We say hello quite often in women’s major championship golf. Especially of late.

Comb through the past 22 women's major championships (a span that goes back to the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine in 2019) and you’ll see 21 different winners and a staggering 17 first-time major winners.

Only Minjee Lee has won multiple majors in this timeframe. And this theme of new champions rings especially true at the Women’s Open, which hasn’t seen a two-time champion in over a decade, since Jiyai Shin won her second Women’s Open in 2012 at Royal Liverpool.

Fittingly, for the first time, Walton Heath will host a Women’s Open. With a lot of newer faces looming at the top of recent LPGA leaderboards, it provides one last chance for a player to break through in a major way during the 2023 season.

But only a handful of names truly stand out – and with most of them under the age of 25, it feels like the top of women’s golf has a youth uprising on its hands. The door is wide open for these five “rising stars,” any of whom could very easily establish another profound introduction to the golf world this week.

Rose Zhang’s professional career is all of two months old, and already she’s shown she is a dynamic, magnetic presence. When you combine the historic finish to her amateur career with a red-hot start to her professional one, she’s been the talk of the town this season. A superb run in the majors has been an enormous part of it: T8, T9, T9.


That’s not been without some growing pains along the way, but Zhang finished her third major of the season with a balanced perspective. “I feel like I'm on the right track in my mental space and navigating the entire tour life,” she said after her final round in the Evian Championship.

“I still feel like I have so much more improvement ahead of me which makes me excited for the learning curve and the growth development I'll have later on.”


For a player who is accustomed to coming out on top more often than not, the adjustment in competition has been particularly steady. Her third start at the Women’s Open (one made cut, T28 and Low Am last year at Muirfield) should show it. But the Women’s Open hasn’t been kind to Americans of late. The last time an American won was 2014, when Mo Martin captured the title at Royal Birkdale.

We’ve seen one former top-ranked amateur take her first major title this season in Celine Boutier – will Maguire become the next? There have been a few close calls in her career, but Maguire has often struggled to convert in big moments. Her most recent attempt at the Women’s Open in 2022 included a last-minute charge, where a final round 66 merited her a T4 finish.

Recency doesn’t entirely favor Maguire’s major championship record, but her overall consistency throughout the 2023 season shows a ton of promise — five top 10s including a win under her belt at the Meijer LPGA Classic. Something has to give eventually – and it starts with putting together four big rounds of golf. She came close at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship before a disappointing 74 on Sunday. This title, especially, would mean a ton to Leona and the whole country of Ireland.

International success on the pro circuit has come to Linn Grant easily – and she took little time to do the same in the United States. In only her third pro start stateside, she assembled a dominant win at the Dana Open and hasn’t missed a cut all year in any event she’s played.


“I'd been playing just in Europe for the past two years or so, I felt that I had the game to win on the LPGA, but it's always that you have to get over this stem of actually doing it,” she said. Grant has proved she can hang with the best, and with the bulk of her professional success taking place in Europe (she’s got five LET wins under her belt), it should be a pretty comfortable week at Walton Heath. Linn nabbed a T-19 last year at Muirfield in her first Women’s Open start as a professional.

Furue’s breakout on the LPGA occurred at a links course when she won the Scottish Open by three shots over Celine Boutier in 2022, her rookie year on tour. Her game has since been exempt from any kind of sophomore slump: She ranks 8th this season in driving distance and has collected three top-5s and two top-10s in majors this season.

While she didn’t recapture the same glory at the Scottish Open as the defending champion, Furue brings a high level of overall momentum this week that’s hard to overlook.

I’d be remiss to leave Maja Stark out of this discussion, who we’ve seen in contention at majors as early as 2020 when she finished the US Open T13 as an amateur. A T9 at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open proves she can compete on the biggest stages and best courses, and like Grant,  the bulk of her professional success has occurred in Europe (six LET wins in just two years). It’s hard not to imagine Stark in contention this week. She enters the final major of the season on a particularly high note, having finished T4 at the Scottish Open last week.

Don’t count out this exceptionally talented group – even if a major championship trophy may be missing from their collection. Their experiences in this event, though few, are valid, and a new venue serves as a new proving ground for another step in parity among the champions in the game.

The Women’s Open: Five star players who could claim their first major

Millions of people around the world can answer that question with a resounding yes. Myself included. But when I brought up going to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour on a somewhat whim, some of my closest friends and family were different levels of puzzled.


I understood; Taylor Swift is a culturally polarizing figure. Between calling out former boyfriends and industry rivals in her music and taking a stand on various political issues, Swift’s voice has often been a point of contention for many people. There’s hardly any neutrality in the discussion – you’re either a Swiftie to some degree, or you don’t like her at all. The former group usually offers a quick justification for it, as it’s not always obvious which kind of Swiftie you’re talking to. After all, they remain the only fanbase to have crashed Ticketmaster and force an investigation from the Department of Justice.

I’ve also never been too open about my Taylor Swift fandom. I really fought it for a long time. I fittingly remember sitting in the back of a pickup truck when I heard “Our Song” for the first time, one of the lead singles from Taylor’s self-titled debut album. I was a middle schooler when her follow-up album “Fearless”

had released, and was deep into a classic rock phase. When my family hosted its annual Christmas Eve get-together, my older cousin was raving about

“Fearless.” I had spent my whole childhood dying to be as cool as her, so I quietly downloaded “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” onto my iPod nano in the following days. 

My earbuds kept the secret well. With every year into my teens, the only ones I liked grew into a pretty big playlist. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was a striking relatability in everything Taylor said, whether it was about crushes, coming of age or empowerment. Of course, liking Taylor Swift was “basic,” and that was the last thing I wanted to be.


