By Alex Myers
Golf fans didn’t get to hear Jordan Spieth’s thoughts following Saturday’s third round at the 2021 Open Championship. Instead of stopping to chat with the media, the three-time major champ made a beeline for the practice putting green at Royal St. George’s after missing a par putt of less than two feet on No. 18. We don’t blame him.

After finishing two shots behind winner Collin Morikawa on Sunday, though, Spieth finally commented on that rough finish. Turns out, he was feeling exactly like how any other golfer would have.

“But the finish yesterday, was about as upset as I’ve taken a finish of a round to the house,” Spieth told reporters after a final-round 66 wasn’t enough to claim a second claret jug. “I walked in and wanted to—I said, ‘Is there something that I can break?’ I knew that was so important because I would have been in the final group.”

Hey, if you rent out your home to a pro golfer playing for the ultimate stakes, that’s the risk you run. Although, it appears Spieth stopped short of actually breaking anything.

Instead, he says he finally was able to put Saturday’s bogey-bogey finish past him after dinner—and after a lengthy practice putting session that included bringing his normally trusty club home with him. Spieth arrived at the course on Sunday with his flatstick still in hand.

And he certainly couldn’t blame the putter in the final round. He just could have used those couple shots he threw away down the stretch the previous day—especially since they kept him out of playing in the final pairing.

“Yeah, it’s just I’ve been in that position a lot of times, and it’s a lot nicer when stuff’s happening in front of you and you can control, you can still birdie that hole, versus I get off the 16th today and it’s like, well, they could birdie behind, and there’s nothing I can do about it now,” Spieth said. “When you’re the last to come in you’ve got the last chance on 18, and I think that’s the easiest place to come from, especially when it’s easier conditions.”

Oh, what might have been. Instead, it ended in a close call for Spieth—and for whomever was his landlord this week.

The post Jordan Spieth says Saturday’s finish made him want to “break something” in rental home appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Whenever Rory McIlroy is in one of his mini ruts, he can often be honest to a fault as he searches for reasons for why he’s struggling. He cares too much, he’s doesn’t care at all, he’s trying to be indifferent, he needs to start swinging like a kid again. They’re not excuses, they’re just ways he’s attempting to rationalize why a world-class player like himself isn’t playing like one.

We’ve seen much of this from McIlroy at Royal St. George’s, where he shot a one-over-par 71 on Sunday to finish at even par for the week, a distant T-46. It wasn’t a terrible week, and it wasn’t a particularly good one, either. He went 70-70-69-71. What the kids call “meh.”

On Friday evening, the four-time major champ was asked if he was trying too hard, and his answer was an interesting one to say the least.

“Not at all. I’ve got four of them [majors]. Geez, look, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I get to do what I love for a living. I have a beautiful family. My life is absolutely perfect at the minute. I want for nothing, so it’s not a case of trying too hard for sure.”

Solid perspective, no doubt, but makes you wonder, is he actually indifferent or is he just desperately trying to seem like it? Following his final round Sunday, he admitted it’s a bit of a high-wire act.

“It’s certainly a balance,” he said. “I think you have to go by how you’re feeling on the week as well. Some weeks you might need a little bit more indifference and some weeks you might need to be a little bit more aggressive.

“For me, at the minute, it’s just the process of trying to work my way back to the sort of form and the sort of the level that I know I can play at.”

It wasn’t that long ago that McIlroy was playing at that level. He just won the Wells Fargo Championship in May, then posted consecutive top-18 finishes at the Memorial Tournament and the U.S. Open, where he was in serious contention on the weekend. Since heading over to Europe, though, he hasn’t found similar success, tying for 59th in the Irish Open, missing the cut at the Scottish Open, and now likely finishing outside the top 40 at The Open. He summed up the recent stretch perfectly with a strong self-own.

“Obviously I haven’t played at that [level] for … not going to say all the majors. Felt like I was close at Torrey Pines. But it’s been one of those sort of … if you want someone to shoot even par for you for a week I’m your man.”

Blunt honesty with a little self-deprecation mixed in. In other words, the perfect Rory quote.

The post Rory McIlroy had the perfect self-own following his latest even-par finish appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Editor’s Note: This cover story appeared in a recent issue of Golf Digest Middle East, before Collin Morikawa won the 2021 Open Championship.

No two golfing journeys are identical. But if there is a common theme, it’s turbulence. Golf drags you on a rollercoaster ride—you fall in love with the game and then fall out of it. You make a breakthrough and then hit a wall. The exhilarating successes are sandwiched by humbling failures.

This is true even for the best players in the world. Of course, their ebbs and flows are on a different scale, and their general trajectory is upward. Still, even the superstars have had their struggles. Brooks Koepka wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship offer from his beloved Florida Gators. Phil Mickelson couldn’t get over the major-championship hump until he was 33. Jordan Spieth stormed onto the scene a conquering hero and then dropped out of the top 75 in the World Golf Ranking.

