event last August, Spieth and Kuchar might have felt some awkwardness, a sense that disappointment for one man lingered as the other still was receiving slaps on the back, still was hearing the awe-struck descriptions of what he had done on that mesmerizing afternoon in the coastal town of Southport the month before.

On that gray day in northwest England, Spieth resembled a teetering Jenga tower. And when his golf ball careened into the unkempt rough far right of the 13th fairway as the final round of the 146th Open Championship neared conclusion, he appeared ready to topple over. Yet he salvaged an uncanny bogey. He was still standing. Who could guess he was ready to erect a monument to tenacity.

Now one stroke in front, Kuchar played the next four holes in two under par. And lost three shots to his compatriot.

“I kept thinking, ‘I’m still in good shape’,” Kuchar recalls, “but after each hole, even though I was playing well, I was not in as good a shape as I was before.”

Spieth won by three and hoisted the claret jug, his third major title. Kuchar swept up his wife and children in his arms, his three most prized possessions, and struggled to conceal the depths of his disappointment.

Yet weeks later there they were at the Silo Ridge Pro-Am Invitational at Silo Ridge Field Club in Amenia, N.Y., not a hint of unease between them. In fact, perhaps not surprisingly, they were fine in the moments after the last putt dropped at Birkdale.

“Right after I finished my media session, we were kind of crossing paths,” Kuchar recalled. “I was walking out, and he was walking in. I wanted to show the kids the claret jug. I wasn’t sure how familiar they were with what that trophy is. Jordan was great with it. He always is so good to my kids. Right then and there just a very, very gracious, humble winner.”

“You know,” Spieth said. “We went through a lot together that last day. It was just us. He and I are similar type guys. We play a bit similarly. We’ve played together in the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup. I think we had a pretty decent understanding of what each was going through.”

David Cannon/R&A

After golf at Silo Ridge, Kuchar and other players, Spieth among them, retired to a rented farmhouse on the grounds nearby. While Matt raced his oldest son, Carson, in go-karts on the sylvan property, Spieth took the younger boy, Cameron, for a spin in a four-wheeler. When they returned to the house, they headed out to the barn where there was a ping-pong table. And there was foosball.

“There were other people around having dinner, drinking, relaxing, but Jordan was just being a kid with me and my kids,” said Kuchar, who recently turned 40. “It just felt like that was his element. He didn’t need to go drink and party. He wanted to be that 10-year-old kid, which I think all of us still do. And it was a fun situation, just having kind of the four of us in there.”

It was all fun and games until the elder son took over.

The score was in dispute but the result was not.

“Carson was my secret weapon,” Kuchar said proudly. “We won pretty handily.”

“I was on defence. Kooch pretty much rode the talents of his son, so I don’t know how much credit he could actually take for the win,” said Spieth, 24, not ready to concede anything. “I think Cameron has a definite future on the professional foosball circuit or whatever they might have. He was pretty unstoppable.”

The proverbial shoe was on the other foot.

“I suppose so,” Spieth allowed.

It’s not like sportsmanship is a foreign concept in other athletic endeavours, but we witness plenty of examples of churlishness and antipathy bubbling over. Spieth wants no part of that world. “Frankly, I don’t want to know how it would be different, how it is in other sports,” Spieth mused. “I wouldn’t want that.”

“I think golf, to a certain degree, has always been different. That’s not really a new concept,” Kuchar said. “But in this day and age, I think we’re all a little closer. It’s a very healthy, respectful competition out here.”

Perhaps that’s because the competition is as much – or more – one that rages within, against oneself, rather than an opponent. Spieth is right. Each knows what the other has been through. Empathy and understanding are virtually inescapable, regardless of which side of the ledger one falls in a given week.

Currently, neither man is showing the kind of form that would suggest another showdown between them next week at Carnoustie Golf Links. That’s OK. They’ve already shown their best form. And it wasn’t at Birkdale.

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By Ryan Herrington
A future without the Old Course at St. Andrews? Or Royal Troon? According to a new report, it’s a reality golf fans could potentially face in the wake of data about the impact of global warming.

The Climate Coalition, which represents more than 130 organizations in the United Kingdom studying the effects of climate change, released a paper titled “Game Changer: How climate change is impacting sports in the U.K.” In it, the group makes the case that rising temperatures can and will have a detrimental impact on some of the area’s most popular pastimes, including golf, soccer, skiing and cricket.