Then I turned 20. On the verge of releasing “Reputation

” Taylor Swift was hard to ignore, but my fandom became even harder to ignore. That summer, I had a chance encounter with someone who felt like he was straight out of a fairytale. Indeed, I was “Enchanted” to meet him – inspired by the “Speak Now”

classic – and the song became my most played on my Spotify that year. I’d blast it alone in my car, screaming every word to the studio version and the live versions – entertaining myself with every possibility, hanging onto every word.


But that’s her superpower: the kind of songwriting that allows the artist and listener to feel every verse, every chorus, every bridge together. You both have the floor. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is encouraged. That kind of space is tough to find – but it was a tougher space for Taylor to break into. For generations, the emotions of men in entertainment have always been reflected as more valuable, pensive and profound. The emotions of women have always been ridiculed and dismissed – and in a powerful interview 

 Taylor perfectly summarized the double standard:


"A man does something, it's 'strategic'; a woman does the same thing, it's 'calculated.' A man is allowed to 'react'; a woman can only 'overreact.' It goes on and on and on. A man does something? 'Confident and bold.' A woman does it the same way, and she's 'smug.' A man 'stands up for himself'; a woman 'throws a temper tantrum.'”


The Eras Tour is not your average tour. In 17 years, Swift has assembled one of the most iconic catalogs in recent pop history. She became the first and only woman solo artist to win a GRAMMY for Album of the Year three times (“Fearless”, “1989”, “Folklore”). She’s got 12 of those, to be exact. Eras marks a celebration of that long-spanning, collective “dear diary.”


I’ve been to a lot of concerts, but I’ve never been part of an audience as engaged or consistent. Before you walk into the stadium, there’s an unspoken dress code you must abide by. “Which era are you going as?” my Taylor Swift-loving friend asked. She had planned an ode to Swift’s debut. I considered going against it, nauseated every time I remembered how much I paid for a ticket (still hurts). I managed to throw together a “Reputation” influenced outfit, which felt appropriate given that was my gateway album. But my outfit wasn’t complete. Upon arrival, each concertgoer is given a color-changing light-up bracelet that corresponds to the given era’s performance (Purple for “Speak Now,” red for “Red” – you get it).

But the flashing lights only embellish the theme. At the Eras Tour, femininity has the stage – the microphone is her sword, and at times, her guitar becomes her shield. The entire stage feels like a fortress, with vivid colorful explosions timed to every melody. Tapestries, dancers, and appropriate backgrounds, from cityscapes to forests surround her. Even in her costume changes, there is hardly ever “down” time – donned in sparkly bodysuits, snarky tee-shirts, and Met-Gala-worthy gowns.

Throughout her entire career, Swift has championed every part of wearing your heart on your sleeve – and it doesn’t end in the studio. Lyrics like 

Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man 

can coexist. Built around the 44-song setlist, Swift gave her all for each era, paying tribute with a handful of songs from most of the albums in her catalog – even the mega hits she could probably do without hearing again.

Speaking of, I’ve got quite an unpopular opinion: I do not like “All Too Well.” And while I don’t think Taylor has a “bad” album, it doesn’t help that “Red” is among my least favorites, which is a take that will have me booed and tomatoed into oblivion. It’s a beautifully written song, but I’ve got no other explanation for it aside from the fact that it never quite resonated with me. It might have something to do with the fact that the “Red” era just happened to coincide with when I fought my Taylor Swift fandom the hardest, but even in retrospect, it just doesn’t hit the same way as her other ballads.


So when Taylor closed out the “Red” era with the ten-minute version, I sat down. Not in objection – but I just knew it wasn’t my moment. The forcefield of red that had illuminated the stadium for the past 20 minutes suddenly felt the strongest it had been all night. With her guitar in hand, Swift poured every part of herself into an ode to what she claimed was the most tumultuous part of her life. Serious or not, it felt like the fans all around me who sang with just as much – if not more passion than Swift – felt the same. I still have 

And you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest 

etched in my brain, not from annoyance, but simply awe. The command she had over 68,517 people with a song she wrote about one of many heartbreaks was among the most powerful things I’d ever seen.

It was OK that I didn’t feel the same. That’s the beauty of the Eras Tour – there is a Taylor Swift for everyone, and that’s respected. I got my moment during “Enchanted” and paid tribute to my younger, more naive self. Based on the way I screamed every word, any onlooker might have assumed it was a song applicable to the present.

But I wasn’t alone. I’ve never had to be alone in any part of this, really – I chose to be. Taylor was there when I needed her, and she was there for my friends, too. It’s a collective journal on display, in a life that feels more disconnected than ever. Her music has withstood the death of monoculture and most generational gaps, where thorough discussions of song album theories and sing-alongs between teens and middle-aged women are totally normal.

She cuts even deeper. In the time my friends and I spend, when we’re too afraid to bare our souls to each other for the umpteenth time about the same anxieties, Taylor fills the silence between the road trips, dinners and trips to the bar. Without a single original word, it’s brought us closer. It was that night, at the Eras Tour, that I finally realized – all along, there was an invisible string tying me to Taylor.

The Eras Tour: How I finally embraced being a Swiftie

HOYLAKE — When Brian Harman arrived at Royal Liverpool’s opening hole Sunday, he was still a bundle of nerves. Rory McIlroy was making a move up the leaderboard, Tommy Fleetwood and Jon Rahm were lingering, and a light rain had begun to fall. He’d never been particularly good in the rain, and now he was facing the biggest test of his golfing life. When the official from the R&A announced his name, the majority of the crowd offered up polite applause, but there was also a distinct undercurrent of booing.


