"We don't doctor rough."

Lawrence Donegan reports on Tiger's first practice round at Turnberry and files this observation about the setup:

That is exactly how it should be at the Open, and exactly what many expected of Turnberry, a terrific golf course whose absence from the championship rota for 15 years seems bizarre. The weather off the Irish Sea has the potential to wreak havoc but on the evidence of a blustery, occasionally sunny Sunday afternoon, the R&A appears to have produced to stern but sensible test. The fairways are broad, the greens fast (ish) and the rough – which has been talked up by many, Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington among them, as the closest thing to penury this side of San Quentin– is not as ridiculous as had perhaps been feared.

Make no mistake, it is wrist-breaking in places, but those places are a distance from the centre of the fairway – in part because the organisers took the decision three weeks ago to widen the semi-rough. If conditions are hard and bouncy, as they almost certainly will be, that will stop some balls disappearing off into the jungle.
"We have widened the cut sections of rough a little bit on each side. Six yards rather than the usual four and a half yards, which is what we had a little while ago," said Dawson. "It is very nasty off the fairway and off the shorter rough but the fairway and shorter rough is, I think, fairly generous. We don't want to get the reputation that the Open is about hacking out of rough because it isn't about that.

"We don't doctor rough. We take what we get naturally and leave the playing arena at a sensible level. If you spray it outside the playing arena here, it is lost ball; hack-out territory."

"I lost a couple of balls on Monday that weren't far off the fairway."

Tom English tells us about Rory McIlroy's big problem these days: the throttle on his new gun metal grey Ferrari F430. And there's Rory's shock at being the third favorite at 25-1 behind Tiger and Sergio. "Bonkers" he calls it.

But he also offers this Turnberry scouting report:

"I saw the golf course in two completely different winds, which is a really good thing. Some holes were playing a lot longer the second day and some were playing a lot shorter. It was really interesting to see how the course can change like that."

A lot of his time was spent gawping at the rough. Some if it is nightmarish, he says. It's like instant death in places. He left there on both days with a very clear thought in his head: be accurate off the tee or prepare for an early exit.

"You have to really, really drive the ball well. The rough being the way it is, the people who drive it well are going to have a chance and the people who don't hit many fairways are going to struggle. With the spring that we've had, we've had quite a lot of rain, but it's also been quite warm so the very bottom of the rough is very lush and very thick and long and it only becomes more wispy the higher up it gets. It can be very difficult to find your ball. I lost a couple of balls on Monday that weren't far off the fairway. There are certain holes where the rough is a lot worse on one side than the other. The ninth for example. You can miss it left all day at the ninth but if you go five yards right of the fairway you'll be doing well to find your ball."

Padraig Taking Career Inspiration From Howard Hughes **

Absolutely do not miss Karl MacGinty's setup and interview with Padraig Harrington about making swing changes after winning two straight majors.

Q: Are great sportsmen different to the rest of us? Can we only try and imagine what they, or you, do?

PH: It's complicated to explain what's going on. I'm trying to understand the whole process (of playing golf) so that I can control it. I wouldn't be able to accept performing without knowing why. I don't think I'd enjoy winning if I didn't know why I was winning. I think the ultimate satisfaction of winning is understanding how I got there. While I admire sporting achievement, I pay very little respect to somebody who wins without knowing why.

Q: Like the guy who smashes the balls up in pool and some go in?

PH: No. No. Actually it's the opposite. It would be the guy who gets in on the pool table; has the perfect cueing action and clears everything up but has no understanding of what he's doing.

Q: Who, for example?

PH: I'm not going to give you examples but I am all the time trying to figure out, do people understand what they're doing?

Q: Like Maradona?

PH: Yeah. I've very little time for wasted talent and very little time for the talent that has no understanding of why they do what they do. If somebody's best in the world at something and they can't explain in detail why they were there, I wouldn't be interested.

And here I thought most great athletes were successful because they didn't have a clue what made them so good!

Q: Can that be damaging?

PH: Howard Hughes. As a 14-year-old kid, he got his dad to buy him a sports car so he could pull it apart. He spent a month breaking it down bit-by-bit and then putting it all back together. Well, that's me with my golf game.

Howard also spent the last few years of his life locked up in the Desert Inn wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes.

Damaging? Oh you be the judge.

