WEATHER ... OR NOT!
Major contenders on bad side of draw could be all wet at the Open
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Tiger Woods got ambushed at Muirfield when he was stalking the Grand Slam in 2012. Will Jordan Spieth suffer a similar fate as he goes for three majors in a row this week?
It’s the Open Championship weather: fickle, nasty and changeable. The luck of the draw alone can determine a player’s chances, and for Spieth, the forecast is coming up snake eyes for now.
He is scheduled to tee off early Thursday, late Friday. Rain is supposed to soak the course overnight Thursday and continue throughout the second round. A softened-up course could produce low morning scores. But as the day goes on, the winds are expected to increase up to 40 miles an hour at their peak.
It’s an eerily similar forecast to 2010 at St. Andrews when Rory McIlroy tied the major championship record with an opening 63, only to shoot 80 on Friday afternoon as gusts up to 50 mph suspended play several times.
Louis Oosthuizen, meanwhile, opened with a 65 in the benign conditions that lasted all day Thursday, then opened a fiveshot lead with a 67 after teeing off at 6:41 a.m. before the weather blew in.
It was a similar story for Woods in ’02 at Muirfield when he shot a third-round 81 in a virtual monsoon. His opening shot landed in the thick rough, and it didn’t get much better from there with a 42 on the front side.
Woods has called it the hardest conditions he’s ever played in.
“I put myself right there in contention after two rounds. I think I was about three or four back at the time, so I was playing great,” he said. “I was right there with a great chance going into the weekend. Just happened to catch it at the wrong time and then and I think I shot 65 on Sunday.”
It didn’t matter. By then he was out of the tournament.
Spieth has proven to be a good wind player. He shot a final-round 63 to win the Australian Open in high winds back in November. McIlroy, who finished 15 shots behind him, later tweeted, “You could give me another 100 rounds today at the Australian and I wouldn’t sniff 63.”
Still, that was on a Sunday, when all the leaders faced similar conditions. When half the field has an advantage, it’s hard to make that ground up, not that it’s bothering Spieth.
“If we wanted to get good weather we’d go play in California,” he said. “We come over here because we want to embrace the opportunity of handling these conditions. I understand that there’s a possibility for a lot of this tournament to be dependent on the draw the first two days, at least for a few strokes. It doesn’t mean you can’t make it up if you get the bad end of it, but it will be harder. Nobody is going to know what that is here because it changes hourly. Going into it, you have to be as positive as can be.”
Spieth isn’t the only big name in the Friday afternoon wave. It includes Woods, Dustin Johnson, Oosthuizen, Jason Day and Bubba Watson. Watson is a notoriously bad bad weather player. Remember his complaints about “water on the club face” at last year’s PGA Championship?
“Yeah, you just have to deal with it when it comes,” Watson said this week. “You can stress out about it now, I guess, I’m hoping I’m there Saturday to fight the winds. We had a wind delay in 2010 my first time here, missed the cut by one, so make one or two more putts, I’ll be able to compete on the weekend and have a chance to challenge a difficult golf course.”
So how do you deal with it? Rickie Fowler, who goes off in the preferable late Thursday-early Friday wave, says you have to suck it up.
“A lot of times in the States when wind is blowing that hard we’re seeking shelter,” he said. “Over here, it’s just hard wind and sideways rain sometimes.
“Looking back to Royal St. George’s (at the 2011 Open), the Saturday we had there was nasty. That was probably one of the best rounds I’ve played.
“I try to just go out and have fun with it. It may not be the warmest weather, the driest weather, but you’ve got a tee time, go tee it up and make the best of it.”
Others, besides Fowler, who could benefit from the draw are Justin Rose, Matt Kuchar, Henrik Stenson, Branden Grace, Paul Casey and Jim Furyk.