According to the report, six of the seven wettest years on record in the U.K. have taken place since 2000. Citing new rainfall patterns, rising sea levels and increased storm surges, the report states that golf courses along the coasts are already dealing with the adverse effects of erosion and will continue to be faced with issues down the road.  

“Unchecked, the impacts of climate change could significantly affect the sport over the long term, particularly in Scotland,” the report states, noting that one in six of Scotland’s 600 courses are located on the coast.

The report mentions by name the Old Course at St. Andrews, the iconic Home of Golf and Open Championship venue, and Royal Troon, another cherished venue in the Open rota, as vulnerable. Other seaside courses in the U.K. that host the Open include Royal Birkdale, Royal Liverpool, Royal Lytham & St. Annes, Muirfield, Royal St. George’s, and Turnberry.

Related: What we saw during an early visit to Carnoustie as it preps for this year’s Open

The Climate Coalition used Montrose Links as a case study. The first reference to golf being played at there was in 1562. In the last 30 years, however, the North Sea has crept 70 meters closer to the course, according to research published by Dundee University.

“As the sea rises and the coast falls away, we’re left with nowhere to go,” Chris Curnin, director of golf at Montrose, is quoted in the report. “Climate change is often seen as tomorrow’s problem, but it’s already eating away at our course.”

Cumin notes that in 2017 a rock armour protecting the first green and second tee would no longer suffice in a severe storm. The course, with the help of the local council, was forced to take rocks from near the third tee and move them to the armour to help fortify the area and prevent a major storm from doing significant damage to the course.

The report quotes Steve Issac, the R&A’s director of sustainability, about growing concerns for the sport.

“It [climate change] is certainly becoming a factor,” Isaac says. “Golf is impacted by climate change more than most other sports. Trends associated with climate change are resulting in periods of course closures, even during summer, with disruption seen to some professional tournaments. We are witnessing different types and timings of disease, pest and weed outbreaks. The future threats are very real, with course managers having to show adaptation if we are to maintain current standards of course condition. It is something we take very seriously.”

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Personally, I felt more sympathy than the CBS announcers, the writers, the fans and even Holmes’ fellow players. The timing was bad, yes, but Noren could just as easily been delayed for 10 minutes by a group on the green (it happens all the time, especially in the winter). Also, isn’t it the nature of professional golf that players must summon intense concentration after long periods of inactivity, over and over and over? This is, after all, a sport where a theoretical highlight reel of each moment in a round when a golfer is actually striking the ball would last about 90 seconds. If I were being glib, I could describe a round of golf as two minutes of exertion sprinkled among five hours of waiting. Is four more minutes really that big a deal? And hey, why didn’t everyone get this mad at Jordan Spieth when he took a half hour to hit a shot at the British Open last year? Is it because it’s easier to pick on a low-profile athlete?

Part of my sympathy, too, stemmed from Holmes himself. I interviewed him in 2014, not long after he won the Wells Fargo Championship, the third of his four career PGA Tour titles. He struck me as an atypical American pro. For one thing, he’s dealt with a rare amount of adversity. He grew up fighting a form of dyslexia that made it hard for him to read small but critical words like “it,” “and,” “but” and “the.” It made school an agonizing process, and he had to work hard just to make average grades—one of the hardest fights of his life was finishing with a 3.25 GPA at the University of Kentucky.

The brain problems didn’t stop once he got on the PGA Tour, either. In 2011, he started to notice his balance failing, and after almost falling in the water at the Players Championship, he learned he had a Chiari brain malformation, which meant his cerebellum was being pushed into an opening at the top of the spinal canal. It required two surgeries—doctors removed part of his skull—and a complicated recovery. (As of 2014, Holmes was keeping the partial skull in a jar.)

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images
It took Jordan Spieth nearly 30 minutes to play his infamous recovery shot on the 13th hole at Birkdale during last summer’s British Open, and the criticism he took was mild compared to Holmes’ 4-minute, 10-second episode this weekend.

So, Holmes’ is not your average American country-club prodigy—his dad was an insurance salesman, his mom was a nurse, and any privileges he had growing up were offset by his learning disability. None of which means he did the right thing at Torrey Pines, of course. The criticism was harsh, but valid, and slow golf is a plague that needs to be cured. It’s just that I felt a wince of sympathy at seeing Holmes portrayed as selfish, when he had seemed so grounded to me, at least by PGA Tour standards.