That’s what makes Collin Morikawa’s rise so remarkable—the linearity of it all. It’s uninterrupted. There is, simply put, a whole lot of good and shockingly little bad: a comfortable upbringing in Southern California, an outstanding junior golf career that gave him his choice of colleges, a world No. 1 amateur ranking, a degree from one of the best undergraduate business schools in the world, a tour card less than two months after turning pro, an enriching relationship with a beautiful woman, three PGA Tour victories, millions of dollars, a major championship—all before his 24th birthday.

Morikawa will tell you he is anything but satisfied. That despite how it might appear, he does not have everything figured out. There is, however, ample evidence to the contrary.

‘I’VE BEEN VERY LUCKY’

Debbie and Blaine Morikawa co-own a commercial laundry business near downtown Los Angeles that delivers linens, tablecloths and the like to restaurants throughout L.A. It has been in the family for quite a while. Nothing crazy lucrative, but more than enough to provide Collin and his younger brother, Garrett, who is 17 and prefers soccer over golf, a worry-free childhood in La Cañada Flintridge, a small upscale enclave just north of Pasadena.

“I’ve been very lucky,” says Collin, who now lives in Las Vegas—on his own but not too far away from home. He misses L.A., of course, but “you know, taxes.” He thinks about money these days, in the good way—because he has a lot of it. He didn’t when he was younger.

“We never had to think about money growing up,” he says, “never had to think about what we were having for dinner. I wasn’t a kid that wanted many things; I never asked for a lot. But if I did need something or I did want something, I was very lucky to have parents who were able to afford stuff like that.”

His family traveled frequently, often to Hawaii, where his fraternal grandparents still live and where he attributes his love affair with the ocean. They would go skiing. They had a membership to Chevy Chase Country Club, a private nine-hole layout in nearby Glendale. But it was at a public course where young Collin’s golf talent began to shine: Scholl Canyon, a 3,039-yard, par-60 track where an instructor named Rick Sessinghaus worked.

When Morikawa was 5, his parents convinced the organizers of a junior golf camp at Scholl to let their son participate. He wasn’t technically old enough, but the bones of his remarkably repeatable golf swing were already in place.

“Rick was the guy at the end of the range who taught the better players,” Morikawa says. “He was the end goal, the guy you wanted as a coach. So after I went through the camp, slowly getting more interested in the game, my parents could see I was getting better. So they approached Rick to see if he would coach me, and by the time I was 8, we had started this relationship.”

That relationship continues to this day. Sessinghaus isn’t your typical swing guru with a stable of professional players. Morikawa is his only student on the PGA Tour, so Sessinghaus has no need to hide his rooting interest. In other words, he cheers. Loudly. And during the fan-less reality of pandemic golf in 2020, he was often the only one. “We fist-bump for birdies,” Sessinghaus says with a smile. We refers to anyone near him, including this writer, who can confirm the policy. “For eagles, I might knock your hand off,” he says.

Of course, Sessinghaus knows the golf swing—particularly Collin’s, which he has molded for 15-plus years. But Sessinghaus also owns a doctorate in applied sports psychology and penned a book called Golf: The Ultimate Mind Game. Not surprisingly, he preaches a holistic method for improvement—he and Morikawa talk often about a “growth mind-set”—and speaks about his relationship with his star pupil as a father gushes about his son.

Their work has never been the typical instructor-stands-behind-the-player-on-the-practice-tee situation. Instead of having a young Morikawa mindlessly hit balls on the driving range, Sessinghaus preferred to simulate situations on the golf course.

“We’d drop balls around the course, and I’d have him play three types of shots,” Sessinghaus says. “On the first, I’d let him do his thing. Then we’d talk about why he chose that shot, what he was trying to do, and he’d make his own adjustments for No. 2. Then I’d give him some technical advice on how to play the correct shot for the situation, and he’d try that shot for the third.”

Sessinghaus’ goal has never changed: He wants Collin to be a player, not a hitter, to think about variables and understand his mistakes. Was that a bad swing or a bad decision? Both coach and student credit this philosophy with helping make Morikawa the measured player he is today. You won’t catch Morikawa posting launch-monitor readings to Instagram, and he doesn’t so much rely on adjusted yardages as he does on feel, artistry and athleticism. What Sessinghaus and Morikawa work on has remained consistent since Morikawa was a child: low-tech drills such as hitting flat-footed punch shots and simple methods like varying how high the hands finish to determine shot shape.

Morikawa progressed rapidly. He quit playing other sports around age 10. Baseball was the hardest goodbye. “It’s not like I didn’t want to play other sports,” he says. “I just felt like if I wanted to do this, this is what I had to do.” Eye-popping self-knowledge for a pre-teen. “It was my decision, as a little kid,” he says. “It’s crazy to think about it, but it’s what I loved.”

During the next few years, Sessinghaus grew increasingly certain he had something special.

“I remember this conversation with my wife when I came home after a day working with Collin,” he says. “I told her, ‘He has it. He has that special thing. He’s going to be a professional.’ He was 12 years old at the time.”

