"Our rules officials have finally realized that — duh! — course setup has a lot to do with pace of play."

As always I enjoyed the pre-Open Championship insights from SI's anonymous tour pro (thought it would be nice if he'd actually seen Birkdale!), including this on the relationship between PGA Tour course setup and slow play.

No doubt I'm wasting my time talking about slow play. One veteran told me that we had the same discussions 25 years ago. The Tour is trying to identify the slower players and work with them to get faster, but in the end we're probably only talking about picking up 15 minutes a round. Is that a big deal? Probably not.

Yes it is!

One thing I like is that the Tour is going to use ShotLink to tell us how long we take for each shot. Certain players who are slow and don't know the average time spent on a particular shot need to be made aware. Our rules officials have finally realized that — duh! — course setup has a lot to do with pace of play. It's not only the players who are slow. When you play a 510-yard par-4 with a semi-island green, you're going to take a while. It seems obvious, but apparently our officials didn't think of it. At some tournaments, like the Memorial, the setups are getting out of control. Guys don't want to play a U.S. Open-style course two weeks before the Open. What Jack Nicklaus had this year at the Memorial was way worse than Torrey Pines. Jack and Arnold Palmer, who's growing serious rough at Bay Hill, may want to have major-championship conditions, but they're in danger of winding up with bad fields. Six-inch rough, furrowed bunkers, greens running at 14 — some guys are going to think twice before coming back.

Good.

Reader Greg noted there was one problem with another the mystery pro's comments.

The Tour thinks that putting San Antonio in Atlanta's spot was a terrific swap because Valero is a great sponsor and that we might have a Texas swing: the Nelson, Colonial and San Antonio in successive weeks. The problem is that LaCantera, the Texas Open venue, is awful. None of the top players would tee it up there in the fall, and they won't play there in May, either. Anytime you can see a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel from a tee box — you can actually hear the people on the rides screaming in the background — that's a red flag. Has any great course ever been built next to an amusement park? Until the new TPC San Antonio is finished [in 2010], I don't see top players remembering the Alamo.

Technically, Pine Valley's next door neighbor is an amusement park too. But we understand his point.

“It's a lot greener than I expected and there is a lot of long, juicy and tough rough. It is not wispy."

John Hopkins issues this disappointing (for fans of links golf) course conditions report:

Birkdale looked impeccable in the strong sunshine, though there was perhaps a little too much green on the fairways and the rough was too lush. “It's very difficult,” Trevor Immelman, the Masters champion, said at the end of his first round over the Merseyside course.

“It's a lot greener than I expected and there is a lot of long, juicy and tough rough. It is not wispy. You had better drive the ball straight here because if you don't, there is no way you can contend.”

And regarding the 17th green...

Much has been made of the redesign of the 17th green by Martin Hawtree, and R&A officials have been defensive about it for months. Yesterday was too soon in Open week to expect definitive comments to emerge about it, though Nick Dougherty admitted that it is out of character with the other 17 greens on the course.

“But it is also a par-five and if you get on the green in two you should be tested,” the Englishman said. “They could be silly about where they put the flag but they won't be. It's great as long as you keep your ball away from the bits that are frightfully over the top.”

"And we would expect to be about 30 million this time," he said.

Chuck Culpepper previews the Open Championship for the L.A. Times and offers this surprising revelation about this year's betting.

And speaking of disposable income in a country where recreational wagering long since has shed its last societal stigmas, last year the bookmakers that adorn every main drag made just under 24 million pounds (about $48 million) on the British Open industry-wide, said Rupert Adams of the William Hill agency.

"And we would expect to be about 30 million this time," he said.

That's in pounds, which outdrive dollars roughly twofold.

To some degree, Woods' absence has unshackled bookmakers and enhanced betting value. It has awakened the "middle level of punter," Adams said, meaning the bettor who spends the equivalent of between $10 and $60 on the Open. He counted himself among those punters and said he'd often seen no value in tournaments involving Woods.

Birkdale Clubhouse Description Watch, Vol. 1

My money is on Martin Johnson making a strong push for inclusion in this contest to best describe Royal Birkdale's clubhouse, but we already have two fine entries:

Brett Avery in Golf World: "its exterior is at once painfully modern and hulkingly out of date, akin to a south Florida condo development, circa 1970."

And Bradley Klein in Golfweek, who calls it both "slightly absurd" and a "compelling anomaly": "...designed in 1935 by George Tonge to look from afar like a massive cruise ship wending its way through the dunes. Think of it as an English version of a prairie schooner."