Harman stood over the ball and wagged his driver. Two times. Four times. Seven times. Ten times. Finally — mercifully — he pulled the club back and took an aggressive lash at the ball. It had barely left the clubface when a small choir of jeers erupted.


Harman smiled. He had heard all of it, and as he walked after his ball, he knew it was exactly what he needed.


“If they wanted me to not play well, they should have been really nice to me,” Harman said.


Harman has always thrived on people’s doubts, which is how you survive as a professional golfer when you’re 5-foot-7 and 155 pounds. It will be harder to doubt him now, considering he put on a performance for the ages, winning the 151st Open Championship by six strokes.


Since 1913, only two players have won the Open by bigger margins — Tiger Woods by eight strokes in 2000, and Louis Oosthuizen in 2010 — which feels like stunning company for Harman to keep, especially considering prior to this week he hadn’t won in six years. But anyone who watched him this week would find it fitting. When Harman walked off the 18th green five hours later, he crossed paths with Sepp Straka, a fellow University of Georgia alum. Straka bear-hugged Harman and looked him up and down.

“Man, that was Tiger Woods stuff out there,” he said.


Harman, to be fair to his doubters, is not someone anyone was predicting would run away from the field this week. If, on Monday, you had drawn up a list of players capable of winning The Open by six shots, it’s hard to conceptualize how many players would have been ahead of Harman. Even as the 28th-ranked player in the world, fifty seems like a reasonable estimate. Though Harman was a stellar amateur growing up in Savannah, Georgia — winning the U.S. Junior Amateur in 2003 — wins have been harder to come by as a professional. He has been consistently good, but infrequently great, winning just twice in his career.


“I've always had a self-belief that I could do something like this,” Harman said. “It's just when it takes so much time, it's hard not to let your mind falter, like maybe I'm not winning again. I'm 36 years old. Game is getting younger. All these young guys coming out hit it a mile, and they're all ready to win. Like when is it going to be my turn again? It's been hard to deal with.”

Something clicked, however, for Harman a month ago. He was digging around in his barn when he spotted a putting mirror he’d picked up somewhere at a PGA Tour event. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d used it, but he decided to lay it down and tinker with his stroke.

“I was just kind of cutting my putts too much,” Harman said. “I spent a lot of time just feeling the ball, almost hitting like a baby draw with my putter, and it's been really, really good the last month or so.”

At Royal Liverpool, it felt like every time Harman looked at a putt he needed to make, he poured it right in the heart. For the week, he only hit 106 putts, the lowest number for an Open Champion in the last 20 years.

“Unbelievably calm,” said Harman’s caddie Scott Tway, when asked to describe what he saw from his player. There were a couple of moments, early in the day when he had a chance to kind of lose his patience, lose his composure. He responded every time, you know? Never got upset or impatient.”

Harman said during Saturday’s round, when he made a bogey on the 5th hole, his mind briefly started to waver. Doubt began to swirl. As he walked to the 6th tee, a fan leaned in from the rope line and offered up a taunt that he knew Harman could hear.

Harman, you don’t have the stones for this.

“That helped a lot,” Harman said. “It snapped me back into ‘I’m good enough to do this. I’m going to do this. I’m going to go through my process and the next shot is going to be good.’ ”

Harman said he also tried to think about something Georgia Bulldogs football coach Kirby Smart had said: “I’m not going to be hunted. I’m going to hunt.”

That seemed particularly apt after the 5th hole, where Harman made a frustrating bogey after his drive found a gorse bush and he had to take a drop, then couldn’t get up and down from in front of the green. He stood at 11-under, and for a few moments, it felt like there might be content unfolding instead of a coronation. Rahm had just made a birdie to get to 7-under, and Harman could hear the roars from the crowd up ahead.


His tee shot into the 6th hole, a 194-yard par 3, was as piercing as an arrow, a dart with a 5-iron that slashed through the raindrops and landed 13 feet from the flag. Harman’s birdie putt was so pure, he was walking it in by the time it reached the hole, and suddenly the margin was five again. When he followed it up with a birdie on the 7th, rolling in a 23-footer to stretch the lead to six, he’d essentially slammed the door. No one seriously threatened again.

“There were fleeting thoughts [of holding the Claret Jug] throughout the day, but I told myself I wasn't going to let any of that come into my brain,” Harman said. “So any time it came, I just thought of something else. I really honestly didn't think about winning until I had the ball on the green on 18.”

Harman casting himself as the hunter instead of the hunted this week felt like a fitting metaphor considering how baffled the non-American press seemed by his reveal that one of his main hobbies, when he isn’t playing golf, is hunting. When Harman shared tales of how he learned to skin a deer when he was 8 years old, and how he’d killed a turkey and a pig on his farm after the Masters, he woke up to headlines in the British tabloids referring to him as “The Butcher of Hoylake.”

Harman had to explain, multiple times, at various press conferences this week that he wasn’t the boorish American redneck they were painting him out to be. He wasn’t going to drink animal blood out of the Claret Jug — “Guinness,” he clarified — or buy a massive rifle with his winnings. In fact, he didn’t even hunt with guns; he hunts with a bow and arrow, and he certainly didn’t hunt rare animals so he could mount them on his walls. He hunts because he likes to know where his food came from.

The English press still seemed bewildered. From what distance was he most deadly?

“Well, you wouldn’t want to be standing in front of me,” Harman said. “I’m good to about 80 yards, but I don’t take a shot past 40.”

That explains your short game, a reporter quipped.

“Yeah, I’ve got a good pair of hands,” Harman said.

As much as he enjoys hunting, Harman said, he was more interested in getting home to Georgia in the next week and taking a spin on his new tractor, just spending a day away from his phone, cutting grass on his hunting ranch. He might even bring the Claret Jug out with him, he admitted, and just lose himself in the spoils of work.