A FATEFUL DECISION IN COLLEGE

When it came time to choose a college, Morikawa had options. An accomplished junior with a sparkling report card, he was every college coach’s dream. “I was able to really look at the entire country and say, OK, this is where I want to go,” he says. “My mom went to USC, so I grew up a Trojan fan. The Pac-12 was always in my blood. I always viewed the Pac-12 as the best.”

In the end, he narrowed his options to four California schools: Stanford, UCLA, USC and Cal-Berkeley. He chose Berkeley and wasted little time establishing himself as the alpha of the program, finishing as Cal’s top player in seven of his 14 events as a freshman in 2015-’16. But he didn’t win a tournament that season, and not until that summer did he truly emerge as one of the best players in the country.

In June 2016 he won the prestigious Sunnehanna Amateur with a final-round 62. The next week he teed it up in the Capital Classic, a tournament on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour, which he qualified for by winning the Trans-Mississippi Amateur the year before. It was his first time playing in a professional tournament, so he felt perfectly content to make the cut on the number. Then he closed with two sizzling 63s and drained a 27-footer for birdie on the 72nd hole to get into a three-way playoff.

Ollie Schniederjans ended up winning, but from the outside, it seemed Morikawa had a difficult choice to make: Stay in school or turn pro. Clearly, his game was ready. But he knew he wasn’t prepared at 19 for the solitary life of a professional golfer.

“I don’t think I would have turned pro, even if I won,” he says. “I definitely would have brought it up to my parents, and I would have thought about it. Yes, maybe my golf game was ready, but I wasn’t ready to live that life by myself. People have said I’ve been very mature and, yes, I probably could have lived on my own. But I didn’t go to a school like Cal to play one year, have some good results and leave. Just wasn’t my mind-set.”

Eric Mina was an assistant during Morikawa’s last three years at Cal and remembers meeting him at the first team practice of Morikawa’s sophomore year at Blackhawk Country Club. Mina had been an All-American at Cal and did the mini-tour grind for a few years before returning to the program. He knew what a professional golfer looked like—an awful lot like a teenage Collin Morikawa.

“What caught my eye was his ability to maneuver the golf ball, to really control it,” Mina says. “Whether it was a half shot or a full shot, he knew his yardages. He really knew them. You don’t see that with a lot of pro golfers, so for a 19-year-old kid to have that—extremely impressive.”

Now, there’s staying in school and then there’s staying in school. It’s not exactly a secret that the best college athletes often pick—how should we say this?—manageable majors and classes. If they don’t leave early, as Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth did, then the goal is to stay academically eligible without racking up a particularly stressful workload.

Morikawa missed the memo. During the fall of his sophomore year, just as his golf had begun to take off, he applied to the Haas Business School, the No. 3 undergraduate business program in America, according to U.S. News & World Report. He received his acceptance letter while at a golf tournament in Hawaii, naturally.

“I think the biggest thing that helped us out as far as keeping him in school,” Mina says, “was him getting into Haas. If he didn’t get in, it might have been appealing for him to leave.”

But what use does a professional golfer have for a business degree?

“A bunch of people are coming out of Haas and running their own startups or going into a large business or company,” Morikawa says. “They’re getting great jobs. Me, I’m getting a great job and running my own brand, running who I am as a golfer. I might not necessarily be doing everything, but I understand everything that’s going on.

“I don’t know that everyone out there on the PGA Tour really has a full understanding of everything that’s going on behind them. I’m very aware of that, of what’s going on in the background. Other people, they couldn’t care less. They just want someone to do it for them. But I want to be involved; I want to learn about it.”

Also during his sophomore year Morikawa met Katherine Zhu, a player on the Pepperdine women’s golf team. Morikawa and Zhu shared a mutual friend on the Cal women’s team, and their story of coming together is distinctly modern: The friend showed Morikawa pictures on Zhu’s Instagram page. Morikawa liked what he saw, and the two began texting, eventually meeting over spring break. They have been together since.

“She’s helped me so much,” Morikawa says, quick to point out that he didn’t begin winning tournaments in bunches until she came into his life. “Especially out on tour, it’s a very lonely life. Everyone will tell you, at parts of their career, they’ve been lonely. Having her travel with me, we’ve been able to explore new cities, have good dinners. I’ve just been able to relax, not to stress about the next day so much. I think that’s how some of the best players out there that have families, kids traveling with them are able to flip the switch. On the golf course, it’s golf; it’s business. Off the course, they don’t tire themselves out. Without her, I’d be so focused on golf 24-7, getting antsy about the next round, stuff like that. You can never do that.”

He got into business school, he got the girl, then he started winning. During his last three years at Cal, he won five times and lost in a playoff twice. His junior year, he set a new NCAA scoring record with an average of 68.68 and finished the year as the No. 1 player in the nation. As a senior, he won the Pac-12 individual title and had 11 top 10s in 12 starts.

But perhaps his most impressive feat in college, the true harbinger of his rapid success as a professional, did not come in a tournament at all. It came on a practice range. While he was at Cal, he took a dispersion test on a launch monitor. “They said my shot dispersion with a 6-iron was about the same as the average tour pro’s with a pitching wedge,” he told Golf Digest in 2019. “I guess that’s a humble brag.”