But, bias aside, reality is reality—Holmes pulled a selfish move on the 18th hole. He may not have realized he was doing it, but selfishness doesn’t require self-awareness. In fact, the two are often mutually exclusive. In golf, over and over, selfishness wins out over self-awareness, but the truth goes beyond that simple observation. It’s worth exploring not just why professional golfers tend to be self-centered, but why they have to be, and why the sport self-selects individuals who meet that criteria and weeds out those who can’t pass the test. Let’s start with a few quotes I’ve collected over the years:

“This is going to sound selfish, but being a pitcher in little league, I’d get out there and pitch four, five scoreless innings, and they’d score a run and we’d lose 1-0 or something, and I hated that. … In golf, the better you play the higher you finish. You don’t really have to depend on anybody else, you just gotta do your own thing, and I thought, yeah, sounds very attractive to me.” —Brian Harman

“I loved team sports, and team golf is my favorite kind of golf, but at the same time the reason I fell in love with golf is I could control my own outcome, I never had to rely on someone else. … It was something I was able to do myself, and really got a lot of satisfaction from that.” —Jordan Spieth

“I pretty much started just playing golf probably when I was in seventh grade. I just liked golf just because it’s … you know, it’s a sport you can play by yourself, it’s just you and the golf course, so you can’t blame anyone else. You don’t have to depend on anyone else, either.” —Dustin Johnson

“Let’s just talk about how golf is the best sport. My dad wanted me to play baseball, but you can play baseball—whatever position you are—you can play with no errors, bat 1.000 and go 5-for-5 that game and lose the game. Why? Or you can throw perfect pitches but you have a human being calling the strikes or balls. You see on TV when they have that little box, it doesn’t match up sometimes. You can play a perfect game and lose it. But when it came to golf, it was straight me and only me. I win or lose.” —Bubba Watson, told to Scott Michaux

I’ll stop there, because you get the point, but I could pull the same quote, with only superficial variations, from a dozen other players—and those are just the ones I’ve asked. To succeed at a sport like golf, which requires thousands of hours of solitary practice, you have to enjoy being alone. You must be an individualist, in other words—someone who doesn’t need, or even want, the support of a team.   

Donald Miralle/Getty Images
Noren took the delay in stride, but we’ll never really know if he might have won the title outright on Sunday had he had the opportunity to play more quickly.

A person who can’t tolerate solitude for very long, who gets uncomfortable without regular human interaction, will never put in the lonely hours needed to become a pro. And that’s what I mean about self-selection—unlike team sports, golf puts up an initial obstacle that only a certain type of introvert can surmount. In the same way that most basketball players are tall, or most great actors love attention, golf rejects the social animals and embraces the loners. And when those loners succeed, it can harden a budding solipsistic mindset—they’ve learned what works.

Selfishness becomes even more important at the professional level. Every golfer is a kind of CEO (an annoying cliché, I know), but the success of the “company” depends primarily on one person. The successful players build teams around them (an ironic but necessary evil) to shelter them from “distractions” and allow them to maintain the self-centered drive that vaulted them to the professional level in the first place. This is a heightened, big-picture kind of selfishness, and preserving a solid career demands it. Lose that me-first edge, and your status will disappear along with it. Forging an insular existence in a very public field may seem impossible, but the best ones manage.

Of course, this mindset can seep into other walks of life where the results, to some, appear less attractive—social behavior, political leanings or even situational awareness on the course. So while you or I may have spared a thought for Noren on the 18th hole at Torrey Pines, Holmes thought nothing of waiting four minutes for the wind to die down, and he didn’t think it necessary to apologize after. He may have more humility than most of his peers, and he may have endured more hardship, but at heart he’s still a golfer, and the first and last thought in that moment was for himself.

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Last year you visited Scotty Cameron’s studio and walked away with the putter you won the PGA with. What was that experience like?
Anytime you go to the Studio and work with Scotty and Paul Vizanko, you learn something new every time. It’s an unbelievable experience. It’s really fun. You walk out of there with more knowledge than when you go in there. I feel like I leave having something good to work on with my putting and my mechanics. It’s not just looking at different putters. You’re looking at what putters are going to give you the best roll and bring out your best stroke, what’s the right weight. I was struggling a little bit with my stroke last year and I wanted to try something different. I just kind of picked that putter [the mallet-style Futura X5] up and it felt kinda good.

