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It’s difficult to pull forward any meaningful data from a course that comes into play once every eight to ten years. The highly volatile nature of just four rounds of golf, plus the elements that you find on the coast of a links course, makes looking too deep into the 2006 and 2014 editions a fool’s errand, in my opinion. Coastal links courses can look different each day, with wind and rain greatly impacting how each round will play. Locals report that the spring and summer were extremely dry, but the past few weeks have seen a fair amount of rain, with the greens more receptive than anticipated during early week practice rounds. The late-week forecast looks wet, so it should be an interesting week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we know about Royal Liverpool is that controlling your golf ball off the tee is critical. Tiger Woods famously gave his driver and 5-wood the week off on his way to victory here in 2006, clubbing down and hitting mostly a 2-iron, focusing on avoiding the tall fescue, deep pot bunkers, and penalty areas that surround most landing zones off the tee. Driving accuracy is crucial to success but difficult to contextualize because the accuracy data that we have access to doesn’t properly capture less-than-driver accuracy. An inaccurate driver, like Cam Smith, likely isn’t hitting a ton of drivers this week, so dinging him for spraying his driver misses the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To fill out my betting card for this week’s Open, I’m focused on strong current form, both in baseline strokes-gained metrics and finishing positions, along with a history of strong performances at The Open and links-style setups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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