The post The inside story of Collin Morikawa’s journey to the peak of professional golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By E. Michael Johnson
Collin Morikawa won his second major championship on Sunday at Royal St. George’s, going bogey-free over his final 31 holes with some incredible scrambling and putting to edge Jordan Spieth by two shots with a final-round 66.

Morikawa thrust himself into the mix with a seven-birdie, one-bogey 64 in the second round and won the game’s oldest championship simply by playing a restrained game that belies his mere 24 years of age. While Oosthuizen made an early bogey at the fourth and then compounded matters with a skulled sand shot on the easy par-5 seventh that led to a damaging bogey 6 (only the fifth made on the hole all day), Morikawa stitched together a parade of pars early and then made Oosthuizen pay even more for his transgressions by nipping a nifty little pitch shot to within inches of the hole on the seventh for a tap-in birdie, turning a tie into a two-shot advantage. Another birdie on the eighth pushed the lead to three, and though Spieth cut the lead to one on the back nine, Morikawa made timely up and downs time and again, including a long birdie putt over the mound on the 14th green.

Morikawa made a number of key equipment changes before The Open. Chief among them was switching his TaylorMade P730 7-iron through 9-iron to the company’s P7MC model. The change was made specifically because the soles of the P7MC short irons produced better turf interaction on the firm links fairways. Sunday after playing in the Scottish Open Morikawa called Adrian Rietveld, senior manager, tour for TaylorMade, to try to figure out why his irons were behaving the way they were. “He felt he was not striking his short irons as flush as he usually does,” said Reitveld. For a superb ball-striker such as Morikawa, that’s an issue. After thinking about the issue, Reitveld came to the conclusion it might be the sole geometry on the P730 blades versus the P7MC.

“The P7MC has marginally less heel relief on the leading edge and a touch less bounce,” said Reitveld. “That should help deliver the club more flush.

“Collin got here Monday and we started testing. The MCs were launching higher but the sound was noticeably different on the strike. It is apparent with a ball-striker like Collin. He was able to shape his shots and get more control and consistency until the pitching wedge. That was working fine so he didn’t change that club. But on the 7-, 8-, 9-irons if you closed your eyes and just listened to the strike you could hear the difference.”

Despite the mixed set, Morikawa stayed with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts throughout.

Reitveld also noted that Morikawa cracked his 3-wood in Scotland and a new head needed to be employed. Morikawa also changed his lob wedge, using TaylorMade’s Milled Grind Hi-Toe, a 60-degree club with seven degrees of bounce.

Morikawa’s TP Juno putter also received a tweak. Morikawa noticed how much slower the greens are versus a typical week on the PGA Tour and was struggling to get the ball to the hole last week in Scotland. As such, he tested different putter head weights and ended up removing the pair of 2.5-gram sole weights and replaced them with two 7.5-gram weights in his TP Juno blade, providing 10 grams more heft to help get the ball rolling more.

A lot of changes that added up to a winning combination.

The clubs Collin Morikawa used at the Open Championship:

Ball: TaylorMade TP5
Driver: TaylorMade SIM (Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 70 TX), 8 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade SIM, 14 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade SIM2, 19 degrees
Irons (4): TaylorMade P770; (5-9): TaylorMade P7MC; (PW): TaylorMade P730
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind 2 (50 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM8 (56 degrees); TaylorMade MG2 Hi-Toe (60 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade TP Juno

The post The clubs Collin Morikawa used to win at Royal St. George’s appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
Kevin Kisner had an open course in front of him on Sunday at Royal St. George’s, and the man did not let the opportunity go to waste.

Kisner, playing by himself in the first game of the final round of the Open Championship, traversed the property in just 150 minutes Sunday morning. If that sounds fast, you’re right: Kisner finished an hour ahead of the group behind him.

Better yet, it wasn’t as if Kisner was chopping it just to get the hell out of Dodge, er, Sandwich. The 37-year-old made four birdies on the day and turned in consecutive 34s for a two-under 68 for his best score of the week.

Then again, maybe Kiz really did want to bounce. While his game seems conducive to links golf, the results say otherwise. Aside from a runner-up at the 2018 Open, Kisner has finished no better than T-49 in seven other starts, and this week won’t improve that standing, currently in 73rd as the leaders make their way to the first tee.

Still, 150-minute round. This, truly, ain’t no hobby for Kevin Kisner.

The post Kevin Kisner plays final round in just 150 minutes because this ain’t no hobby appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
All the signage at Royal St. George’s says this is The Open Championship, but the leaderboards hint this isn’t the Open of old. Red numbers are everywhere at the English course known previous for its cruelty and quirkiness. Meanwhile, a mild weather forecast for the weekend hints that there are more low scores to come over the final 36 holes.

So who will take advantage? Well, why not the twosome that played the best over the opening 36 holes. Eleven years after his Open triumph at St. Andrews, Louis Oosthuizen will try to reclaim the claret jug and add a second major title. He’ll do so with the positive knowledge that he just set the Open’s 36-hole scoring record with his 12-under 128 performance. Whenever you can hold the record in an event that’s more than 150 years ago, you’re doing something right.