You had been playing a blade-style putter before that. Had you played mallets before?
This was a totally different look for me. I’ve used a Newport 2 style for basically my entire life. I had used a Cameron Fastback model during my year on the Web.com Tour for about 85 percent of the season but other than that it’s been a Newport 2, so it was a completely different look.

You made a couple of changes at Quail Hollow. Different wedge, put the 5-wood in instead of the 2-iron. Do you regularly adapt your set makeup to the courses you’re playing?
Absolutely. The 60-degree wedge I was using was the one I used at the British Open and I can’t think of more different conditions than Birkdale and Quail Hollow. You’re going from firm and tight turf and not really any grain over there to a little bit wet, also very tight, but grainy Bermuda grass. The other 60-degree I had was meant to dig and that wasn’t going to work at Quail Hollow. You don’t want to use the bounce when it’s that grainy. You’re just going to embarrass yourself. In terms of the 2-iron and 5-wood, that’s something I’ll change frequently, usually depending on the par 5s.

You have the new Titleist 718 MB blades. What was the process in making that switch?
It was an easy transition. Just hit some balls with them and I liked them right away. They are very similar to what I have now, but I liked the updates. They were more forgiving and I was able to hit the shots I wanted and the shot shapes I like to see.

Why do you prefer muscleback blades instead of a more forgiving club?
It looks clean at address. The feel is great, they go through the turf well, they have a good sound to them. All the irons are great but I’ve used blades most of my life. I’m hitting them well so I’m not about to change.

On your driver, it’s the Titleist 917D2 which has an adjustable hosel. How do you have that set and do you ever tinker with the settings?
I don’t change it too much but I have changed the settings at times. I’ve gone back and forth between A-1 [standard loft and lie] and D-1 [standard lie, minus .75 degrees loft]. I actually changed my setting last week at the PGA. I was hitting good drives but was just leaking it a bit to the right. So I altered the loft and felt I could see a little bit more of the face and could turn it over a little easier and not lose it to the right.

That said, it sounds like once you find something you like, you tend to stay with it?
If you’re changing it probably means you’re not hitting it well, so I don’t want to be changing equipment a lot.

You’re still a young guy, but how has your appreciation of what equipment can do for your game evolved?
Quite a bit. The guys at Titleist make it so easy on us. Anything I need they’ll do for me. Anything I want to change, they’ll help me with. Anything I’m curious about or have questions about they’re going to answer for me. I can practice all I want, but if I don’t have the right equipment for my kind of game it’s not going to mean very much. In some ways what they do for me is more important than what I do to get ready.

When you first started getting into the game, what was the first club that captured your attention to the point you said to yourself, “I really want this club?”

I remember wanting a Scotty Cameron Circle T putter really badly. I remember the first time I went to the Studio and I got to pick one out and have it customized. That was pretty cool. I actually got it lengthened and refinished a couple of years ago. It’s a very pretty and special putter to me.

Do you pay any attention to what other players are using?
I kind of do my own thing and worry about what I’m playing. Yeah, once in a while I’ll take something out of someone’s bag and take a look at it, but for the most part I’m more interested in my equipment.

A lot of your tour brethren have stampings on their wedges. You have “Radar” stamped on yours. What’s the story behind that?
It’s a funny story. I tell everyone that it’s a nickname that nobody calls me. When I was going up through the junior ranks Phillip James from Titleist I went on to California to the test center and I was hitting wedges with Mr. Vokey and P.J. and I made a couple of chip shots and hit a couple of good wedge shots and they said something about it being like a radar and P.J. refused to send me wedges going forward unless it has “Radar” on them so it kind of stuck from there.

Ever hit a persimmon driver or balata golf ball?
I actually have. Only couple of times and probably not enough to understand how much harder it is to use than what we have now. But it’s definitely a different feel.

Related: 15 Things You Need to Know About Justin Thomas

How many golf balls do you go through in a round and at the end of the week what do you do with all your extras?
It depends. If it’s a short course where you use a lot of wedges, it can be three or four. Hopefully not more than five—I don’t want to be losing any balls or taking drops. I usually go through three, though. I carry nine in my bag. Three that I use for practice putting, and the rest for competition. At the end of the week I sign them and give them to people who work the tournament like standard bearers and also fans.

What’s the most unique thing about your equipment?
Probably that my irons have absolutely no offset. They’re very customized for me. They look different from everyone else’s irons. It’s such a clean look from the shaft down to the hosel down to the clubhead. I will say that when I’m not hitting it well those 4- and 5-irons look pretty difficult to hit, but it’s a great look. I’m not sure how it started but I think it was when I picked up a set of irons about four or five years ago and said I wanted a set like that. Been using irons like that ever since.

