154th Open Championship Recap: Shades of LACC

The 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale will be remembered for a number of reasons: it was the first trip back since Spieth’s wild finish eight years prior; Bryson DeChambeau was hit with a two-stroke penalty after stepping on fescue behind his ball – inadvertently giving him a better lie (more later); the course was baked out, something we haven’t seen in years at The Open; multiple 62s were shot; and that Ryan Fox won with birdie on the 72nd hole.

But what may not be thought about is how the 154th Open was quite similar to the 123rd U.S. Open at LACC. Let’s look at a few things: LACC was hosting a U.S. Open for the first time; Royal Birkdale had been overhauled since the 2017 Open, with some holes being completely new or severely altered. Multiple 62s – the lowest score in a major championship – were shot. And a fan-favorite fell one stroke short to a player no one has really heard of.

Now, back to what happened at Birkdale. Three players, including two in a span of minutes, shot 62 on Friday, and Fox, the eventual champion, shot the score on Saturday. On Friday, after his round was finished, Bryson was given a two-shot penalty, which gripped the golf world for 18 hours, capped off by Bryson’s agent saying he wasn’t sure that the LIV/YouTube golfer would continue playing. As the announcers put it, ‘he craves attention.’ That is most definitely true. But it did not matter in the end; he finished six shots back of first. This is the same penalty that Wyndham Clark should’ve been assessed on the 10th hole of the final round at last month’s U.S. Open, where he clearly tamped down fescue to have a better swing, which would’ve given Sam Burns his first major, making this week much less painful after falling by two shots.

The baked-out course allowed the players to hit almost any club a country mile, which in the U.S. would’ve produced low scores, but the links course would not relent, and the final score finished at -10, despite three rounds of 62 (-8). In all, it was quite the week north of Liverpool. 

Now, golf fans must grapple with the fact that we do not get a major championship again until the Masters in April – 8 months, 37 weeks, 259 days – until we are back at golf’s biggest tournament, on golf’s grandest stage.