Update on 2009-07-11 04:15 by Geoff

**Lawrence Donegan talks to Padraig's teacher Bob Torrance about what the defending Open Champion is trying to do with his swing. Meanwhile, the tabloids are enjoying this one:

Turnberry Rough Crop Peaking In Time For Open!

John Huggan confirms Padraig Harrington's recent observation that it was sprouting. Oddly, my Scottish sources say there hasn't been an inordinate amount of rain in that time. Must be those balmy nights!

Huggan on the prospects of finally seeing some links golf after Loch Lomand and other green swampy slogs the last few months:

Any prospect of bouncy, seaside golf will have to wait until next week's Open at Turnberry, even if early reports on the length of the rough and the greenness of the Ayrshire resort's fairways offer little hope of balls spending as much time on the ground as they ideally should.

And...

Watch out for an almost endless stream of hybrids and long irons off too many of Turnberry's tees.

Sadly, all of the above will -- yet again -- reduce the field to playing a bastardized version of links golf, one where hack-out rough replaces the couple of inches of semi that is enough to promote both temptation and doubt in the minds of even the best players. If that is so, we are going to be treated to the depressing sight of a missed fairway being inevitably followed by a big heave-ho back into play then a wedge to the green from 90 yards or so. In other words, the U.S. Open all over again.

Come to think of it, maybe everyone should just have stayed in America after all.

Another DVR Alert: Nicklaus-Watson At Turnberry

I'm sure the ESPN on ABC On BBC telecast will feature the inevitable revisiting of Nicklaus-Watson at Turnberry, but this Monday night Golf Channel show sounds promising despite the presence of "award winning" journalists.

ORLANDO, Fla., July 6, 2009 – One of the most memorable showdowns in major championship history took place at the 1977 Open Championship at Turnberry, when Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson engaged in a historic 36-hole battle for the Claret Jug that became known as “The Duel in the Sun.”

When the 2009 Open Championship returns to Turnberry, Ayrshire, Scotland, next week, GOLF CHANNEL will chronicle the story of the duo’s epic battle in a special presentation, Duel in the Sun, airing Monday, July 13 at 9 p.m. ET. The half-hour special includes tournament footage from the original broadcast and features recent interviews with Nicklaus and Watson, third-round leader Roger Maltbie, 1977 U.S. Open Champion and third-place finisher Hubert Green, and several award-winning journalists.

Duel in the Sun will document the Nicklaus-Watson pairing in the final round at the 1977 Open Championship, where they separated themselves from the field. Watson, going for his second major of the year, birdied the 71st hole on Sunday to take the lead for the first time, ultimately finishing one shot ahead of Nicklaus at 12-under-par. Green, who finished 11 strokes back of Watson at 1-under-par, was the only other player to break par for the tournament.

Duel in the Sun will re-air Monday, July 13 at 9:30 p.m. ET and Tuesday, July 14 (Monday night) at midnight ET.

"It has been sobering in recent weeks to see confidence drain out of the golf game which won three Majors in 13 months"

Karl MacGinty offers a sobering Padraig Harrington asessment and though he calls it a "ludicrous" comparison to Ian Baker Finch's swing tinkering, is it really that far off?

Meanwhile Padraig offered this assessment of Turnberry in his website diary:

it was definitely a worthwhile trip as the course had changed dramatically since I had played it 6 weeks ago. The rough has grown substantially which now makes it a very tough course; there is definitely a premium for hitting fairways.

"It seems the days of preparing by visiting Irish courses are a thing of the past"

Phillip Reid with some details about Tiger's pre-Open Championship preparation:

It seems the days of preparing by visiting Irish courses are a thing of the past, though this probably has more to do with his increased family commitments.

Instead, Woods intends to travel to the Scottish links on Saturday to get acquainted with the course. But he won’t be waiting until then before practising the type of shots he believes will be required if he is to reclaim the Claret Jug he last won in 2006.

To that end, his coach, Hank Haney, has been summoned to Woods’ home in Florida. What type of shots would they work on?

“Just making sure that you can flight your ball and making sure you can manoeuvre it both ways efficiently, because over there you don’t know what kind of weather you’re going to get,” Woods said.

“You’re going to get years like we had at St Andrews where it’s perfect, or you can get like a Muirfield day or what they had last year at Birkdale. You just don’t know, and you have to be able to be confident in controlling your golf ball and manoeuvring it all around and feel like you can do it efficiently.”

