2018 British Open: Tiger Woods Faces an Incredible "Cooked" Challenge

There is a moment in the episode of Chronicles of a golfer champion Tiger Woods, a documentary about his wins in Open Championship, when he takes a long break before he describe the unique challenge of golf. You can say that he thinks about it very hard. He wants to nail it and do it effectively, rather than just providing narrative flair to fill the time of a documentary. After the break, he slowly lets it roll

"It's understanding how to control the ball in the air to control it on the ground."

This seems to be a simple statement without much interest. But it's great. It's great in its effectiveness. He is brilliant in the way he captures, for perhaps the best player of all time, the process of playing golf at the British Open. It may be that this does not cover every little detail of what makes golf courses at the Open so different from what we are used to, but it touches the most important part. It best reflects the style, a style of golf that is the way golf should be.

The beauty of Open golf is how the earth offers so many different options to play. You can use the ground, you can fly in the air, or find a mediocre trajectory and a form of shooting that is best for that hole. There are options and that's the kind of style that makes a playable and fun course for some of the worst golfers of the weekend while challenging the best pros in the world. A big guy who stinks at golf can always have fun running around the field with a little skill. He can not fly it in the air at 215 meters on a rope and with any kind of precision, which is often a demand for courses in the United States. It can be masochistic, endless and not fun at all.

In golf links, there are options and it's mental exercise that the world's best – who can both fly on a rope and use the ground – go to the Open. It varies from hole to hole and from day to day depending on weather conditions. But the best option and the best game are not always visible to you, as is often the case every two weeks on the Tour. This is the heart of this Tiger Quote and why the Open offers a different and fun golf style for the world's best and those who look at home.

This week we are going to get a version similar to a blizzard game at Lambeau Field. We are on one of the oldest links courses in the world and mature nature has given us a gift that will make it even more fun to watch from home

Scotland is burned. It is completely "cooked", a phrase you will probably hear a few minutes after watching this week. You'll hear it, and all the synonyms, dozens of times if you choose to watch some of the 50 hours of the Golf Channel and NBC coverage. It's going to be a hammered theme at home almost every time. It's crisp, fiery, firm, fast, burned. It is definitely cooked and looks glorious. Here's how Carnoustie's first hole takes place this week, compared to that of a previous Dunhill tournament, an annual Euro Tour event.

There was almost no rain in the six recent weeks and precipitation is expected to be minimal this week. Scotland is not a place where course superintendents will water to make up for things. Have you ever seen how a lush 18-hole golf course looks natural since the blimp view on one of the desert courses in the United States? This is not it. They will water where they really need it, but otherwise the conditions dictate what it looks like when the best in the world show up.

And how it's going to play, it's like concrete. Players will have to contemplate the game on the ground and develop a strategy based on the possibility of balls short of hundreds of yards. It's not uncommon to have an oven open like this, but it's a gift we do not get each year. The ground game is still a part of the Open, but embrace this one as you would for one or two blizzard football matches that we could have in every football season.

Divergent Strategies

After a few days of practice, player feedback is everywhere and it's exactly what you want. Here are the strategies to date:

1. The natural presumption is that hundreds of yards of roll mean that the driver is a useless club that will not be used much this week. But big hitters like Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm have indicated that the conditions of exhaustion extend to the rough and that means they can let it fly as much as possible. Pot bunkers are the real problem at Carnoustie. They are dangerous and close to a penalty in one go. You often have to hit right side.

The thought of the big hitters is that they can hit the problem with the pilot and if they fall to the water, it is not so bad. We've heard a lot of older players sound really shocked about how the rough is thin and burned compared to previous editions of The Open at Carnoustie. So maybe DJ and Rory think that they can just grab and tear everything and hit a low iron or some rough corner if they have to. We'll see how it goes …

2. The shorter batter who can not fly over the problem will hit medium irons and irons with absurd trajectories. Jordan Spieth said the first impression of his caddy was that they were going to hit a bunch of 5-irons of the tee. It's cool. It's a style we do not get every week from bomb-and-gouge. Thinking of this quote from Tiger above – your lines and angles of play will be critical. You lose control of the ball as soon as it is in the air. If you take the wrong line, you may be desperately watching rolling and rolling and not stop until it burns (for the uninitiated, it's the small coves) who cross the course) or a bunker.

