TROON, Scotland – Predicting what will happen during the final round of this 152nd Open Championship might be a fool’s errand.
Did you see what happened Saturday?
They couldn’t reach par 4s in two shots.
They had to putt with their hats on backward because a steady rain filled their brims to the max.
They stood on the 18th tee and wondered, legitimately, whether a full-throttled drive would be enough to find the fairway.
One by one, soaked players trudged into the media tent to explain what the hell had just happened over the past five hours.
Their reactions differed as much as their scores.
Billy Horschel was thrilled – he managed some of the best golf of his career in some of the worst conditions he’d ever experienced.
Shane Lowry was miffed – he was still processing how he’d gone from the second-round lead to a Saturday 77.
And Scottie Scheffler was relieved – to be done, certainly, but also to have managed to keep himself in the mix to capture a second major title.
Let’s break down how we got here – and what might happen next:
ONE DAY LATER, WHY IS THIS LEADERBOARD SO DIFFERENT?
Eighty players made the halfway cut, and those who were sent off early Saturday enjoyed the best conditions of the week.
It was warm(ish), partly sunny, calm.
In the third group out, Sungjae Im (66) and Shubhankar Sharma (67) got the scoring started early. Adam Scott followed a few groups later with another 66. Justin Thomas, an hour and a half after that, continued his up-and-down week with a 67.
Royal Troon wasn’t a pushover, but those players had signaled to the rest of the field that these were, by far, the most scoreable conditions of the week.
Now, things were really getting interested. South African Thriston Lawrence, teeing off more than three hours ahead of the final group, went out in 30 and played steady to the house to post the best round of the day, a 6-under 65. Three groups later, that score was matched by Sam Burns, who sat with Lawrence in the clubhouse at 3-under 210.
At the time, not much was made of their chances – in fact, of the six questions that Burns was asked post-round, not one concerned his position in the tournament. Same for Lawrence.
“It is moving day, as they say,” Lawrence said, “and I definitely did it well.”
But then a funny thing happened.
Sure, the temperatures nosedived and a steady rain blew through, but that has been forecasted since the start of the week. What was unexpected, however, was the intensity of the wind and the direction as the round progressed – 15-to-20 mph gusts out of the northwest, a different direction to how the course had played for the first two days (but the prevailing wind, ordinarily).
Troon’s back nine plays about 300 yards longer and, historically, much more difficult. That split was magnified on Saturday, when all but two of the hardest holes were on the back nine.
The 504-yard 11th, played back into the teeth of the freshening wind, had a scoring average of 4.6. The 502-yard 15th became unreachable even for players who were bashing driver off the deck. And every player in the last few groups reached for lumber once they came to the 238-yard 17th.
“I don’t hit a 3-wood on a par 3 very often,” Scheffler said. “I don’t hit driver and a 3-wood really solid on a par 4 and don’t get there in two, either. … It’s definitely the hardest (nine holes) that I’ve played to this point.”
The final three hours of the third round became a test of survival. In the last seven groups, there were seven nine-hole scores of 40 or worse.
“You’d have to question why there wasn’t a couple of tees put forward today, to be honest,” Lowry said.
Added Dan Brown, who went off in the final group with Lowry: “Course setup probably wasn’t thought about too much this morning when that weather came in.”
WILL IT GET BETTER TOMORROW?
Players, caddies and officials will at least get a chance to dry out – there is only a slight chance for a stray shower in the forecast, with temperatures in the mid-60s.
Perhaps most interesting, the wind is expected to switch again – back to the southwest, which is the direction it blew for much of the first two days. That should make the shorter front nine more challenging while letting up, slightly, on the treacherous back nine.
SO, WHAT ARE BILLY HORSCHEL AND THESE OTHER GUYS DOING UP THERE?
Hey, they’re likely as surprised as anyone.
If Burns goes on to win, he will have had the worst first-round position (T-96) of any major championship winner. Lawrence hasn’t placed better than T-42 in any of his five prior major appearances and now he’s in the final group. Russell Henley, making his 10th Open start, admitted that links golf has humbled him in his career because “I’ve never really felt like I’ve known what I was doing exactly.” Well, thanks to a Saturday 66, he has a spot in the penultimate pairing.
The only surprise for Horschel, perhaps, is why it’s all coming together now.
He’s 37, with more than a decade of big-game experience. He has never played well in The Open. He won an opposite-field event this season for his eighth PGA Tour victory but has never seriously factored late in a major; he has just two top-10s in 42 starts.
And yet here he is, 18 holes away from a signature victory – a situation eerily reminiscent of last year, with Brian Harman, a veteran, too-good-to-be-a-journeyman-type who clinched his first major at the game’s most unpredictable major.
“I’ve worked my entire life to be in this position,” Horschel said. “I’ve been in the lead many times going into a final round. Obviously, this is a major. It means a little bit more. We all know that. We know what this means to everyone. I know what it means to my legacy in the game of golf and what I want to do and accomplish. But I’m excited to be here. I’ve wanted to be here my entire life. I’m finally here. I’m embracing it.”
WHO HAS A BETTER CHANCE FOR MAJOR NO. 2: XANDER SCHAUFFELE OR SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER?
Schauffele is a shot closer to the lead, just one back and in the six-way logjam for second.
If Schauffele glances at those around him – Horschel and Lawrence, Burns and Henley, Justin Rose and Brown – he won’t be intimidated. Five have never been in this position before. One is making his major debut. Another, the 43-year-old Rose, would be the oldest Open winner in nearly 60 years.
And after years of being the guy who couldn’t nail down a major, who was good but never good enough, Schauffele is now in a position to win two of his last three and make a compelling case for Player of the Year honors. Of course, the test at Troon is nothing like the rain-soaked shootout at Valhalla; they’re be lucky to reach double-digits under par here come Sunday night. But Schauffele can still flash back to the memories of his win: how he went wire to wire, how he endured a rocky start, how he birdied the last hole with the golf world watching.
“I imagine it’s not going to hurt me,” he said. “If I’m in that spot with a few holes to play, I think I can maybe lean on that.”
So, too, can the player who has done more winning this year than anyone else.
Scheffler is already the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six Tour events before July 1, and now he can emulate The King that year by claiming a claret jug at Troon.
In the trying conditions, Scheffler was at his surgical best, leading the field in driving accuracy and ranking fourth in approach play. But as many good looks as he gave himself over the front side, he could convert only one of them, holing just 16 feet worth of putts.
That trend continued on the back, when he missed momentum-saving par putts on the 13th and 15th holes.
For the day, he ranked 78th out of 80 players on the greens.
But Scheffler moved back within two shots of the lead by knifing a 3-wood on 17 to a distance that even he felt comfortable converting. It was the shot of the day and, if he goes on to win, will no doubt be the shot of the tournament.
“It was pretty wild out there,” he said, “but we did a good job of grinding it out.”
Another grind-fest looms on Sunday at Troon, where battle-tested players have come to expect the unexpected.