Royal St. George’s is set to host The Open for the 15th time after the 149th edition was put on ice for 12 months 

By Kent Gray
After Hideki Matsuyama’s historic Masters moment, attention switches to the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island and this month’s U.S. PGA Championship. But for lovers of links golf and the glory of The Open, July can’t roll around soon enough. After being put on ice for 12 months due to COVID-19, the return to Royal St. George’s Golf Club for the 149th Open is palpably anticipated. The snow that blanketed Sandwich in early February will be gone but count on some sort of weather event playing its part in the outcome of the 2021 edition of the oldest – and grandest – major. Who will etch their name alongside J.H. Taylor, Harry Vardon (twice), Walter Hagan (twice), Henry Cotton, Bobby Locke, Sandy Lyle, Greg Norman and 2011 winner Darren Clarke (among others) as the ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’ at England’s first Open venue?

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1. Lee Westwood In Abu Dhabi

Ahhh, January. Remember how easy life was way back then. Lee Westwood made golf look simple too, most of the time anyway, en-route to a 25th European Tour title at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship to become just the third player to win on tour in four decades after Mark McNulty and Des Smyth. Lucas Herbert’s playoff win in Dubai was dramatic, Graeme McDowell’s Saudi triumph rather romantic. But Westwood’s lesson in longevity won Abu Dhabi the Desert Swing. We wonder now what Westy’s defence will look like.

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2. Great To Be Back

Four months after the season was suspended in Qatar, the European Tour returned to action at Diamond Country Club in Atzenbrugg near Vienna. It has been a fraught wait and the Austrian Open rather fitting crowned Marc Warren champion. It was a fourth European Tour title after the sweet-swinging Scot’s own long wait – six years – since his previous win.

It was low key but absolutely brilliant to be back.

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3. The UK Swing

The European Tour went back to its roots with a hastily-arranged, six-event UK Swing that was an unexpected bonus for lovers of “traditional” golf. The geographically-clustered swing was, as CEO Keith Pelley sign-posted at the time, a “glimpse into the future” and we are down with that. If we had one wish for the future it would be the promotion of courses like Sunningdale in the magical Surrey/Berkshire sand-belt. Wishful thinking maybe but hey, who would have thought a few months ago that a face mask would be an essential piece of golfing kit? If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s how we suddenly treasure the pleasures of great things from our past.

Sam Horsefield galloped away with a pair of UK Swing wins but for us it was Rasmus Højgaard’s triumph at the ISPS Handa UK Championship (pictured) that got us all emotional. More specifically it was the return to the Brabazon course at the Belfry that had us romanticising glories of Ryder Cups past. Sure, time and technology has moved on but here was proof why we shouldn’t totally dismiss tradition.

We’ve had a soft spot for Andy Sullivan ever since the genial Englishman won a space flight as a hole-in-one prize at the 2014 KLM Open and promptly turned it down.  “I’m thinking, if anything happens to the pilot, I’m in charge and that’s not a position I want to be in. So I’ve put the mother-in-law up for that one,” Sullivan joked in a Golf Channel interview two years later. We loved Sully’s seven-stroke win at Hanbury Manor and didn’t his post-victory video link-up with the family after the English Championship epitomise how even celebrating has changed in the era of COVID. The laughter, and tears, flowed after a near-five year wait for his fourth European Tour title. “It was just the people that have missed this win, my brother-in-law was only 24 and he was taken from us. so it’s quite emotional for him not to witness it. It means quite a lot for me to do it for him today, and a good friend of mine has passed as well. It’s nice for my family, to win for my little boy who is only two years old, it’s just nice for him to see Daddy being successful.” How cool is golf.

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Englishman Garrick Porteous hits from the hay on the 16th hole during the final round of the Scottish Championship presented by AXA at Fairmont St Andrews

4. The Home Of Golf

With the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship canned, it was a bonus to return to St. Andrews for some links luvviness at the  new Scottish Championship presented by AXA – especially as we’d been robbed of the season’s ultimate (links) highlight, the 149th Open at Royal St. George’s. It was doubly sweet that Adrian Otaegui, with his Dubai-links, won on the Fairmont course. With that said, here’s a memo to Keith Pelley rescheduling, along the line of our earlier Sunningdale plea: How about events at gems old and new like Royal Dornock, Cruden Bay, Nairn, Western Giles, Machrihanish and North Berwick? If you really want to appeal to the purist, head back to Prestwick. We know, we know, the original home of the Open would be embarrassed by today’s big-boofers. But would it really if the weather gods were alerted? Hey, it’s been a tough year. Let us dream on.