When asked how much he’d spent on the tractor — an orange, 105-horse-powered Kubota — Harman came close to blushing.

“I haven’t told my wife yet how much I spent on it,” Harman said.

There will be plenty of spoils to come, and perhaps a few life changes, but not as many as you might expect.

“If I know Brian like I think I do, I don't think it's going to change him as a person,” said Rory McIlroy, who finished T-6, his 20th top-10 in a major since 2014. “There might be a few more demands on his time, but apart from that, I think it'll be pretty much the same.”


It will, however, almost certainly earn Harman a spot on the American Ryder Cup team, which, by the way, could certainly use a player who putts well on European soil.

“I think I've got a selection of riches,” said U.S. Captain Zach Johnson. “More positives than anything. The state of American golf is great.”

After Harman rolled in his final putt on 18, he shared a lengthy hug with Tway, then made his way toward scoring to make things official. Tway carried his bag, but Harman wouldn’t hand over his putter. He carried with him as he wove his way through the crowd of R&A officials and marshals and media that engulfed him.

The hunter didn’t want to put down his bow quite yet. It had been so good to him all week, he wanted to cradle it in his arms just a bit longer.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up

Brian Harman: The Hunter Captures Glory

HOYLAKE — What would you think about, trying to fall asleep Saturday night with a five-shot lead in the Open Championship, if you were Brian Harman?

Would you wrestle with the weight of the moment, your anxiety going to battle with your earnest anticipation?


Or would you lean into what was possible, conjuring up blurry images of the Claret Jug and all that it would mean to wrap your arms around it?

Golf is different from other sports in countless ways, but one of its best quirks is the psychological examination it conducts at a major the Saturday night before its final test. You cannot fast forward the hours that exist between the moment the last putt of the third round drops and the moment you can put a tee in the ground again. You have to sit and ponder what awaits, and try not to overthink as you toss and turn in a strange bed.

"Anyone who has a lead has to sleep on it," Tiger Woods said during the 1999 Open Championship 

when asked if anyone could beat Jean Van de Velde,

 who went into Sunday leading by five shots. “That's not easy to do. When I won the Masters in '97, it wasn't exactly an easy night's sleep, and I had a nine-shot lead. Anything can happen, and this golf course is very penal. He has to play a solid round again.''

I wanted to know how Harman might wrestle with the conundrum, so I asked him Saturday night what a good night’s sleep might look like, especially when you’re trying to win your first major. He did not hesitate.

“Hopefully about 10 hours worth,” he said.

Harman is not an effusive character. He does not seek out attention, or wax poetic about the importance of golf or his place within the game. But he has been dreaming about winning a major championship since he was a little boy growing up in Savannah, Georgia. He knows he will not be immune to big-picture thoughts when his head hits the pillow Saturday.

“I imagine the thoughts come and go,” Harman said, “so we'll do our best and sleep as much as we can.”

To sleep on a lead at a major is the closest thing we have in golf to a blessing and curse. It can rattle even the most seasoned competitors, as Woods revealed.

At the 2017 Open Championship, Jordan Spieth elected to address the matter head-on, hoping that he’d learned a few things from past experiences at the Masters, including the lead he blew in 2016.

“It’s a different feeling, and it’s one that’s harder to sleep with,” Spieth said when asked about the differences between leading and chasing. “You feel like you almost have to change the way you do things. You almost kind of see the finish line. You control your own destiny. Sometimes that can be a big thing on your mind. It’s a little bit tougher to sleep.”

It’s extremely likely that Harman wins the 2023 Open Championship on Sunday, that he shrugs off whatever nerves the moment brings, regardless of how he sleeps Saturday. But, just as a thought exercise, let’s imagine how it might go another way. What if Harman can’t shut his brain off, and he finds himself staring at the ceiling, waiting for the hours to pass? Sleep deprivation isn’t just a mental obstacle, if your brain doesn’t get enough sleep, it can lead to exhaustion, slowed motor function and issues with coordination.

Ernie Els told Golfweek in 2016 that every golfer, no matter how accomplished they are, feels restless trying to sleep on a lead.

“You need good nerves, and you need good confidence in yourself,” 

 “I always try to get off to a solid start. If I can hit a solid drive, solid second, solid putt – if it goes in or not, solid stuff – and then I’m fine. Then I’m in the battle and I’m fine. You have to get all those thoughts settled, and if you make a screwup after that, you can come back.

“But you get off to a shaky start, all of a sudden you’re not hitting the ball as well as you did the first three days, and stuff gets into your head. You think about swing and so on. You need a good game plan, good self-confidence, and when you get into it, you should try to make your lead bigger and bigger and bigger.”

found himself tied for the lead after the third round at the Masters with Ben Crenshaw,

 and he was so giddy about the possibility of winning, he spent Saturday night entertaining friends and family at his rental house. He had trouble winding down as he went to bed. He shot 76 on Sunday and fell to 10th place.

“I really enjoyed Saturday evening,” Henniger told GolfWRX in 2018. “I liked the attention. It was part of my make up, and part of the joy to have people interested in your life, your game, your joy and your passion. I probably didn’t deal with it very good. I brought four people who had supported me, and got to share it with them, and I felt like I’d won the tournament. When I look back on it, if I had prepared a little bit better and gotten quiet, gone to my own room, settled down, distracted myself some way, it would have been better. And then Sunday, you don’t tee off until noon. So you have a lot of time to reminisce about the potential for what this might mean to your career. That’s how I proceed into Sunday, with a lot of nervous energy and to be honest, a little exhausted from the excitement of Saturday night.”

