FWIW to anyone. I walked the course yesterday. Its been crazy hot here for weeks and that wont change before play starts. The course is baked which is great to see and very different from last two visits here. Irons off the tee are travelling a long way and along with fairway woods will be a big play this week. Was good to see a number of the guys that missed the cut at the Scottish out.
Rough is tiered. First cut fine, 2nd wispy and whilst ok will draw some not great lies but playable. 3rd has some real thick spots and in and around dunes/ gorse etc will definitely come into play.
Distance whilst never irrelevent is as close to being so as you will see as course is playing so firm. Greens are pretty flat and wont be difficult but plenty run off areas. Played Kingsbarns (Dunhill Rota)recently and hugely different to there greens wise. Massive undulations on a large number of greens.
Very fair test, all in front of you. Should be a great week.
Great insight!
With the mix of Scottie MC, Rory course fit, and the overall course fit it is shaping up to be a wide-open Major, at least relative to the baseline of the Scottie era.
Surprised that Matt Fitz isn’t popping more. I was not expecting him to be below Tommy. Interesting they have a 0.15 difference in ‘country’ - is this being counted as England or UK generally?
No course fit adjustment for accuracy seems strange. Im obviously missing something … anyone advise what?
Do you think there should be a premium on accuracy this week?
Accuracy and distance are pretty strongly (negatively) correlated, so the fact that distance is heavily de-emphasized this week means most accurate players will be getting a boost.
As for why accuracy specifically isn’t getting a boost… the past data at Birkdale seems to indicate it was pretty average in terms of predicting performance. I know you said it would be more firm this week than past Opens here, but I’m not sure how I would expect that to impact the importance of driving accuracy.
Open venues in general, with pot bunkers that can be pretty random in terms of which tee shots find them, and a lot of patchiness with the rough, tend to devalue accuracy.
Thats fair, and certainly makes sense. Thanks