Adrian Otaegui (Spain) tees off on the 14th hole en-route to victory

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5. Golf In Dubai Championship

We’ve loved some of the new destinations added to the reimagined Race to Dubai schedule, the double-header at Aphrodite Hills with those breath-taking Cyprus vistas a fresh case-in-point. But for those of us who regularly golf the UAE, the exposé of Greg Norman’s Fire course at Jumeirah Golf Estates will be a special treat. More than a few believe it is a stronger design than Earth. Whatever your opinion, the 11-days at JGE culminating in the DP World Tour Championship are sure to provide a dramatic ending to this unthinkable year, a European Tour season that hasn’t turned out so bad after all.

The post Five reasons why the COVID-complicated European Tour season wasn’t so bad after all appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
There’s not going to be an Open Championship at Royal St. George’s next week. And the British Senior Open won’t be taking place at Sunningdale one week after that. But next month the AIG Women’s British Open at Royal Troon (Aug. 20-23) will go ahead—albeit without spectators—assuming players flying to Scotland from the United States are exempted by the Scottish government from the two-week quarantine restrictions currently in place.

That looks more than likely, however, as does the playing of the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Women’s Open at The Renaissance Club Aug. 13-16. Although both are “subject to the necessary approvals being secured,” a statement released by the R&A, which runs the Women’s British Open, contained a more than encouraging message from Fiona Hyslop, Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture.

“Scotland is the home of golf and so it is fitting that we are on course to host golf’s first major of 2020, the AIG Women’s British Open,” Hyslop said. “This is only possible thanks to the dedication of the R&A in working with the Scottish government and other partners to develop comprehensive plans to allow for an event of this stature to take place, set against the most challenging of circumstances. I’m especially pleased that we are able to support the return of female professional golf, underlining our commitment to equality across both sport and society.”

The field at Troon—nine times an Open Championship venue but hosting the Women’s Open for the first time—will be comprised of the leading players from the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings as well as recognizing successful players from recent tournaments staged on the world’s leading tours. Pre-qualifying and final qualifying events for the championship have been cancelled based on health and safety advice.

As has been the case on the PGA Tour, and will be on the European Tour later this month, the championship will enforce strict health and safety protocols including the creation of a biosecure zone. Only personnel essential to the event’s onsite operations—namely players, caddies, officials, and staging staff—will be inside the zone with their movements for the week limited to the golf course and designated secure hotel (likely near Glasgow Airport). All personnel will be required to return a negative COVID-19 test from an authorized testing centre and will be subject to further daily temperature checks and rigorous protocols designed to maintain the integrity of the zone and the health of those within it.

“The AIG Women’s British Open is important to the success of women’s professional golf,” said R&A chief executive Martin Slumber. “We have been working closely with our title sponsor AIG, Visit Scotland, Royal Troon and our key advisors to find a way for the Championship to be played safely this year. We believe that playing the AIG Women’s British Open is a significant step for players whose playing opportunities have been severely impacted this year.”

One player especially pleased is European Solheim Cup captain Catriona Matthew, who lives in North Berwick, less than five miles from the Renaissance Club.

“We are all happy to hear that women’s golf will be getting back underway in Scotland,” said the 2009 Women’s British Open champion. “With men’s professional golf back playing, it is important that we are able to follow suit, so this is really excellent news for the women’s game and I am delighted to be preparing for my national open in just over a month’s time.”

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For all the complaining about the decision to move the PGA Championship from August to May and, in the process, make the Open Championship the year’s last major, the change has worked out perfectly. And will continue to do so in the years to come.

The reason for the move wasn’t as simple as the PGA just deciding that May would be a better date for its event. As always in sports, money was involved in an important decision. The PGA Tour and FedEx badly wanted to move its playoffs out of September and away from competing with the NFL for TV viewers. As long as the PGA was the second week in August, that was impossible.

And so, a deal was worked out: The PGA of America would cede August to the tour, and in return, the tour would move the Players Championship back to March—where it always should have been.

The tour moved the Players to May in 2007, hoping to create the illusion that there was a major each month, beginning with the Masters in April and ending with the PGA in August. It didn’t work. The weather might have been occasionally cold and rainy in north Florida in March, but that was better than the blistering heat in May. When Tim Finchem was still commissioner, he talked about possibly moving the event back to March.