The post Justin Thomas reveals he’s more of an old-school equipment guy than you might think appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Battling an uncharacteristically balky putter, the 24-year-old Texan shot a sluggish second-round 73 on Friday at the PGA Championship, giving him a 36-hole total of three-over-par 144 to make the projected cut by two shots.

“I kind of accept the fact that I’m essentially out of this tournament pending some form of crazy stuff the next couple of days,” said Spieth, who with a victory would capture the fourth leg of the career Grand Slam. “On to the weekend to try and fire at stuff. Nothing to lose.”

Considered by many the finest putter in the game, Spieth made just one of his 21 attempts from outside 10 feet over the first two days. He ranks T-111 in the field in total putts per greens in regulation.

But Spieth was at least marginally off in other important parts of the game. He ranks T-40 in the field in greens in regulation, T-38 in driving accuracy, both areas where he usually excels. Most notably, he is 73rd in strokes gained/around the green.

Spieth referenced the difficulty of Quail Hollow, especially for those players not at their best.

“The pins were in such tough locations, it was hard to get the ball to feed to the hole,” he said. “It’s a tough track where they are putting these flag sticks.”

Prior to the championship, Spieth emphasized that even after his dramatic victory at the Open Championship last month, he came to Quail Hollow on a “free roll,” basically free of oppressive internal pressure to win. His reaction to his position, 11 strokes behind the current leaders, remained consistent to that relaxed mindset when he was asked if he had a number in mind for the weekend.

“Probably 54 would be nice,” he said.

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Spieth and Kuchar, the main protagonists in the The Open at Royal Birkdale won by Spieth after a breathtaking scoring run down the stretch, were paired together in Sunday’s final round of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. The stakes weren’t quite as high as they began the day well behind 54-hole co-leaders Zach Johnson and Thomas Pieters.

It was the second time in as many years the two were paired together the last day at Firestone, and each man carded a two-under 68, with Spieth finishing at four-under 276 and Kuchar a stroke behind at 277.

“It wasn’t expected to be bad blood,” Spieth said in his final warm-up before the PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C. “A lot of respect, I think, was shown on both sides, and we assume and hope that we’ll get more opportunities like that.”

But it’s the opportunity that Spieth will have immediately before him that is important. A victory seven days hence would make Spieth, 24, the youngest player to win the career grand slam after his 2015 wins in the Masters and U.S. Open and last month’s triumph in the The Open.

Spieth was being, perhaps prudently, circumspect in his remarks about the potential to make history at Quail Hollow. He insists there is no urgency to complete the task this year.

“There’s definitely nothing taken for granted, but it [a win] doesn’t add anything to next week this year. It really doesn’t. I was thinking about it a little today on the course. You know, if you don’t win next week, next year, obviously, you focus on the majors, but does the PGA become kind of that one that’s starred? And that’s so long away; it’s 365 days away.

“In that sense, I’m excited for next week. I’ll just focus on it being the last major of the year and trying to work my way into contention. I had a chance to win and had some pretty fun, stressful weekends the last few events.”

The Dallas native has played Quail Hollow Club, traditionally the site of the Wells Fargo Championship, only once, finishing T-32 in 2013. Because Rory McIlroy twice has won the tournament, Spieth said, “Rory’s probably the guy to beat at this point next week. I played with him the first two days and the way that he is driving the golf ball, he continues to do it there, he just has a massive advantage over the field at that point. Someone who’s had such success there, he and Rickie [Fowler]. Phil [Mickelson has] played it really well. These guys that have good feelings there, yeah, the golf course is changed, but it’s similar enough that they’ve got good vibes around there, so we need to try to develop those before it starts.”

To that end, Spieth might get a jump on his preparation with 18 holes Monday instead of taking a day of rest, given that rain is in the forecast starting Tuesday. After a sputtering week at Firestone following wins in his last two starts, Spieth said about every part of his game needs a little tightening up.

“Each part of the game, there’s something that I need to just put in some work with, but I do know what it is and that’s the best part,” he said. “I had a chance to do something special today, but after nine holes, that was done and it was kind of nice playing a little relaxed golf. But I do miss the heat of things, and that’s the goal is to get back in the heat by Saturday, Sunday next week.”

Whether he likes it or not, the heat will be on him all week in Charlotte.

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