Still, Oosthuizen has the mental baggage of having painfully finished second in the last two majors, and having six runners-up in the game’s four biggest events.

Meanwhile, Collin Morikawa is trying to set a unique record of his own. When he won the PGA Championship in 2020, he did so playing in the event for the first time. It’s an accomplishment matched by a handful of pros, but no golfer has two different majors in their debuts, and this is Morikawa’s first Open. The 24-year-old shot a 64 to jump into an early Friday lead, despite putting some new irons in his back just this week, and now sits just two back.

All told, 77 players made the cut at one over par. Below are the tee times for Saturday’s third round.

SATURDAY/Third round (local time/ET).
The UAE is 3 hours ahead of UK time.

9:20 a.m./4:20 a.m. — Yuxin Lin (A)

9:30 a.m./4:30 a.m. — Talor Gooch, Bryson DeChambeau

9:40 a.m./4:40 a.m. — Richard Mansell, Bernd Wiesberger

9:50 a.m./4:50 a.m. — Marcus Armitage, JC Ritchie

10 a.m./5 a.m. — Ryosuke Kinoshita, Poom Saksansin

10:10 a.m./5:10 a.m. — Rickie Fowler, Antoine Rozner

10:20 a.m./5:30 a.m. — Brendan Steele, Robert MacIntyre

10:30 a.m./5:30 a.m. — Sam Burns, Harris English

10:40 a.m./5:40 a.m. — Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak

10:50 a.m./5:50 a.m. — Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Sam Horsfeld

11:05 a.m./6:05 a.m. — Rory McIlroy, Richard Bland

11:15 a.m./6:15 a.m. — Benjamin Hebert, Xander Schaufele

11:25 a.m./6:25 a.m. — Padraig Harrington, Matthew Fitzpatrick

11:35 a.m./6:35 a.m. — Kevin Streelman, Lanto Grifin

11:45 a.m./6:45 a.m. — Viktor Hovland, Joaquin Niemann

11:55 a.m./6:55 a.m. — Max Homa, Chan Kim

12:05 p.m./7:05 a.m. — Justin Thomas, Adam Scott

12:15 p.m./7:05 a.m. — Billy Horschel, Kevin Kisner

12:25 p.m./7:05 a.m. — Jazz Janewattananond, Matthias Schmid (A)

12:35 p.m./7:05 a.m. — Chez Reavie, Aaron Rai

12:50 p.m./7:05 a.m. — Jonathan Thomson, Lee Westwood

1 p.m./8 a.m. — Ian Poulter, Jack Senior

1:10 p.m./8:10 a.m. — Webb Simpson, Tommy Fleetwood

1:20 p.m./8:20 a.m. — Johannes Veerman, Matt Wallace

1:30 p.m./8:30 a.m. — Sergio Garcia, Byeong Hun An

1:40 p.m./8:40 a.m. — Joel Dahmen, Justin Rose

1:50 p.m./8:50 a.m. — Dean Burmester, Daniel Berger

2 p.m./9 a.m. — Shane Lowry, Brandt Snedeker

2:10 p.m./9:10 a.m. — Danny Willett, Brian Harman

2:20 p.m./9:20 a.m. — Corey Conners, Cameron Smith

2:35 p.m./9:35 a.m. — Tony Finau, Ryan Fox

2:45 p.m./9:45 a.m. — Jon Rahm, Cameron Tringale

2:55 p.m./9:55 a.m. — Brooks Koepka, Mackenzie Hughes

3:05 p.m./10:05 a.m. — Justin Harding, Paul Casey

3:15 p.m./10:15 a.m. — Marcel Siem, Andy Sullivan

3:25 p.m./10:25 a.m. — Daniel Van Tonder, Emiliano Grillo

3:35 p.m./10:35 a.m. — Dustin Johnson, Scottie Schefler

3:45 p.m./10:45 a.m. — Jordan Spieth, Dylan Frittelli

3:55 p.m./10:55 a.m. — Louis Oosthuizen, Collin Morikawa

The post Starting times and pairings for Saturday’s third round at Royal St. George’s appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
SANDWICH, England—Here he comes again. Runner-up at the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open already this year, Lodewicus Theodorus Oosthuizen—better known as “Louis”—is back on the leader board at a major championship. This time and at least for the moment he is right at the top, too. Bogey-free, the 38-year-old South African strolled round Royal St. George’s in a nifty six-under-par 64 to claim the early lead in the 149th Open Championship.

All of which is nothing new to Oosthuizen. Winner by seven shots in the 138th edition of golf’s oldest major at St. Andrews back in 2010, he knows exactly how to run from the front. Maybe the only thing new about all of the above is that the man who has been runner-up in all four of golf’s most important events shot the score he did with just about everyone paying attention. No more under the radar stuff for golf’s most famous farmer.

Indeed, the game that has been his professional life has never been everything to this father of three young girls. Just after he won that Open at the Home of Golf he splashed some cash. And what did he buy? A new tractor.

