Jon Rahm called his record breaking third round 63 at Hoylake “the best round I’ve played on a links golf course ever”
He likened the feeling to his first round at Augusta National this year when he went on the win The Masters.
It was an extraordinary display of clinical ball striking and hot putting. He started the day at +2 and after 4 pars had birdies at 5 and 9 before he took apart the back nine.
A 14 ft birdie at 10 following by 11 and 12 where he muscled his ball out of thick rough to a 3 ft to hole for another birdie and then a lucky break at 16 before taking advantage of the par 5s at 15 and 18.
He said that everything was better today. He was holing more putts and he used the driver a lot. The weather was favourable and the difficult turn, holes 11-14 were playing downwind and therefore more accessible.
Today was one of those days where I felt invincible,” he said. “I’ve been very comfortable from the tee, so it’s easier to stay aggressive. I would highlight the (par) putt (from six feet) on eight, which was key. In those 20 minutes between the par on eight and the birdie on 10, everything changed.”
He described his 63 as “the best round I’ve played on a links golf course ever”.
After finishing before Harman and Tommy Fleetwood hit the links, he could not properly assess his final round chances, but he knew he’d put himself in position.
“We have to see how the rest of the day goes, but I did what I had to do to give myself options on Sunday,” he said.
“Yeah, it feels really good but it’s a lot of work to do tomorrow”.
If he were to win tomorrow he would be the first player to come from more than 12 shots behind after 36 holes.
When asked about his temperament he said “ I think I’m a lot more patient than most people believe. It’s just my frustration but I’m extremely positive on the golf course”.
Does he plan to do anything differently in the final round? “No. There’s nothing different between player that was there yesterday and the one today”.
“JT is going to be OK. JT is one of the most talented guys out here. He shot 69 at the TPC a couple of years ago in 40 hour winds and I always remind him of it…if JT put on that kind of display in those conditions yeah. We all go through bad patches. There’s not one golfer in the world who hasn’t”
So said Rory McIlroy last night after Justin Thomas departed the Championship at +11, after rounds of 82 and 71 with his place on the American Ryder Cup team in jeopardy.
If JT doesn’t automatically qualify for the team for the matches in Rome he’s not going to petition captain Zach Johnson for a spot.
His rounds here in Hoylake had 8 bogeys, 2 double bogeys and a snowman +1, an horrendous 9 Quadruple bogey on day 1. He’s missed the cut in 3 of 4 majors this year.
He was perplexed by his score on day one after he said he had hit some quality shots. But he admits that he’s making mistakes that he did as a junior golfer 20 years ago.
“I don’t know if it’s a focus thing or I’m just putting too much pressure on myself or what it is. I’m trying not to dwell on it”.
After shooting the 82, and despite the fact that links golf demands accuracy and restraint he decided to take out his driver.
He didn’t hold back or lay up as he had nothing to lose. And he turned in an impressive 71.
“I’m hitting a lot of good shots, I’m just making so many bonehead mistakes and crazy things are happening. But I’ll be fine”.
When asked if he will be coming back to England to watch Leeds United – the team he and Jordan Spieth have invested in – JT grinned.
“I’d like to. But I gotta figure out this sport first”.
A small controversy has blown up over Rory’s second shot out of the bunker on 18 on Thursday. He managed, through a contortionist act, to get the ball out for par.
The issue is whether his caddie, Harry Diamond, stood behind him as he took his stance, contravening Rule 10.2b(4) which says
“Once a player begins taking a stance for the stroke and until the stroke is made the player’s caddie must not deliberately stand on or close to an extension of the line of play behind the ball for any reason”
I have had a look at the broadcast for Thursday again and while the caddie is behind him for a moment, he moves away as Rory re-addresses his stance and then plays the shot. He was still adjusting his stance after the caddie stepped away. From what I saw the brief time that the caddie was behind him he was not directly behind his line of play he was well to the left of the shot. If the rule has been infringed, it would have been completely inadvertent and not deliberate.
This is petty nit picking, but social media has shown some comments from LIV supporters saying that if this had been Patrick Reed a storm would have erupted. I wonder why? It would have had nothing to do with certain LIV players being singled out, it would have been about their previous. This is just annoying and meant to distract Rory and undermine his serenity this week. It’s got no substance.
On Friday Xander Schueffele was caught in a controversy on the 6th hole when after hitting an impressive shot he appeared to mouth “six” to Cameron Smith.
This lead to R&A Chief od Staff David Rickman interviewing both players at Scorers after they finished their round. Rickman then said he was 100% sure that what Schauffele had said was “thanks”.
Schauffele’s caddie also told on course reporter Notah Begay that the club hit was actually a 5-iron.
If proved this would have been a violation of rule 10.2a giving advice to another player.
This follows the incodent at The Masters when Brooks Koepka’s caddie was thought to be he,ping Gary Woodland’s caddie by mouthing ‘five’ with Koepka seeming to signal the number with his hand.
Realistically, top caddie Craig Connolly says “It happens every day, multiple times a round. It happens in every professional tournament”.
This exceptional piece of writing from Michael Bamburger about the 2006 winner at Royal Liverpool, Tiger Woods.
Tiger’s Long and Winding Road
A return to Royal Liverpool is a chance to reflect on Woods’s greatness—and his absence
By Michael Bamberger July 21, 2023
HOYLAKE, England–Maybe it’s for the best that Tiger’s not here, at Royal Liverpool, where he won the 2006 British Open in such stirring style. He would not like the new par-3 17th hole, an uphill, into-the-wind 130-yard test with a table-top green. This can be said with certainty because as a course architect Woods liked options and as a man he has always been resistant to change, though he did make the move from the balata ball to a plastic one better than anyone. Woods is like everyone else. He likes things the way they were. The way they were when he was at his best.