The challenge affects everyone differently, but almost no one feels indifferent about it. Lucas Herbert, who slept on the lead at the Australian Open as a 21-year-old, told Golf Digest in 2017 that he was a wreck.

“I don’t know how I slept last night,” Herbert said. “It’s like trying to drink three cans of Red Bull and then trying to sleep.”

Harman is not Jean Van de Velde, a journeyman who happened to get hot, only to let a life-changing victory slip away with a series of mental gaffes. He is a disciplined veteran who has made the FedExCup playoffs 12 years in a row, never once coming close to losing his Tour card. And he has been in a position like this before, leading the U.S. Open at Erin Hills by a stroke going into the final round. But he shot 72 and finished four strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.

“I just probably thought about it too much,” Harman said this week. “Just didn’t focus on getting sleep and eating right.”

It is a timeless challenge, trying to rest while knowing your whole life could change the following day. In 1919, according to the legend, Walter Hagen was partying deep into the night instead of resting for a playoff the following day against fellow pro Mike Brady, when a friend implored him to find a bed.

“Mike’s been in bed for hours,” the friend allegedly told Hagen.

“Mike may be in bed,” Hagen supposedly quipped. “But he ain’t sleeping.”

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director for No Laying Up.

Get some sleep, Brian Harman

HOYLAKE — If you are someone who is ready to bury Justin Thomas, who looks at the two-time major winner and sees a golfer who is lost and broken, I get it. Things are not great at the moment. Watching him miss the cut at the Open Championship by a mile, his third missed cut in a major this year, was painful. He looked, in his post-round press conference at Royal Liverpool, like his eyes were welling up with tears when he answered questions about potentially missing the Ryder Cup.

If this isn’t the nadir for Thomas, then heaven help him.

I would, however, like to offer some advice to anyone who believes Thomas is cooked, based on 

There is a good chance he’ll make you feel foolish.

He is going to figure this out, even if he doesn’t seem close to doing so right now.


I believe U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson should heed that warning as well, just in case he starts to overthink things. American captains have a tendency to overthink, and Thomas is one of the players who helped the United States bury those bad habits in team competition.

Thomas needs to be on the American Ryder Cup team. To leave him home when the Americans go to Rome and try to snap a 30-year losing streak on the road would be a massive mistake.


I know what some of you are thinking: Wasn’t the American task force supposed to blow up the buddy system? Shouldn’t the United States lean into the idea that a meritocracy is the best method for putting together a team?

I’m imploring you, don’t be a prisoner of the moment. This isn’t someone without a body of work to draw on. This is the best TEAM competitor America has produced since Lanny Wadkins. Thomas drives his opponents batty in match play. If he’s on your squad, he’s the best kind of obnoxious. He’s one of Rory McIlroy’s closest friends, and in Ryder Cups, McIlroy wants to strangle him. He is a menace, the closest thing America has to our own Sergio Garcia, the rare player who is the best version of himself when he’s playing for something bigger than himself.

“I want to make the Ryder Cup more than anything,” Thomas said Friday after shooting 71 in Round 2 of The Open. “I'm probably honestly trying too hard to do it. It reminds me a lot of my first or second year on Tour. I tried so hard to make that team for the first time. I'm in a very similar position. I've been trying to make it easy on Zach and get in the top six, but I seem to not want to do that with my golf.”

Is Thomas currently lost? Admittedly, it looked that way on Thursday when he shot 82 and made a mess of 18, taking nine shots to wrap up his final hole.

“Making two doubles and a quad, that's eight-year-old, nine-year-old kind of stuff, not someone who's trying to win a British Open,” Thomas said. “You just can't do stuff like that.”

But there were also signs of stability on Friday, signs that Thomas — even though he had no chance of making the cut — was searching for a feel rather than going through the motions. On the 14th hole, his drive bounded into the right rough, leaving him a buried lie. He took a vicious lash at the ball, then watched it trundle toward the green and stop just short of the surface. His third, a low, running chip with spin, banged off the flag and dropped into the cup for a birdie. The roar from the crowd inspired a weary-but-appreciative smile from Thomas, who tried to take a philosophical approach after the round.

“Everybody has their waves, their kind of momentum and rides and rock bottoms, whatever you want to call it,” Thomas said. “I just keep telling myself, this is it, I'm coming out of it, and I unfortunately have surprised myself a couple times with some bad rounds. It doesn't mean a day's good play like today doesn't get a spark going.”

It’s very possible that Thomas is deep in denial mode. But for now, I’m okay with that. If he needs to lie to himself to boost his confidence, he wouldn’t be the first great player to use that tactic.

“There's nobody that shot 82 that hit some of the quality shots that I did yesterday. It doesn't make sense,” Thomas said. “I'll hit shots like a No. 1 player in the world, and then I'll make a 9 on my last hole of the tournament. I don't know if it's a focus thing or I'm just putting too much pressure on myself or what it is, but when I figure it out, I'll be better for it.”

I’ve heard several rumors this season that Thomas is injured, that he’s been trying to play through pain instead of opting for surgery, but he’s never mentioned it, so I finally got the chance to straight up ask him: Are you healthy?

“I feel fine,” Thomas said. “My wrist was a little sore because I hit it in the fescue and bunkers so many times yesterday, but it's fine.”

What about his diet? Thomas revealed earlier this year that, at the request of his nutritionist, he’d agreed to cut out gluten for a year and dairy for six months. He was frequently feeling fatigued and hoped that might lead to more energy. I was curious: Had that been hard to stick to that approach considering it seemed to coincide with his worst season as a professional?

“Yeah, I wish I felt worse so I could say it was that,” Thomas said.

