HOYLAKE, England – At 50 years young, Stewart Cink knows there’s no correlation between a scorecard and a date of birth.
“I just have to look back a few years to Phil Mickelson winning the PGA. I think that was probably a more difficult course than this,” Cink said of Mickelson’s victory at the 2021 PGA Championship at 50 years old. “Watching him win it didn’t really surprise anybody. He’s been so good for so long.”
He could also revisit his own major moment at the 2009 Open Championship when he beat then-59-year-old Tom Watson in extra holes at Turnberry. Age at the game’s oldest championship is truly nothing more than a number.
“I’ve played a lot of these and experience matters here probably as much as anywhere else. Right up there with probably Augusta National,” said Cink, who opened with a 68 at Royal Liverpool for an early share of third place.
Full-field scores from the 151st Open Championship
But if Cink’s age is no surprise, his caddie might be. Heading into April’s RBC Heritage, Cink had missed five consecutive cuts and his wife, Lisa, suggested it might be time for a change. “She just kind of said, ‘If you want me to caddie, I’ll caddie. If you want something to change the scenery,’” he recalled.
In retrospect, Cink admits that he had difficulty adjusting after his son, Reagan, stopped caddying for him last fall.
“I was suffering from some post-Reagan that I didn’t really expect. It was going to be difficult for any caddie to fill in that role after Reagan because of that bond that we had out there,” Cink said. “How are you going to replace your son caddying? Well, my wife.”
Lisa Cink’s time on the bag was supposed to be a one-week experiment but even after Cink missed the cut at Hilton Head Island, S.C., he convinced his wife, who had caddied for him about dozen times before this year, to try the job full time.
“I’m a little bit more peaceful person out there with her caddying,” Cink said. “She just kind of understands the ebbs and flows and the way I tend to drift a little bit and she can pull me back into center a little bit more than somebody that doesn’t have that connection.”
Cink has needed every ounce of that peace this week, which started a day later than he’d hoped after his flight from the United States was canceled and he arrived in England on Tuesday. Although he played the previous two Opens at Hoylake in 2006 and ’14, he said he didn’t remember much from either championship.
He also doesn’t have the best record on links courses other than his victory in ’09 in Scotland, but Thursday was as stress-free a round as one could hope for at Hoylake with just a single shot (his approach to the 18th green) finding a bunker.
“It’s a regression thing. The more you hit into these bunkers you’re going to end up getting hosed big time,” said Cink, who posted just his fifth score in the 60s on Day 1 at The Open. “In my group, we had some backwards and sideways shots out of bunkers. Eventually, it’ll catch up with you.”
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