Tiger Woods won the 2006 Open by hitting a single driver all week. This year, Hoylake was even firmer than Carnoustie this week. This course is the longest of the Open Rota and it may be unwise or impossible to go as far as this 2006 Tiger strategy, but we could get something close from many of the best players in the field.

The third strategy we hear from players is a mix of 1 and 2 above. We will get more drivers than expected because of sagging, but it will still be a precision match with shorter clubs on most starts. Phil Mickelson said that he was going to fall somewhere in between. Tiger is working on this erotic stinger that he has used for a good part of the season and is training with a new iron prototype.

Justin Thomas said that he hesitates between hitting the pilot and the 5-iron on many tees. How often do you hear that and how good is it ?! On tour in the United States, you may hear a guy who is preparing to jump into a woods – not discussing horseman 5.

"There are opportunities to hit a lot of different clubs and clubs. play a lot of different ways, "Thomas said Tuesday. "By being as firm as that, it definitely adds another variable to what we normally see on tour – there are so many ways to play every hole … it makes you think."

C & # 39 we want it. Different styles among the best in the world can, if they are really world class, play the game in many ways. We will see which strategy works best and on which days depending on weather conditions.

The benefits of "cooked"

• We will see a lot of darts and shots that are just starting to take off. These are beautiful to watch the world's best perform. Tiger made it popular, and he will do it again this week, but it will also come from different players in the field. It's a shot that we do not get with regularity during the season.

• There will be plenty of little games. There will be putts away from the green. There will be half-irons hit on the green. Todd Hamilton has won an open kick and is shooting around the green with a hybrid. US players can try to hit the usual high-loft corners of these absurdly tight exhausted lies. They are so good that most will probably be executed as planned, but the few that are not sure will be interesting and ugly to watch. You can play as you want around the green.
• There will be crazy distance numbers, and these are always fun to annoy on Twitter. Dustin Johnson's 18-year-old rider raced about 460 yards this weekend, with a bullet even going into the burn right next to the green. The old man Padraig Harrington also hit in that burn in front of 18 during a practice lap. Middle irons run at 300 yards easily. The numbers are going to be wild.
• Tiger has repeatedly said that fairways run faster than greens. Greens are the only area they do not let escape. The top view highlights the difference in conditioning, as putting surfaces are the only green color on the property.

As is customary on link courses, they are slower than those at which US players are used to it. It will be an interesting fit to watch as they go from baked fairways to greens slower than they are accustomed to.

• Score does not matter for the R & A of The Open. We have seen winning numbers pushing 20 cents and we have seen, especially at Carnoustie, that players are struggling to reach the peer-pair. The conditions dictate everything and as Tiger recently stated in a not-so-subtle shooting of the USGA US Open, here they are not "trying to make an open". Carnoustie often roughs the field, but with a shorter course because of the conditions are firm and fast, and the greens still receptive, we will probably get lower than normal scores for this place. And that's good! Birdies are good and exciting.
• As the first line down on football broadcasts, TopTracer was one of the game change inventions for television coverage of golf. You can fully appreciate these darts and action as the most talented golfers in the world put on the ball. This week, however, this ball will spend a lot of time on the court. So, NBC and Golf Channel introduce "Links Tracer" to follow it when it bounces and unfolds across the country. Give it to me now.

The costs of "cooked out"

None, as far as I can tell. The Open is the best style of golf to watch and Mother Nature has given us a particularly fascinating treatment this year. Learn to love life cooked.