Leaderboard lists 39 within six shots, all with chance
Woods is in mix, seeking first major in decade
ICARNOUSTIE, Scotland n plumbing the bottomless mystery of how one person can win four out of the 15 golf majors played in one stretch of time, then zero out of the ensuing 14, that person, Rory McIlroy, proposed an explanation earlier this week: The world keeps churning out highbrow talent. The damned world. “Even this week, there’s 156 guys in the field, and there’s probably over half of them that have a realistic chance of winning this golf tournament,” he said. “Like, I didn’t play in the previous eras, but I don’t think there were that many.”
The 147th British Open leader board reflects precisely this. With 28 players under par after two rounds, and 39 within six shots of the lead shared by Americans Zach Johnson and Kevin Kisner at 6-under, it feels like multitudes contend and wagering is a lousy idea, however fancied in this land.
The group of 39 includes a Xander (Schauffele) and a Zander (Lombard), the latter a 23-year-old South African with one previous major participation in his life, yet who briefly held a share of the lead Friday evening before two bogeys, and said: “Yeah, it was pretty cool. I sort of glanced at the scoreboard every now and then. Didn’t think much of it.”
These people include Johnson but not Dustin Johnson, the
No. 1-ranked player who missed the cut badly at 6 over, on a day when Zach Johnson, whose two major wins include the 2015 Open at St. Andrews, said: “I mean, I’ve been called ‘Dustin’ many times. I doubt he’s been called ‘Zach’ that many times. … Maybe some people do
assume, when they see the name up there, that it’s Dustin. How many tournaments has he won, 20?” (Technically, 18.) What about that guy who shot 63 on the Sunday of the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills for a second straight top-five U.S. Open finish? He seemed hot.
That guy is England’s Tommy Fleetwood and he’s here, too, one shot off the lead after his heavenly 65 in the Friday morning rain, with his smashing long locks and his fondness for Scotland based on its beauty and its fondness for dogs, “how doggy-friendly it is,” he said. As to how a person shoots 72 in the sunlight and then 65 in the downpour, he said of this strange sport, “Just a golf thing, I think.”
Of course, the burgeoning group would have McIlroy himself, having followed his opening 69 with another on the par-71 course to sit at 4 under and two shots behind. He’s on a mission of aggression after what he viewed as troubling caution at Augusta and Shinnecock.
“Sunday at Augusta was a big learning curve again for me,” he said, “because, even if I hadn’t won that tournament but I went down swinging and aggressive and committing to every shot, I would have walked away a lot happier. So I’m committed to making sure, even if I don’t play my best golf and don’t shoot the scores I want, I’m going to go down swinging, and I’m going to go down giving it my best.”
Then, before you get to the guys six shots off the lead, who include Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at even par, there’s a three-time major winner, the defending champion Jordan Spieth, who at 3 under feels highly confident and freshly boffo about his putting, of which he said, “Yeah, I made a change even from yesterday to today on the practice green that allowed my arms to do more of the work, which is what I’m looking to do.”
It’s bizarre, but it’s a very good living. If the winner here is to come from among those who have come close enough before to induce the kind of horrid suffering at which golf specializes, then there are those, too. Among the five people at 4 under is Matt Kuchar, whose normally sunny countenance could not hide its crestfallenness last year as runner-up to Spieth.
Asked if that experience might help, he said: “I don’t know exactly how to use it. I know that I’m playing well at the moment.”
At 3 under is Rickie Fowler, with his eight top-five finishes in major tournaments, of which he said: “I would say it just continues to feel more and more comfortable. Just like anything, the more you do something over and over, it starts to feel like routine in a way, but in a good way.”
And up in the lead is Kisner, 34 and just getting going at this kind of contending, wading into the thickness last August when he led the PGA Championship after three rounds. He’s the only player here to visit the rare air of 8 under par, and he left that perch only on No. 18, which he double-bogeyed when he went into the Barry Burn, the rivulet of water that meanders through this region while rudely, inconveniently deciding to do part of its meandering through a major golf course.
“I had 160” to the pin, Kisner said of his double. “So I only had 150 to carry the burn. With an 8-iron thinking it would come out pretty quickly, just making sure it wouldn’t turn my club over to the left, but it just came out like a high flop shot to the right. It was weird. I don’t know if it caught something or what happened. You never know out of the grass. It was in a different grass than usual. It was wet, green grass instead of the brown grass.”
In fact, the world is so lavish with its tiptop golfers that South Africa has produced three of the top 17 here, men ages 28, 23 and 25: Erik Van Rooyen and Lombard at 4 under and Brandon Stone at 2 under after knowing world-famous countryman Ernie Els literally all his life.
“My dad was a professional golfer in South Africa,” Stone said, “and they turned pro around the same time. When I was in nappies running around the clubhouse, he used to grab me every now and then and give me a chocolate bar or something like that. So the relationship is quite strong.”
So relentless is the world nowadays, it produces even contenders Ernie Els used to grab in nappies.