Tail Of The WD Tape

At the end of Jeff Rude's story, Golfweek.com lists the Open Championship qualifiers in Texas, which included Davis Love. It's fun to see who tried, and also to note who threw in the towel after one round.

I couldn't find a listing of scores and WDs from Europe for the U.S. Open qualifying, just this story.

Britain Reeling From Jerry Kelly's Decision To Skip The Open

Well, European tour professional Alastair Forsyth is upset. And he's Scottish. Still...

I'm like reader Gene, wondering if the press will view this the same way Kenny Perry's choice was treated, or if Kelly gets a pass because he's a Wisconsin guy and not as highly ranked and playing as well as Perry was.

“Today’s professionals are bigger, stronger, fitter, have more technology at their command, and it’s very important that we keep our great links courses relevant to the modern-day professional"

Some day they'll look back and say, wow, the R&A changed courses to mask their regulatory incompetence. But surely they were discreet about it, right?

For Immediate Publication

THE R&A ANNOUNCES COURSE CHANGES AT TURNBERRY’S AILSA COURSE

21 APRIL 2009, Turnberry, Scotland: In advance of the 2009 Open Championship, Turnberry’s Ailsa Course has undergone a number of adjustments designed to ensure that, as one of Britain’s finest links, it continues to challenge modern professionals. The most extensive changes are on the 10th, 16th and 17th holes, though most have been enhanced in some way.

“Today’s professionals are bigger, stronger, fitter, have more technology at their command, and it’s very important that we keep our great links courses relevant to the modern-day professional,” explained The R&A’s Chief Executive, Peter Dawson. “We’ve been doing that at every Open venue, with Turnberry having had a considerable number of changes since the 1994 Open Championship.”

Thankfully, circa 2002 Major League Baseball owners never declared that the players were bigger, stronger, fitter with more technology at their command, therefore, proudly announcing that they extended the Green Monster skyward 40 feet and spent millions to alter their ballparks so that the lads can keep injecting their rear ends!

The 10th has been redesigned to bring the coastline into play and now requires at least a 200-yard carry over the rocks from a tee perched on an outcrop by the lighthouse. The fairway has been moved closer to the beach to tempt longer players to cut off more of the corner, and three new fairway bunkers force a decision to be made between safer tee-shot with a longer approach or a riskier, braver and more aggressive drive.

Significant changes have also taken place at the 16th and 17th. The shape of the 16th has been radically altered and it now dog-legs right from a re-positioned tee around newly-created dunes and hollows. 45 yards have been added along with a new bunker on the left of the fairway. The bunker, which used to guard the left side of the old fairway, now protects the right edge of the new one.

The realignment of the 16th has allowed a new back tee to be constructed on the 17th, extending the hole by 61 yards. A newly-constructed approach bunker, along with another to the front and left of the putting surface, adds difficulty to the second shot.

Including those on the 10th and 16th, a total of 23 bunkers have been added on holes 1, 3, 5, 8, 14 and 18, with two removed at the 3rd and 14th, making players think more about their course management strategy.

Uh no. They are intended to make players leave driver in their bag so you don't have to regulate equipment.

Though many Open Championship courses have upwards of 120 bunkers, Turnberry still only has 65, testament to the natural test that the landscape provides.

New tees have also been introduced at holes 3, 5, 7, 8, 14, and 18, extending the course to 7204 yards, 247 yards or 3.5% longer than when The Open was last played at Turnberry in 1994.

"Any tweaks are in the hands of the R&A."

In this Mike Aitken story on Turnberry closing November 1st to prepare for the Open Championship, he quotes LeisureCorp head man David Spencer on what changes to expect.

"We plan to increase the number of holes at Turnberry from 45 to 54 and to build a new golf academy with Taylor Made, which will still be supported by Colin Montgomerie. Our relationship with Greg Norman, an Open winner at Turnberry, is fairly well publicised.

"Several weeks ago, Greg, Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, and myself, walked the course. But Greg will not be doing any design changes to the Ailsa. Any tweaks are in the hands of the R&A. But as far as the Kintyre and the Arran are concerned, we would like to see Greg Norman involved."

Great to get that clarified. If you don't like the new look Turnberry, you know it wasn't our fault!