Rory McIlroy says ‘burnt’ Birkdale Open could play easier – and harder
The first two days of Open Championship week are characterized by one thing: the hard and fast conditions at Royal Birkdale and the challenges they will present to the world’s best players.
As my colleague Sean Zak writes, the arrival of The Brown™ this week suggests we’re in for a classic Open Championship to close out the big season. That’s something that makes Rory McIlroy happy. But the two-time defending Masters champion also sees how Royal Birkdale’s drought will change the strategy of chasing the Claret Jug this week.
“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” McIlroy said on Tuesday. “I think all this dry weather and sun and light wind is obviously very good for the course in some ways, but when I was here a couple of weeks ago, the trauma was a lot more punishing than it will be this week. It’s definitely burned out.
“The big thing, especially off the tee here, is the fairway bunkers and avoiding those. You might see some guys being too aggressive, taking the driver, trying to clear the fairway bunkers. OK, it might be tough, but that’s not the penalty, so you get a wedge in your hand and you can get it there.”
The hard and fast conditions at Birkdale will cause some, like Justin Rose, to change their bag setup to touch. Rose, who burst onto the scene as a freshman at Birkdale in 1998, will have 2-, 3- and 4-irons in the bag this week, meaning he’ll need to ditch his usual 7-wood and lose one of his wedges. For world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who will have a 3-iron in the bag this week but no other changes, the Birkdale “brown out” increases the mental challenge by giving players different options on most holes.
“The ball is going to last a really long time,” Scheffler said. “The fairways this week are tight, so you get a lot of crosswinds. It can be hard to catch because it’s very fast and very strong. So there’s a lot of thinking about whether you want to hit the driver there in a certain area and play a really tough game, or do you want to start hitting the irons, put them on the long fairways and hit the driver?
“In each hole there is a good strategy; there is a good measure of thinking. If it wasn’t as strong as it is now, there wouldn’t be so many decisions to be made, but I think that with the strength, it creates a lot of challenges, I think, for us as players, to try to control your ball and find out where we will end up with a couple.
Royal Birkdale has also undergone a few changes since it last hosted the Open in 2017. They changed the 5th hole to make it a real par-4 reward, raised the green on the par-3 7th and changed a set of back nine holes, including the 13th, 14th and 15th new par-3.
McIlroy favors more changes despite what he calls “unnatural” greens. Those greens, combined with strong and fast conditions and a forecast with no rain in sight, should make for a great finish to the big tournament season.
“Some of the greens are probably unnatural with the flow and kind of what they’re trying to do with the putt,” McIlroy said. “But it creates a good challenge, and it creates options that if you miss the green, whether it’s a putter, a bump-and-run, some guys can choose a lob wedge, and I think we all know, even going back to Shinnecock a few weeks ago, when you give options to professional golfers and you can create a little doubt in their minds about whether I should start playing this game, especially if I’m starting to play this game. Spectator Not so much for us … That to me is a sign of the good test of youth.
And it looks like that’s on the horizon at Royal Birkdale.