Woods would be discreet in his criticism of this new 17th. Of course he would be. He might compare the RLGC’s NewHo (borrowing from the PGA Tour’s much-touted, Saudi-backed NewCo!)to the penultimate hole at TPC Sawgrass, another short par-3 where your ball must pitch on the green and stay on the green or you’re most likely making bogey or worse.
That kind of binary golf is cool for an entertainment known as golf-on-TV. Maybe it’s OK for resort play, where tourists on holiday don’t care (for one round, anyway) if their $8 golf ball is suddenly swimming with the fishes. But no golfer wants that thrill for their everyday play. And the beauty of these linksland courses on which these Opens are played is that they exist for everyday golfers. For the Open, the good people at the R&A push the tees back and that’s about it.
Tiger’s thing—one of his many things—was to watch as much of the golf telecasts as he could. You can imagine what he must have been thinking, watching Francesco Molinari play 17 on Thursday. In theory, the idea that a 130-yard hole could be the most difficult on the course (relative to par) is kind of cool, except you don’t play golf in a lab. Molinari, winner of the 2018 Open at Carnoustie while being chased by Woods, pitched the ball on the front part of the green. It was clipped and flighted. It was a shot that needed four more yards. The green’s severe false front repelled the ball and it spun back 20 yards off the green, into the yawning front bunker.
The so-called Italian Detective—he knows who did it and how it was done, all he has to do now is prove it!—made par only because he drew a clean lie and played a superb second shot, followed by a six-footer. Good golf shots come in groups of two.
Even if he was with his employee/mates—Mark Steinberg and Steve Williams and Rob McNamara and Butch Harmon (going back now)—Woods probably would have said close to nothing. To say anything is to admit defeat. The origin of it is what it is. It’s the same for everybody, it’s the same for everybody, it’s the same for everybody.
An interesting question is whether Brooks Koepka will be in uniform as a playing member of the U.S. Ryder Cup team in Italy in September. (Almost certainly.) A more interesting question is why Tiger Woods is not going to be on the team, as one of Zach Johnson’s assistant captains. Woods seems to be receding from public life more and more. He went to Los Angeles during the U.S. Open in June at the Los Angeles Country Club, but didn’t come to the course. His last sit-down press conference was at the Masters in April. He has offered no meaningful commentary on the proposed PGA Tour-LIV Golf partnership. He’s gone Hogan. He’s gone Garbo.
To a point. Earlier this week, Woods was honored by the Association of Golf Writers, the British and European version of the Golf Writers Association of America. Woods didn’t attend the AGW’s Tuesday night dinner, but he did offer comments by video and they were funny and moving and seemingly off-the-cuff, just as his superb remarks at his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame were last year.
Woods has made 22 British Open appearances. His first was in 1995, as an amateur, at the Old Course. His last—for now and who can say if there will be another one?—was last year, again at St. Andrews, when his first tee shot finished in a divot. He has won three Opens, in 2000 and 2005 at St. Andrews and his 2006 win, here at Royal Liverpool, aka Hoylake.
He told the writers’ group that “some of the greatest moments and greatest memories” of his career and his life have come at those 22 Opens. It brought to mind what Bob Jones once told the people of St. Andrews: “I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St Andrews and I would still have a rich, full life.”
Jones was in St. Andrews, wearing a suit, in a packed auditorium. Woods was staring into a camera, wearing a lime-green golf shirt, with a gray curtain behind him. There was something lonely and heartbreaking and poignant about it.
Who knows how this will go for Woods, here on out? Nobody. He will, tragically, not enjoy what Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, to speak of two other iconic American golfers, enjoyed, a long sunset, buoyed by a long marriage and a public life that was easy and natural and beneficial for all.
By all accounts, Woods is a committed father to his daughter, Sam, and son, Charlie. But the kids have their own busy lives, school and sports and friends and all the rest. Woods has his impressive foundation work, his design business, various other business ventures. He has a yacht, a plane, an estate, three things he certainly didn’t have while growing up.
Nor does he have the golfing dreams he had growing up. His career, what he did on the course, exceeded those dreams. What he has now is the rest of his life. He’s 47.
There was something about his play here in 2006. We all remember his reaction, falling into his caddie’s arms, and then his wife’s arms, when it was over. His father, Earl, had died 10 weeks earlier. Steve Williams and Elin Nordegren were pillars in his life then. Now they are not. What would he give to go back? Not even Woods can say.
But the thing that made the greatest impression was his play, the true greatness of it, the athleticism and intelligence. He called the week “probably the most gratifying” of all his Open weeks. His play had another dimension to it. It was forever. These Opens–they are forever. Golf’s oldest championship, and its best.
It has been very interesting to watch Shubhanka Sharma’s progress recently, a much tighter short game and increased swing speed, he is looking like the complete package with a swing that many admire. Thanks to Joy Chakravati for being so good at keeping us informed with everything Shubhanka is doing. It’s a long way since 2018 when he approached Mickelson an hour and a half before his tee time and was dismissed as a member of the press.. “Not right now, after the round”, at a time when Shubhanka was leading the tournament. Now in the tip five in the Championship everyone will learn his name. Happy Birthday for today.
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