“Being a farm boy, it was one of my big dreams and I bought myself a nice John Deere tractor for my farm back in South Africa,” said the then-27-year-old. “John Deere is very close to my heart. It’s for me to drive around on and I made sure there was enough space for my little daughter Jana to sit beside me. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

That has always been Oosthuizen’s way, of course. While he owns what is perhaps the most-admired swing amongst the inhabitants of the game’s upper-class—swing coach Pete Cowen calls it “like watching a virtuoso play music”—he has never yearned for attention. Oosthuizen’s soft-spoken manner and innate modesty off the course contribute to that relative anonymity. He is not one to toot any musical instrument, never mind a trumpet. But life out of the limelight, as much as that is possible for someone who has played so well so often at the highest level—he has seven top-three finishes in majors, apart from his lone victory—has forever been his way.

Still, there was no disguising Oosthuizen’s pleasure at the end of a round in which he left playing partners Jon Rahm ((71) and defending champion Shane Lowry (71) trailing by seven shots. He even went as far as to label his performance “in my mind the perfect round I could have played.” Which is accurate. Standing on the eighth after seven straight pars, the former South African Open champion rattled off six birdies in the next nine holes, before closing with a brace of pars. Even the last of those was notable. After driving into sand, Oosthuizen blasted out then got up-and-down from 80 yards to preserve the cleanliness of his card.

“I didn’t make many mistakes,” her said. “When I had good opportunities for birdie, I made the putts. So just a very good, solid round. On this course it’s all about hitting the fairway. You’re not going to be able to do much from the rough here, or the fairway bunkers. Driving the ball good is key. If you aren’t comfortable with a driver around this course, then don’t be scared laying further back, as long as you can get in the fairway.”

So far, so good then. But Oosthuizen would be less than human if past disappointments were not already circling his psyche. Being so close so often to a second major win has to have left a little scar tissue, even on one so outwardly composed. Then again, maybe not. In response to questioning along those lines, he was resolute.

Charlie Crowhurst/R&A
Louis Oosthuizen plays his second shot on the 10th hole during Day One of The 149th Open.

“It gives me confidence going into majors knowing that I’m still competing well in them, and I’ve still got chances of winning,” he said. “Once the week starts, I need to get that out of my mind and just focus on every round and every shot. But it definitely puts me in a better frame of mind going into the week. Getting over a narrow defeat depends on if you lost it or someone else beat you.

“At both the PGA and the U.S. Open I was beaten by better golf at the end,” he continued. “But yes, it takes a little while to get over. You have to do it quickly though, otherwise it’s going to hold you back to perform again. I try to take a few days off and just try and forget about it and see if I can get myself ready for the next one. Ideally, I like to spend time on the farm with the family, with the kids, and just get my head away from golf completely. I’m always on the tractor. I don’t need to play good or bad to be on the tractor.”

More specifically, much of Oosthuizen’s brilliant form has been attributed to a big improvement in his putting. Going into this week he was leading the strokes-gained category on the greens, a huge difference between the mediocrity that so dominated years past. In explaining that welcome development, Oosthuizen identified an improved pre-putt routine and a determination to stick with the Ping Voss putter that currently occupies his bag. All a big change from the time when a new putter was almost a weekly occurrence.

“I have a bag of them [putters] at home that maybe needs to be thrown in the river,” he said with a smile. “I went through a stage where I changed a lot of putters. I realised quickly that’s no way to find any consistency. Going through all of that and sticking with it has really helped me a lot.”

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By Joel Beall
Sergio Garcia turned in a two-under 68 Thursday, a score that has him in good shape at the Open Championship. Of course, merely making it to Royal St. George’s was somewhat of an accomplishment for Sergio.

Following Round 1, the former Masters champ said he was pleased with his performance given he darn-near missed his tee time.

“Very happy with it. Obviously very happy with the finish. Even happier after how the morning started, where because of terrible traffic coming in,” Garcia explained, “even though I left the house with plenty of time, I needed a little bit of help from a couple very nice English policemen on the bikes to get me here with only about 35, 40 minutes to tee off.”

Garcia explained that he usually arrives at a course 90 minutes prior to his tee time to allow for a full warm-up. Clearly the abridged time did not effect Sergio, as he made three birdies on the front. “I was able to do a very quick practice, very quick warmup, but it worked out okay because I played nicely,” Garcia said.

As for what happened en route to the course, Garcia had no clue.

“I don’t know, we just got stuck,” Garcia said. “We couldn’t move, and thankfully they helped us a little bit and got us here in time.”

After a string of four missed cuts, Garica entered the week with three consecutive top-20 finishes. The Spaniard has 10 top-10s at the Open in his career, including a T-9 (2003) and T-10 (2011) at Royal St. George’s, and Thursday’s start gives him a chance to build off that success. “It’s always nice,” Garcia said about his opening round. “It doesn’t mean that it’s going to do—it’s going to make or not your week, but obviously if you start nicely, it gives you a little bit more confidence. It gives you a little more—you relax a little bit more. I’m very excited about that.”