Related: Watch Shane Lowry’s epic walk up the 18th fairway at Portrush

And, no matter how frequently the tour’s TV “partners” tried to imply that the Players was some sort of the fifth major, no one was buying it. Better to return to March and be the first truly important tournament—albeit not a major—of the year. Or, as Greg Norman, who won the event in 1994 once put it, “a perfect warm-up for the Masters.”

Heads exploded in Ponte Vedra when he said that, but it was accurate.

The final impetus to return to March was provided by a desire to move the playoffs to an earlier date.

There were—to put it mildly—sceptics about the August-to-May move for the PGA. “What about spring weather in the Northeast?” they moaned. “What if you got a cold winter? Would golf courses like Bethpage Black, Oak Hill, Aronimink and Baltusrol be playable that time of year?”

No doubt there will come a year when getting one of those courses ready in May will be difficult. But how about the weather in August ANYWHERE? If the PGA Championship has had a signature in the past, it was horrific heat and humidity and thunderstorms.

Often, the best players were exhausted by the time they arrived at the PGA by the combination of trying to play three majors in nine weeks and the heat they had to face during the championship. Now, they arrive at the PGA a month after the Masters without having to deal with brutal heat. The weather at Bethpage this past May was almost perfect. It won’t be that way every year, but the odds are a lot better than in August.

Warren Little

What’s more, moving into the second slot in the majors’ lineup, has—and will—increase the visibility of the PGA. Players are fresher in May, fans and media will still be riding the high of the Masters—even in years when Tiger Woods doesn’t win—and there’s a vitality to the week that isn’t likely to be present for a mid-90s slog in August.

And, there’s more to it than that.

The climax of the majors’ season is no longer the fourth-rated major. As David Duval once said so eloquently, “If there are four of something, one of them has to be fourth-best.”

That has always been the PGA, and there have been years where the last major has ended more with a bust than a boom. Now, though, ending the majors’ season with the Open Championship is perfect.

To me, the Open has always been the best of the four majors, and not just because it’s been around the longest. The golf courses on the other side of the Atlantic are completely different than most of the golf courses in this country. Not only are they links courses, but how the week goes is almost always directly connected to the weather. The old Scottish saying, “If it’s nae wind and nae rain, its nae golf,” rings true.

Related: The story of Day 4 at Royal Portrush in 9 (or so) sentences

Consider this: Shane Lowry played brilliantly on Saturday at Royal Portrush to shoot 63 and take a four-shot lead this past weekend. He might have played better on Sunday to shoot 72 and increase his winning margin to six shots. The difference, of course, was the weather.

And then there are the fans. There are a lot of corporate tickets sold at all the U.S. majors—yes, including the Masters. A lot of the fans who show up at those majors are there to tell people they were there. I’m not saying that sort of fan doesn’t exist in Great Britain, but there are far fewer of them.

Many years ago, Tom Watson described the difference: “In the U.S., almost everyone grows up understanding baseball,” he said. “Maybe you don’t play the sport, but you’re exposed to it, and you understand it. That’s the way golf is in England, Scotland and Ireland. They understand that there are some shots you hit to 30 feet that are great, and others that aren’t.”

In the U.S., you will hear a lot of “get in the hole!”—on tee shots from 500 yards away. In the U.K., you hear singing. Imagine if the “patrons” at the Masters burst into song the way so many of the Irish did this past weekend. They’d probably be removed from the premises.

I have a vivid memory of driving into Birkdale on a Friday morning years ago with the great Dave Kindred, my longtime colleague. Play hadn’t started, and the rain was coming down in torrents. The place was packed. Almost no one was looking for a corporate tent to hide out in until the rain stopped. Most were beginning to line fairways, waiting for the first tee shot to be hit.

“Don’t these people know it’s raining?” Kindred said as we pulled into the parking lot.

“They don’t feel rain,” I said.

Like I said, “Nae wind and nae rain … “

I ask you this: Is there a better climax in golf than the impending Open champion walking up the 18th fairway with the huge grandstands on either side of the green packed with people standing, screaming and singing? Fred Couples calls it “the best walk in golf,” and he never won the Open. The giant yellow scoreboards are unique, and I always get a little chill when I see the hand-posted sign, which this year read: “Congratulations Shane. See You Next Year at Royal St. George’s.”

The coolest moment, though, comes during the awards ceremony. It’s brief and simple: The head of the R&A says the most eloquent six words there are in the sport: “The Champion Golfer of the Year … ”

Gets to me every time, regardless of the winner. It’s the perfect annual climax to golf’s four most important events.

This year. Next year. And, I hope, forever.

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