It’s possible we need to slip Thomas a plate of carbs before the Ryder Cup, but even if that doesn’t happen, I suspect he’s still going to be part of the U.S. team in Rome. Johnson, who is actually rooming with Thomas this week, certainly knows what an asset he’s been on previous American squads.

“Obviously he's a stalwart in that event, right?” Johnson said. “I don't know his record off the top of my head, but I know it's pretty good. Bottom line is, this game is really hard. There's going to be peaks. There's going to be some valleys. Let's hope whatever sort of non-peak he's in, it's short. I know he's got a great team. I love his coaches. I love how he works. He's a worker. Guys with talent like that [who] work and aren't afraid to put their work in the dirt, if you will — not to be cliche — typically find it. It's just a matter of when, not if. He's too darned good. I might be slightly concerned, like I said, as a friend, but I'm not worried about him because I know what he does and I know what he's capable of.”

Thomas doesn’t feel like he needs to text his way onto the team, even if that approach has worked on Ryder Cup captains of the past.

“I mean, it's not like I'm going to write [Zach Johnson] a love letter or anything,” Thomas said. “I would like to think that my record is my best argument. I love the team events. I thrive in them. I just enjoy it. Playing with a partner could kind of ease me a little bit, relax me. I don't want to put him in this position. I hate even having to hope for a pick. This is the first time since I first qualified that I've had to rely on a captain's pick, and it's not fun, especially when you're trending the wrong way when other people are trending toward it. But I'm just hoping that I can finish this year out strong and my record speaks for itself.”

It’s dicey territory for a writer to try and analyze a professional golfer’s swing, or even his tactical approach. It feels a bit like a guy who draws stick figures with crayons trying to tell Monet how to paint water lilies, so I wade into this territory carefully and respectfully. But I wonder sometimes if Thomas might benefit from trying to emulate Colin Morikawa more and Tiger Woods a little less.

Yes, Thomas is an artist, and as he has shown, there is no shot shape he can’t picture in his mind, then attempt. He moves the ball with as much creativity as anyone in golf. (Woods and Bubba Watson might have an edge.) But there are times when he feels like Thomas needs a reliable miss, particularly on days when his timing and tempo aren’t perfect.

What if he showed up at the 3M next week and just hit fades?

That might seem like madness, but it’s worked for Morikawa, for Max Homa, and particularly for Scottie Scheffler. Why not experiment for a bit, at least until your tempo and timing return? Thomas’ best friend, Rickie Fowler, has reinvented himself by re-making his swing. What’s the risk in trying to find a stock miss? That creativity and artistry will re-emerge as his confidence does.

Thirty years ago, the American Ryder Cup team went to Europe and won 15-13 at the Belfry. They have been flummoxed trying to figure out how to win overseas ever since.

That’s also the same year — 1993 — Justin Thomas was born. We have been waiting three decades for someone to come along and help break the curse. Thomas, and his fist-pumping, beer-chugging, chest-thumping energy, is an essential part of the team culture. He doesn’t need to play five matches, but he needs to be part of the team, whether he makes the FedExCup playoffs or not. Since making his first international competition in 2017, he’s gone 16-5-3 in Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups. In 2018 when the United States got rolled by the Europeans at Le Golf National, Thomas was one of the only players who didn’t shrink in the moment going 4-1, including beating McIlroy in singles on Sunday.

Early in his career, Thomas received some mild criticism for saying 

he’d rather win a Ryder Cup than win a major.

 It was hard for the American golf establishment to wrap its head around that mentality. Yet this year may be the best chance to fulfill that promise. Yes, he was garbage in the majors and will be the first to concede as much. But the biggest prize, in Thomas’ mind, still remains.

Don’t you want someone like that on the first tee in Italy, staring down McIlroy and Rahm, with an obnoxious but somehow perfect smirk on his face?

Yes, put Justin Thomas on the Ryder Cup team

HOYLAKE — So much has happened in Rickie Fowler’s life since the Open Championship was last held at Royal Liverpool in 2014, where he finished tied for 2nd.


He played in an Olympics. He added a few tattoos. He got married, and is now a father. He lost his game, hired a different swing coach, spiraled further, then bottomed out. He missed three straight Masters, two U.S. Opens and the Open Championship in a three-year span. He contemplated signing with LIV. He re-hired his old swing coach, they rewired his swing DNA dramatically. This time, something clicked for Fowler. He won a tournament for the first time in four years, climbed the world rankings, and is once again a factor in majors.


“Kind of weird to think how long ago it was,” Fowler said.

One thing, however, has not changed: Fowler still possesses the game’s best poker face. Rarely does he flinch, in good moments or bad. He is stoic and steady when others are quick to throw tantrums. And he needed that stoicism on the 18th hole of his opening round Thursday.

Fowler was standing in the middle of the fairway, 289 yards from the green, and in an ideal position. He’d struggled early in the round, but on the back nine, he was hitting the ball beautifully. He’d just made a birdie on the treacherous 17th, and he stood at 2-under par, tied for 5th place. Another birdie — or perhaps an eagle — would tie a bow on a banner day. Fowler figured he could thread a long iron between the two bunkers in front of the 18th green, and showed little hesitation as he stood over the ball. He drew the club back, and fired a low bullet in the direction of the green.

It was clear, as soon as the ball left the clubface, that a nightmarish result was unfolding. The ball drifted right, then farther right, and Fowler’s expression never changed as it sailed toward the out-of-bounds line that looms all along the right side of the 18th. As soon as it landed in the high grass, on the wrong side of the line, a marshal waved his arms to signal it was a goner.

“Obviously pissed off but nothing I can do about it now. Just had a bit of a hanging lie from the fairway and caught the first one a little low on the face,” Fowler said. “I was obviously trying to hit a low little hot cut and just [made] poor contact.”