And with a 3:32 p.m. tee time on Friday, he’ll have plenty of time for a proper warm-up.

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By Dave Shedloski
All except the very late starters at the 149th Open Championship were treated Thursday to heaping helpings of Royal St. Gettable (nee St. George’s), with greens more green and the winds less sweeping, leaving the par-70 layout set up at 7,049 yards in a rather vulnerable state.

Seven thousand yards? That’s, like, 12 holes at Kiawah Island or Torrey Pines, where they played the PGA Championship and U.S. Open, respectively, earlier this year.

The results were not surprising. Forty-seven players broke par and 73 shot par or better. Seven players didn’t make a bogey. Among those in red figures was a player whom we expect to break par and that was Brooks Koepke, who despite a bogey at the last shot 69. Seems like we’re always talking about Brooksie in these majors, and that is to be expected when the guy now has 40 rounds in the 60s in major championships since 2016.

The surprising part of his day was reportedly declining an interview afterwards. In addition to good scores in majors, this guy delivers direct hits in his interviews, so a lost moment in what was otherwise a rather eventful opening day.

All we have to say is watch out if Brooks is miffed after a 69. No one plays better with internal combustion motivation.

Here are eight other surprises to Round One:

GLYN KIRK
Andy Sullivan plays from the rough on the 12th hole during his first round of the 149th British Open.

Off the Matt surprise: Andy Sullivan, 67.
A graphic displaying players with the most rounds of 75-plus in the Open since 2015 included Sullivan, who is tied with Dustin Johnson for third-most with five, thereby proving that not every comparison to the No. 1 player in the world is favourable. Thursday’s handsome score came in just his 17th Open round, meaning nearly a third of his previous scores required advanced math. In fact, his 67 came on the heels of ignoble scores of 76-76-75 in his previous three rounds in the Open at Carnoustie and Portrush, respectively. Ranked 81 in the world, Sullivan gained entry as an alternate when Matthew Wolff took a pass. His performance Thursday was some kind of alternate reality.

Kickoff surprise: Jordan Spieth, 65.
New irons in the bag need a breaking in period. Or so goes conventional wisdom. Took Jordan, oh, about four holes. Shot lowest opening round since Birkdale in 2017, when he also scored 65 and went on to win. Still hasn’t shot higher than 72 in any first round since he showed up in 2013 at Muirfield and started with a 69. The performance represents a bit of a breakthrough for the three-time major winner, who hadn’t opened a major with a round in the 60s since shooting 69 in the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage. Nice having that trusty putter to lean on.

Surprisingly not that surprising: Stewart Cink, 66.
We might tend to categorize Cink’s victory in the 2009 Open as having a “lightning in a bottle” quality, but the Georgia native arrived at St. George’s with top-25 finishes in three of his last four appearances, and he was T-6 in 2007 at Carnoustie before beating 99-year-old Tom Watson at Turnberry two years later. (OK, Old Tom only looked 99 in the playoff.) A two-time-winner this season, Cink is enjoying a resurgence at age 48 and that continued with his best score at St. George’s and only his second bettering par in Kent compared to three 75s and a 77 among his previous eight rounds. Oh, and like Spieth, Cink equalled his lowest opening round from the year he won.

ANDY BUCHANAN
Brian Harman places his ball on the 18th green during his first round of the 149th British Open.

Big (smirk) surprise: Brian Harman, 65.
This diminutive left-hander hasn’t rounded third and come home to cash a check in the Open since his debut in 2014, when he finished T-26 at Hoylake in 2014. Since then, the 5-foot-7 hunting enthusiast delivered a string of 70s hits, none of them representing a score below par, and missed cuts, four in a row at last count. Harman putted well on Thursday, but that’s to be expected, looking at his stats on the greens this season. The problem has been finding them; Harman ranks 138th on the PGA Tour in greens in regulation, but at St. Gettable he got on 15 of them.

Big surprise (non-smirk division): Benjamin Hebert, 66.
Playing in just his third Open Championship (his first two were 11 years apart in 2008 and ’19), Hebert, a 34-year-old Frenchman, didn’t make a bogey. Ranked 262 in the world, he has played in 14 events this year on the European Tour and has one top-10 finish, a T-7 at the Porsche European Open. Not to be confused with Lucas Herbert—he has, indeed, been confused with Lucas Herbert, and right there in the Open Player Guide, which says he got into the championship off his win in the Dubai Irish Open. Nope, that was Lucas Herbert. So he overcame an identity crisis as well as sparse Open experience to tie for third-best score of the day. Footnote: Hebert beat Herbert by four shots and one consonant.

Alarming surprise: Byeong Hun An, 67.
Look what this guy does when fully awake. Last we heard from the South Korean golfer he was voicing displeasure over his series of early tee times on the PGA Tour. But let this guy get a second cup of coffee and muffin, and he ties his second-lowest score of his Open career, bettered only by a 66 in the third round at Carnoustie three years ago. An has never started stronger in his previous seven Open starts, and he did it with birdies on his final two holes. Can’t wait to see what he does with breakfast and lunch under his belt before his 3:54 p.m. local tee time on Friday.

