British Open: Wind batters afternoon players at Royal Troon, ‘It’s brutal out there’

Matthew Southgate stepped before the microphones at Royal Troon and ran a hand through his hair, looking like a man who’d just survived a dozen nightmares. Asked to size up the conditions at the British Open, a weary Southgate didn’t hold back.

“I need to lie down in a dark room,” he sighed. “It’s brutal out there. That’s one of the toughest experiences I’ve had on a golf course. It was cross-winds everywhere and pins on the same side where the wind was coming from. It’s just so, so difficult. It was like survival golf, really.”

Weather conditions at the Open Championship are dicey even in the best of circumstances, and Friday at Royal Troon was, as the players attested afterward, some of the worst of circumstances. The wind howled at well over 30 miles per hour. As if that windspeed alone wasn’t bad enough, the wind’s direction was unpredictable, shifting not just from one end of the course to the next, but one hole to the next, or even tee to green.

“Mentally, I mean, it can drive you crazy. It’s just so tough,” Abraham Ancer said. “It’s tough to make putts. It’s tough to leave the ball where you want to put it, you know. Usually you feel like you hit a good shot and you know where it’s going to end up. Here you have to have a little bit of luck as well.”

The afternoon draw took it in the teeth, By 7:00 p.m. local time, only two players on the course had under-par rounds — Jon Rahm at -2, MK Kim at -1. All 10 players below par after two rounds played in the morning wave, getting off the course or holding on for dear life before the winds reached critical levels.

“It’s funny, I think that sort of 5-, 10-mile-an-hour difference in wind speed does make a big difference. The front nine was so, so tough. The whole golf course is so tough,” Laurie Canter said. “You’re looking at a lot of putts from, best case, 30 to 50 foot in some cases. It just feels like you’re grinding every hole.”

The winds hampered everything in the area, from the players on the course to the planes in the air heading to nearby Prestwick:

“I think today it tipped over the edge where the elements were in control, meaning that you were aiming right of a pin and slicing the ball and seeing the ball hook. So the wind had all the control on the ball. The player couldn’t have control over the wind. I think that’s the tipping point today,” Justin Rose said. “Yesterday I felt like it was playable. I felt like it was a fair fight yesterday. Today just kind of was a bit more survival.” Rose tied for the low round of the day at -3, along with five others, and sits just two strokes behind leader Shane Lowry at -5.

While so many others have struggled this week, Rose — who fought his way in via qualifier — has been having the time of his life. Rose’s birdie on 18 drew a Ryder Cup-esque roar:

At the other end of the leaderboard, the wind threw some notable names right out of the tournament entirely. Both heroes of the U.S. Open, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, struggled from the jump on Thursday and teed off in the heart of the wind on Friday. Just weeks after putting on a duel for the ages, both McIlroy and DeChambeau will go home early and disappointed.

At least McIlroy could smile about this too-little, too-late birdie:

The half-round of the day belonged to Joaquin Niemann, who managed to go four-under on the back nine after carding an astounding quintuple bogey at the Postage Stamp, the par-3 8th. “It was a tough hole. It was a tough break,” Niemann said. “Knew if I recovered quickly I was gonna be able to bounce back because I’ve been playing great golf.” He sits at even par, seven strokes off the lead

Trying to forecast the weather in Scotland is like trying to predict how McIlroy will play on any given hole, but it appears the wind will be in the single digits on Saturday … and the rain will pick up in the afternoon, right around the time the leaders tee off. The best weather day of the tournament might be Sunday, but then again, at Troon, “best weather” is a dubious concept and a moving target.