With a quiet calm, Fowler turned to caddie Ricky Romano and asked for another ball. A more timid man might have chosen to lay back, but Fowler knew what shot he wanted to hit. He wiggled his feet, took aim (once again) for the right side of the green, and drew the club back.

It was not close to landing within bounds.


Watching a professional golfer spray consecutive shots out of bounds can be an uncomfortable thing to witness, and as Fowler dropped again and prepared to take his sixth stroke toward the green, a surreal murmur rippled through the crowd.

Were we witnessing a Tin Cup situation? How many times would he have to attempt this shot?


Mercifully, Fowler’s third attempt landed exactly where he wanted, precisely where he hoped the first one might have gone — his ball landed short of the green but threaded the two pot bunkers, then trickled forward and came to a stop near the back. A gentle lag putt left him with a tap-in for triple bogey, then a long, sobering walk to the scoring tent. His first two long irons had landed no more than 15 yards right of the 18th green, but at Royal Liverpool, that’s about 8 yards too much.

Fowler offered up a weary and wistful smile when asked by reporters to relive his ghastly finish. But he wasn’t interested in criticizing the much-debated internal out-of-bounds line at Royal Liverpool.

“It’s not like they just stuck it in there,” Fowler said. “We know it’s there.”

Those kinds of quirks are part of the reason Fowler loves golf in this part of the world.

“I think it’s fine,” Fowler said. “It’s part of links golf; you get some quirky stuff here and there, and it’s part of it. You’ve got different characteristics. It’s not like they just decided to put that up there. There’s plenty of little boundary walls in different places that come into play, and that’s part of links golf. Do I like it? Right now, probably not, but I think it’s part of links golf with some of the cool different characteristics that are kind of what make it so special.”

Fowler didn’t completely eject himself from the tournament, but it’s rare for anyone to make a triple bogey in a major and go on to win. Only two players — Tiger Woods at the 2000 U.S. Open and Keegan Bradley at the 2011 PGA Championship — have pulled it off. He knows he’ll need to draw on some of the good feelings from 2014 to climb back into contention.

“It’s nice to know that we’ve had success around here,” Fowler said. “Even just from today, I didn’t swing it that well but still managed to get around for a decent round of golf. When you look at overall, 1-over isn’t terrible, but considering the finish it should have been a few shots better.”

Fowler has experienced just about everything on the golf course throughout his career, whether it’s young kids screaming for autographs with the fervor of Beatles fans or grown men following him around dressed, head-to-toe in orange. But Thursday’s round produced a genuine first: He was heckled by an English football fan.

The impetus? Fowler’s decision not to move forward with an investment in Leeds United F.C., which currently plays in the Championship League, the second division of English football.

“Someone called me a coward,” Fowler said, “They were a Leeds fan, and they gave me a hard time for not investing in Leeds. I think he should put his own money behind it if he wants to call me a coward.”

Asked if that was the first time he’d ever been heckled in his career, Fowler thought about it for several seconds and conceded that, yes, it likely was.

“It started with him saying ‘Why didn’t you go through with the investment?’ ” Fowler said. “I was just walking, he called me a coward and I turned around and he was laughing at me. Unfortunately you have to deal with that. I wouldn’t say our fans [in the United States] are any better but I don’t think that’s a position to call someone a coward for not investing in something.”

It was a strange day all around, but also, just another chapter in an eventful decade for Fowler. If he was annoyed, you couldn’t really tell. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?


Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up.

The Unflappable Rickie Fowler

Welcome back to the NLU Mailbag. In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious.

A quick reminder: You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at kvv@nolayingup.com with your Nest handle and your question. If your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free Nest towel.

CarleyRaeJespenFan: What are your thoughts on people referring to The Open Championship as ‘The British Open’?

This seems like one of those “controversies” that’s not actually real and only meant to juice engagement. For years, NLU has been poking fun at the whole thing by referring to it instead as The Open Championship Presented by Her Majesty the Queen. (Now The King, of course.) But I was surprised to learn that some people take it very seriously. In my Twitter mentions this week, people are literally cursing each other out. One thing people don’t talk about is that an entire generation of Americans grew up watching the “British Open” on ABC and ESPN. That’s literally what the broadcast partners called it for us! That’s what we know it by!

I’m of two minds here: I like to refer to it as The Open Championship. But I also think if it’s going to be viewed as the one, true OPEN, then why exactly are we limited to holding it in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland? I know that’s blasphemy, but it feels like a certain kind of golfing snob wants it both ways. Don’t call it British, but don’t truly share it with the world.

If it’s truly just THE OPEN, then why can’t we hold it in Australia? Or Canada? Or South Africa?

If you don’t want to call The British Open, then consider this my official application to hold the 2030 Open Championship at Tara Iti in New Zealand.

PTM: Outside of the actual golf, what is the most difficult adjustment for American golfers traveling to the The Open? Lodging? Food? Driving on the right side? Schedules?

In my experience, it’s the quality of the Guinness, which makes you want to drink 10 of them and then you wake up the next morning fighting the time change and a hangover. But that’s a media answer. My answer for the golfers is mostly the fact that they’re outside their comfort zone, and very few of them are able to embrace the unfairness of links golf. Sometimes you’re going to get bad bounces and sometimes you’re going to be on the shit side of the draw. American golfers struggle when they don’t have control because they’re so used to hitting the ball high and making it stop quickly. I think lodging and food, they have figured out ways to bring a piece of home with them, but on the course, you still have to mentally commit to hitting certain shots 150 yards knowing they’ll bounce another 30 yards, and as soon as the ball lands, you have no control of the outcome.

