British Open: Top golfers up against treacherous Troon

Young lot to pit their wits against iconic course’s unpredictable holes

TROON: Treacherous and unfamiliar challenges lie in wait as the British Open returns to Royal Troon this week and Rory McIlroy returns to the hunt for the Claret Jug.

McIlroy, who leads a host of the sport’s biggest names to have withdrawn in controversial circumstances from next month’s Rio Olympics, is bidding to win his fifth major and second Open after his victory at Hoylake in 2014.

Twelve months ago McIlroy was missing from the field in St Andrews after suffering an ankle injury while playing football but he will tee off this morning in the same group as Bubba Watson and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama.



“I’m excited to be back and to a golf course that I’ve never played on before,” the Northern Irishman, number four in the world, told reporters.

Troon is where Tiger Woods first played in the Open as a professional in 1997. The ailing 14-time major winner is not in this year’s field and instead the focus is on the current ‘Big Four’ of McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and recent US Open winner Dustin Johnson. They have all withdrawn from the Rio Games amid much-publicised fears about the Zika virus, with Spieth pulling out at the last minute on Monday.

The Open has been played at Troon eight times, with the last six winners all American, most recently Todd Hamilton in 2004. In 1997 the winner was Justin Leonard, a Texan just like Spieth.



“I don’t think it impacts you, but I think it’s very cool to walk through the clubhouse halls to see that,” said Spieth of Troon’s history.

Dustin Johnson may be the favourite and Day the world number one, but all of the sport’s leading players must beware the potential pitfalls in store.

Troon is home to one of golf’s most iconic and deeply unpredictable holes, the 123-yard par-three eighth known as the Postage Stamp. Here is where German amateur Herman Tissies took 15 in 1950 but also where a 71-year-old Gene Sarazen had a hole-in-one in 1973.

Then there is the 11th, a 482-yard par-four with the Glasgow to Ayr railway line immediately over a four-foot high stone wall to the right side. Jack Nicklaus took 10 here in 1962.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2016.

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