TROON — If you can spare a prayer to the golfing gods this morning, ask if one simple wish might be granted for the final two rounds of the Open Championship.
Ask for the wind to blow.
I’m not talking about a gentle-but-steady breeze or even an orchestra of intermittent gusts. Those scenarios would be enjoyable, but also — for the most part — unmemorable.
What I’m asking for, in the year’s final major, is a symphony of chaos.
I want the Postage Stamp, Royal Troon’s venerable 8th hole, to continue to flummox, terrify and paralyze the world’s best golfers. I want to see them stand on the tee, with their shirt and pants rippling in the breeze, looking frozen with doubt.
It’s such a benign little hole without the wind. A flip wedge and an easy look at birdie. But when the wind whips, when it howls in either direction, it is as fun to watch as any hole in the world.
I spent much of my Friday posted up at the Postage Stamp, watching the frustration and torment play out as waves of players came through. At first, there wasn’t much to see, just a litany of wedges aimed at the middle of the green. I grabbed a few pints and enjoyed the Scottish sunshine. But as the afternoon progressed, something exquisite unfolded. The wind began to hum with the intensity of a rock concert.
The often-gentle 120-yard Par 3 — one of the shortest holes that professional golfers will play this season — started to show its teeth. Balls aimed at the left edge of the green floated into the right bunker. Balls hit at the middle of the green with cut spin never stood a chance. Players grimaced and grumbled and bitched and moaned. Joaquin Niemann came to the Postage Stamp playing some of the best golf at Troon, and left with an 8, his first, second, third and fourth shots finding a bunker.
It was electric.
“Oh god, what can I say?” Jon Rahm said, when I asked him how hard the 8th was playing on Friday when his group came through. “I think it’s just a testament to how great a design that hole is.”
Nothing in golf is as humbling as the wind, and nowhere is that more apparent than on a tiny hole like Troon’s 8th. It requires a thoughtful strategy, and a specific shot into a specific wind, instead of blunt force, which is why it tormented so many groups when the wind began to buck.
“It's just so hard to trust the wind,” Niemann said. “You've got to hit a wedge shot where you've got to take some off. You've got to hit a draw because the wind is pretty strong on the left, and also you don't want to be in that left bunker. I probably started too far right. I'm not used to hit draws when I take a wedge off. So in that aspect, it's a tough shot for me. I'm going to go try to practice that shot and try to get it dialed in for (Saturday).”
Niemann’s quintuple bogey was essentially like watching someone fall down a flight of stairs in slow motion. His first shot ended up in the right bunker, the most common miss of the day. (42 balls came to rest there on Friday.) But the real trouble began when he hit his second into the Coffin Bunker on the left side of the green.
“I had a great lie, and I thought I was going to be able to put out the shot,” Niemann said.
The ball rolled back to his feet.
“I ended up being in my own divot,” Niemann said.
From there, he made the prudent but painful decision to pitch out backward, back in the direction of the tee. But the genius of the Postage Stamp is there is no safe harbor there either. Neimann’s ball trickled into the front bunker.
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At this point, Niemann was in such a state, he experienced something most amateurs can relate to. He lost track of how many shots he’d hit.
“I was going to start counting what I did, but I just stopped and I didn't count,” Niemann said. “I just saw the scoreboard on the next hole, and whatever comes, it comes.”
Niemann wasn’t the only player to feel the Postage Stamp’s bite. Tom Kim visited all three bunkers that Niemann did, although he was able to salvage a double bogey with a nice up-and-down front bunker.
Rahm’s tee shot found the right bunker, but he proved there was an artful escape possible. He hit his bunker shot past the pin, toward the Coffin Bunker, but used the slope to bring the ball back toward the hole and give himself a makeable par putt. He had to take on the risk of hitting his second shot in the Coffin Bunker, but that’s part of what makes it a great hole.
“That coffin on the left, it makes its presence felt, and with that wind today, you know you have to start it left,” Rahm said. “But it was just very difficult to do. In my case, I tried to hold a pitching wedge and drove it towards that bunker, and the second it got past the grandstands, no chance. But if you don’t get really lucky in the bunker, to that pin, it's somewhat doable because you have that backstop, and that's what me and Bob MacIntyre did. You just hit it up high, and hopefully, it comes back close enough to make a putt.”
The hole actually played a bit harder on Thursday than it did on Friday, when 20 players made double. (Only seven made double or worse on Friday.) That was only because it played fairly benign for the early part of the day. For nearly three hours on Friday, no one made a single birdie, which got me thinking about something Scottie Scheffler said earlier in the week.
“I think No. 8 is great,” Scheffler said. “I get frustrated sometimes when the solution to distance is just making holes further and further, and then it only just encourages guys to try to hit the ball further and further and not worry as much about controlling your ball. No. 8 is a good little way to almost step back in time and control your ball a bit more. You don't have to make a par-3 230 yards to make it a great hole. It can be 120 yards.”
Scheffler continued: What are considered the best Par 3s in the world? It’s shorter holes like No. 12 at Augusta and No. 17 at Sawgrass.
“I think great little short holes like that are fun,” he said. “I think it's an underrated skill for guys nowadays to be able to control your ball, and I think it's something we need to encourage in our game, not just building golf courses longer and longer. You can make a short hole with a small green, and it's pretty dang tough.”
We had a strong and steady wind on Thursday, when the Postage Stamp was the 5th hardest hole on the course. It was so menacing, it even drove Frenchman Romain Langasque to withdraw. He hit his first shot 20 yards short of the green into the rough, tried to hit a pitch and grimaced in pain. He immediately took off his hat and went to shake hands with his playing partners. He’d had enough, withdrawing with a back injury.
It’s such a mental and physical test, that players can’t resist inventing scenarios to explain away their mistakes. When Justin Rose found the bunker on Thursday, he was convinced it was the fault of someone other than Justin Rose.
“Right in my backswing, someone must have dropped an umbrella or something,” he said. “I came out of the shot a little bit and with the wind off the left, you’re not going to get away with it on that particular hole. Once you’re in the bunker down there, anything can happen.”
But then the wind died down Friday morning, and it didn’t pick up until mid-afternoon. The caveat to the Postage Stamp is we need the wind to live up to its vicious potential. Scheffler’s point about short par threes is valid, but only if the elements play their role. A short hole without the wind is just a dart board. A short par three with bunkers everywhere and a swirl of wind is an adrenaline hit.
We only have two days remaining of major championship golf in 2024, and Saturday already looks disappointingly benign. The wind should pick up a bit when the players come to the Postage Stamp, and we should get a little rain as well, but Sunday has the potential for 15 to 20 mph gusts.
All we can do is ask for the golfing gods to be ruthless.
Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up
Email him at kvv@nolayingup.com
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