VinnyCal75: Are there any venues that have either never hosted an Open or haven’t for a really long time that could potentially do so within the next 10-15 years?

I appreciate the spirit of this question, but the only real answer is Turnberry, which hasn’t hosted an Open since 2009 when Stewart Cink edged out Tom Watson in a playoff. Turnberry hasn’t been officially removed from the rotation, but it seems clear the R&A isn’t going back as long as the Trump Organization continues to own the property. (By the way, that’s not my politics talking, that’s the R&A, which has made its stance clear repeatedly, including again this week.) While Turnberry was the venue for one of the greatest final round duels in golf history, Watson and Nicklaus in 1977, it’s only been the host four times, and the remoteness of the property makes it a tough sell for fans to get to.

In a world where the ball didn’t go 350 yards, it’s kind of fun to think about playing the Open at Prestwick, where the tournament originated in 1860 and was played 24 times between then and 1925, but even if you gave modern players hickory golf clubs and asked them to attack the 6,500-yard layout, it doesn’t have the land available for all the corporate tents, grandstands and hospitality that are required to host. There is a certain irony to the fact that Prestwick stopped hosting the Open because too many people came out to watch Scottish hero Macdonald Smith try to win the 1925 Open, and the crowds were deemed unruly, 

as Golf Digest detailed in this enjoyable look back.

I’m of the belief that if Royal Portrush can host the Open, then Royal County Down should be considered. I know it has logistical challenges, like a lack of lodging nearby, but it’s arguably the greatest golf course in the world. You’d think there would be a way to make it work and still draw thousands of fans. It has, after all, hosted the Senior Open Championship three times. A man can dream.

It does seem criminal that Wales has never hosted an Open, and maybe Royal Porthcrawl deserves future consideration.

Drewski: If you can go back in time to see any British Open in person, which would you choose and why? Watson at Turnberry in 77 feels like an obvious choice, but to see Tiger’s dominance at St. Andrew’s in 2000 or the Phil/Stenson match would be hard to pass up as well.

I gave this some serious thought and ultimately I landed on a bit of a dark horse — 

 The reason? It was Lee Trevino’s second straight Claret Jug and represented a moment when he was arguably the best golfer on the planet, and certainly the most creative.

My dad always admired Jack Nicklaus, but he loved Trevino, whose humble upbringings and charm were more relatable to a working-class guy from Montana. Watching a video of Trevino thinking his way around links courses, shaping shots that modern players can’t even fathom, seems like golf nerd nirvana.

TheEyeTest: KVV (and maybe some help from the Merch Czar as he’s the course/band comp GOAT), which classic British rock bands would you associate with each of the courses on the Open Rota? Is the Old Course the Beatles or the Stones? If one course could be the Sex Pistols, which course would it be?

Great question, and exactly the kind of weird shit we are into here at the NLU Mailbag. I love music but also know my strengths so I enlisted my man D.J. to help with this one as Neil was off creating content. Some initial thoughts…

 — The Rolling Stones. Imagine the opening riff of Gimme Shelter beginning to play just as Jean Van de Velde puts his tee in the ground on the 72nd hole, and this immediately makes sense. An element of danger hangs in the air, of madness and mayhem. No course, and no moment, has ever embodied the lyrics “It’s just a shot away” more than that one.


 — The Beatles. This one feels like a cheat, considering there is a long and winding road in the middle of the course. I once suggested that Yesterday was the best song comp for The Old Course, considering the way it flows together, one piece connected seamlessly to the next, suggests (in the cheesiest, best way) that art is guided not just by people but something spiritual and ethereal. Both song and course invoke nostalgia, the longing for something that's already (mostly) gone. Each creation story feels like the happiest of accidents. A course that was once played in the opposite direction has something in common with a song that was about Scramble Eggs before it became something bigger. It's arguably too short for modern standards, but also maybe not. But it goes beyond Yesterday too. The Old Course is at its most interesting when the weather kicks in, when the wind makes you do experimental, provocative stuff. Also, it would be cooler if they played it with clubs made of Norwegian wood. Much like the Beatles, TOC is as endlessly simple or complicated as you want to make it.


 – Blur: People who seem to know what they are talking about tell me it's really good and perfectly crafted, but I've never really taken the time to dive in. Like a lot of people, I kind of only know the Adam Scott meltdown. Woooohooooooo!


 – Fleetwood Mac: Hitters only. Tournaments that stand the test of time. So much greater than the sum of its parts. Controversial relationship to white lines.


 – The Kinks: Weird, conceptual, not nearly as charming and polished as its more famous contemporaries, but I dare you to not enjoy it. Also probably Wes Anderson's favorite venue.


 – Led Zeppelin: Big, bold. Feels like if Tolkein was a bad ass. Total sensory overload.


 – U2: Undeniably world class, but takes itself laughably seriously.


Writing

The Women’s Open: Five star players who could claim their first major

The Eras Tour: How I finally embraced being a Swiftie

Brian Harman: The Hunter Captures Glory

Get some sleep, Brian Harman

Yes, put Justin Thomas on the Ryder Cup team

The Unflappable Rickie Fowler

KVV Mailbag: The Open? Names, Venues and British Rock Bands

NLU Podcast, Episode 715: 2023 Scottish Open Recap Show Notes

My Wisconsin Golf Marathon

Little KVV: Reflections from the U.S. Women's Open

Charley Hull Is Ready

Corpuz Conquers Pebble

Surprise! Allisen Corpuz has been here all along

Michelle Wie West's Longest Wave

Thank You, Amy Olson

The more Rose Zhang changes, the more she stays the same

A week for new memories at Pebble Beach

KVV Mailbag: Sportswashing, 'Drink Fingers' and Hamilton