It might be wishful thinking, especially if the wind doesn’t blow off the North Sea, but I want to see the Old Grand Lady stand up to the big boys of professional golf in the 150th Open Championship.
Of all the 2022 tournaments, this is one that doesn’t need a cloud of potential embarrassment looming overhead.
But that’s going to be the case if the air is still. If it is, most likely, the Home of Golf is going to get ransacked. Right in front of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland, which was founded in 1754.
Repeat, if the wind doesn’t blow, the rumpled, timeworn ground will get lit up by bigger, faster, and stronger players teaming with technology to launch missiles and make the course play more to a par of 68 than its scorecard-written 72.
The Old Course at St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images
With little room to lengthen the course, players will be salivating. The most recent year the Old Course hosted the Open was 2015, when Zach Johnson shot 66-71-70-66 and won in a playoff in 2015. That year, the course played to just under 7,300 yards and featured seven par-4s measuring under 400 yards, including the 356-yard 18th, which Bryson DeChambeau might reach with a 3-iron this year.
In 2000, when Tiger Woods completed the career grand slam on the Old Course, he set the scoring record of 19 under with rounds of 67-66-67-69.
Unless the course is saved by the much-needed ally named wind, Tiger’s record is gone. Branden Grace holds the record for the lowest round in major championship history with a 62 (Royal Birkdale in 2017). Unless it blows, that’s gone.
What would the powers in the R&A and U.S. golf Association do if someone puts his signature to a 59? Heck, a 58? Or two or three players do. Picture DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and others unleashing lumber and driving multiple greens or at the least having flip wedges into the greens over and over and over again.
And the greens aren’t exactly menacing.
It could be a red-number blitz of humiliation. If so, perhaps it would be the proverbial final straw and significant action will be taken to limit distance. But after all these years, it would just be sad if it came at the expense of the Old Grand Lady. So let it blow, let it blow, let it blow.
—Steve DiMeglio
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Spanish