Tabloid surprise (well, maybe not): Bryson DeChambeau, 71.
Proving that he and Brooks seemingly can never get on the same page, Brooks didn’t talk after his 69 and Bryson said too much amidst a few brief observations after posting a score two shots higher. Can’t blame his troubles on new caddie Brian Zeigler, and certainly can’t blame himself. No, no, no. Equipment is sub-standard. “If I can hit it down the middle of the fairway, that’s great, but with the driver right now, the driver sucks,” he said after hitting four fairways, which was only two fewer than he found in the final round of the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, where he closed with 67 and won by six. Weird, right?

Skyrocket surprise: Phil Mickelson, 80.
Welp, this isn’t going to help the Ryder Cup bid. It’s one thing to shoot the highest score in the field and in your Open Championship career, but it’s another when the scoring average is hovering around the age for full Social Security benefits (70) and you’ve got one of only two snowmen in the 156-player field. And it’s still another when you fail to make a birdie doing it when you’re kind of known for your ability to light it up, even at 51. In his 115th major, Mickelson sits outside the top 100 for just the 10th time. But he is the PGA champion. Truthfully, that fact seems even more amazing given Thursday’s proceedings. For Phil, it was Royal St. Forgettable.

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By John Huggan
SANDWICH, England — It wasn’t quite the classic “game of two halves,” the phrase that doubles as one of the hoariest cliches in football. And it certainly wasn’t the equivalent of the 2010 Open’s second day, when, after a relatively calm morning, those playing in the afternoon were all but blown away. But, with a few noteworthy exceptions led by the afternoon 66s shot by former U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson and Benjamin Hebert, there can be no doubt that a morning tee-time in this 149th Open Championship at Royal St. George’s brought with it a significant advantage.

By close of play, just under 50 of the 156-man field had broken the par of 70, the average score for the day a fraction under 71. The easiest hole relative to par was the 547-yard par-5 14th, which played downwind and averaged just over 4.5. The most difficult hole was the 496-yard 15th, where the average score was just under 4.5.

Of those players in red figures, 34 hit drives off the first tee before noon. As is normally the case with U.K. courses located within touching distance of an ocean — and when the wind is blowing — the fairways and greens are prone to firming up as the day progresses. Generally speaking, this makes scoring — or at least scoring well — more difficult.

As the numbers indicate, that was indeed the case on day one of the game’s oldest major. Those asked to rise from their beds earlier than they might have ideally wished benefitted from the inconvenience.

“I would say if anything just a little bit of softness,” said Jordan Spieth of the course in the immediate aftermath of taking 65 shots to get round, the first of which was hit at 9:25 a.m. “I kind of got away with a couple tee shots in the first cut that maybe if it was firmer may have worked their way just into the fescue. It’s a course where you have so much undulation in the fairways that if it gets firmer it gets very bounce dependent.

“Yes, the wind is up, and the pins are on knobs and crowns,” he continued. “But they put a few pins in some really fun spots for us today. You could get at them in some bowls. If you hit some wedges you could feed it in. But that’s only a few of the holes. The rest of them, the pins are in some of the more difficult locations.”

Sergio Garcia, who shot 68 after teeing off at 10:31 a.m., was another beneficiary. Which is not to say he felt the course was playing anywhere close to easy.

“I’m actually quite impressed how good the scoring has been,” said the Spaniard. “Obviously the course, it’s a little bit softer because of the rain that we had, but it was quite windy out there. There were a lot of tough holes. There were a lot of holes that you needed to hit very good drives and good long irons into the greens. The guys are obviously playing great.”

Ah, but how did things compare with past Opens here at Royal St. George’s? Averages for each round in 1985 are unavailable, but the mean score for the week was 74.29. Eight years later, the average score on day four was 70.54. The week’s average was 71.56.

In 2003, the opening day saw that average soar to 76.50. The second round was just over a shot easier at 75.15, the third easier again at 72.57, before the final day saw an average of 72.88. Average for the week was an eye-watering 74.82.

In the most recent Open here, the first-round average of 72.03, almost a shot lower than today. Day two was harder, 72.97. Day three was the most difficult at 74.69. And the final round average was 73.60. For the week, the average was almost exactly 73.

Looking at the last four Opens, the figures hint at what we can expect over the coming days. At Royal Troon in 2016, 50 players broke par in the opening round. That number went down quickly though, to 20, 13 and 21 at the conclusion of subsequent rounds.

In 2017 at Royal Birkdale, 39 men broke par on day one; only eight men did the same 24 hours later.

Carnoustie in 2018 saw a different pattern emerge. Thirty-one players shot under par on day one; 38 did likewise on day two; then 43 did the same on day three. Clearly fed up with that nonsense, the R&A stiffened things up for the final round. That day, only 14 players broke par.

The bottom line? Don’t be fooled by anything we’ve seen today. Given the weather forecast, Royal St. George’s is going to get firmer and faster. And, likely as not, more difficult.

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