Troon’s wind and weather blow tea-time golfers off leaderboard
Troon, Scotland — Even in their dotage decades from now, the golfers who got cursed with afternoon tee times Friday at the 145th British Open might be able to tell of the unfairness of it all. They might end up exaggerating wind speeds and rain sheets, but the thing is, they won't have to by much.
As Phil Mickelson spent a second straight day atop the leaderboard at 10-under par, and Henrik Stenson blitzed to within one shot, that leaderboard itself spent much of the afternoon and early evening in stagnation. The people who post the numbers could have gone for fish and chips and nobody would have noticed.
Because the angry Scottish sky by the Irish Sea reserved its most zestful malevolence for mid-to-late afternoon - prime tea hours - all the top 10 scorers upon on that board had teed off between 6:46 a.m. and 9:47 a.m. Most everybody else has stories. Jason Day, the reigning PGA champion and No. 1 player (2:26 p.m. tee time), can tell of aiming “60 yards left of the pin to hit it” on at least two holes. Jordan Spieth, the two-time major winner and No. 3 player (2:04 p.m. tee time), might say even years on, “What we had on 16 tee when I looked up and you see the sheets of water moving sideways, legitimately sheets of water moving sideways, man, if I've played in that, it's been over here on a practice round day or I can't remember . . . I can't remember seeing the wind move a ball that much.”
Rickie Fowler, the No. 7 player (2:26 p.m. tee time), might tell of his short putt on No. 13: “It was maybe only three and a half, four feet, but the putt's supposed to break left and then it's gusting to the right. So you just kind of hit it and hope it kind of breaks a little if the wind holds it.” And Masters champion Danny Willett (2:26 p.m. tee time) might repeat his understatement, “Whenever your umbrella's horizontal trying to keep the rain off you, it's always going to be a tricky one.”
“Ridiculous,” was an adjective from the 2013 U.S. Open champion and No. 11-ranked player, Justin Rose (2:04 p.m. tee time), who said, “You know, great players, kind of doing their best to make the cut, kind of tells you it was tough out there for sure.” He also said, “You know when you see such a disparity between the draw and you see no name from this side of the draw (the afternoon side) popping up, it's just frustrating. That's really about it.”
During one late-afternoon Hades when things got really biblical, Day said, “I think I went through four gloves.”
Said Spieth, “You wish your score didn't matter when you play in this. You wish this was just a round with your buddies where you go into the clubhouse and have one or seven pints afterward.”
After the Thursday weather imported from San Diego, everyone agreed this qualifies as a British Open. They generally refused to complain, and Day even said, “It's great.” Spieth said, “Just tried to smile.”
When the 29-year-old American Billy Horschel, who shot a fine, 4-under-par 67 on Thursday, appeared at the tee on famed No. 8 “Postage Stamp” par-3, his score on the little mobile board still read a spritely 2-under par. From there, he made a triple bogey, two more double bogeys and five other bogeys for an 85.
For a spell, Steve Stricker deserved some sort of award, and might still. The 49-year-old spent part of the afternoon as the only late-tee player still lurking on the board. He arrived at No. 15 at 4-under par after 14 straight pars. A nice man, he hardly deserved the vengeance that would come.
One shot later, a search party hunted his ball in high, weedy foliage.
Seven more shots later, exiting that same hole, he was back at even par.
And to think that somewhere around midday, Mickelson had said, “I played kind of stress-free golf, you know,” and he didn't even mean to be funny. His 68 did include some wetness, and at one point on the BBC “Radio 5 Live” broadcast, one commenter said, “The town of Ayr has just disappeared from the horizon now.” Of Mickelson, Spieth said, “He's Phil Mickelson, you know.”
Spieth and some of the other five American players staying together in a nearby mansion - Fowler, Jimmy Walker, Justin Thomas - watched parts of the relatively placid early day on TV. “We kept on saying, ‘Those flags are not moving,'” Spieth said.
Those flags were raging later on. It left Spieth “playing shots that I don't even want to hit certain clubs because I can't get my mind right on actually hitting,” he said. “Like into 16. I can't get my mind to hit a full 8-iron there. I hit a rip 9-iron. I'm in the air and I'm thinking, Maybe it's coming down right next to the hole and (then) I've got 45, 50 feet (to the cup).”
He called it “a cold, heavy wind,” even conducting some funky meteorological math and concluding that a 20-to-25-mph wind here equates to a 40-mph wind in the United States.
Nobody had the heart to quibble.