Perry Wins Again; May Skip PGA Championship To Rest Up For FedEx Cup

Just kidding...maybe. It would be fun if he skipped the FedEx Cup to rest up for the Ryder Cup, wouldn't it?

Anyway, the AP game story about the hottest player in the world not named Tiger winning yet again

He never wanted to be the star, the main attraction, but Kenny Perry will have no choice if this continues. The guy who merely wanted to win enough to make the Ryder Cup team is now racking up victories at a rapid pace.

"I don't want to live in a fishbowl," he said. "I don't want Tiger status."

I'll take Tiger's fishbowl!

“I hear the rain may be done, but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

Larry Dorman is at Birkdale and offers this scouting report:

The case can be made that Royal Birkdale is in the same league, strategically if not aesthetically, with the other regular courses in the rotation. It can play hard and fast or it can play slightly moist and thick with heavy gorse and bracken that will gobble golf balls the way a Venus fly trap eats flies. This weekend, with the northwest wind whistling off the Irish Sea and the dull gray clouds sticking to the sky like a thick layer of lead tape, Birkdale rolled its shoulders and stirred awake.

Near the grandstand by the second tee, Willie Dunbar, a course worker, was busily checking the footing. In a thick Scottish burr, Dunbar explained he was checking the course for “trip hazards,” trying to ensure that spectators would not kick exposed TV cables or any other protrusions and take a fall. He seemed more concerned that a soft, green golf course would not have enough trip wire to keep the pros honest.

“I hear the rain may be done,” he said, quickly adding in a dour Scots manner, “but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

Recent rains have made the fairways green and the rough lush and thick, while chilly winds have dried greens and fairways enough to keep it from becoming too soft, the way it was back in ’61. That year some course signage was blown down by howling north winds and rain that delayed the start of the third round.

Meanwhile John Huggan shares this from Phil Mickelson:

"I'm really looking forward to this Open," he declares. "Birkdale is one of my fondest courses. It was there I played in my first Open back in 1991. It is in incredible shape, just immaculate. The greens were still pretty firm despite the rain. If it dries out and firms up over the next few days, as it is supposed to, it will be running hard and fast by next Thursday.

"I like those conditions; they will produce the right winner. The players today are so good and the equipment is so good that the temptation is always there to do something funky to the golf course to make par a legitimate score. I think winning scores should be between five and 12 under par. That is a hard test, a playable fair test. The best golfers in the world should be able to shoot that. That is what I would prefer. It would give the top players the chance to separate themselves." 

"Jesus Christ, he can't help himself, can he?"

In an entertaining autopsy of this week's revelation, Tom English says not so fast on Monty and The Times declaring that the 2014 Captaincy is all wrapped up.

Monty wasn't so much the cat out of the bag as the cat that got the cream. You could practically hear him purring from the back row of the interview room at Loch Lomond.

That's Monty's mantra. Last week, next week, next month, next year, he'll keep at it, he'll keep campaigning for the role in the hope of backing the committee into a corner whereby it becomes a massive story if he does not get it. A snub. A shameful way to treat an old hero. By making noise now he is sowing the seeds for 2014.

Monty's comments are not based on fact, not based, we're told, on any secret promises. From what we can make out they're assumptions based on the hardly fullproof theory of "I am Monty, I want it, I need it, I deserve it, how could you not give it to me?"

Having spoken to two members of the tour committee, we can say that Monty is being premature here. Maybe he will get it – if you put a gun to the head of both committee members they'd say he probably will – but they cast their eyes to the gloomy heavens above Loch Lomond when Monty's quote was read to them. One said: "Jesus Christ, he can't help himself, can he?" The other was a lot less exasperated and a great deal more sarcastic: "Does Monty want to be captain at Gleneagles? Bloody hell, he should have said something before now."

Kenny Perry Peaking Just In Time For U.S. Bank Championship

He shares the third round lead at the John Deere Classic, is looking for his third win in five weeks, but has one defender for skipping the Open Championship in Jay Williamson.

“He’s made a commitment to this Tour because he knows that this Tour has put him where he is, and I think other guys need to take a look at what he’s doing because he’s taken a lot of heat for that,” Williamson said. “He’s a guy that really values what the Tour means to him.”

Hey Jay, The Open Championship is a PGA Tour sanctioned event too, you know.

"If I had won, I would have a real cool trophy sitting in my office right now. And a couple more dollars in my bank account. And I'd be a part of history. That's what would have been different.''

I don't know about you, but I'm really struggling to get excited about the Open Championship, what with players dropping like flies, Tiger out, Kenny Perry staying home...well that's not the worst thing...and Birkdale's only real interest relying on a goofy green going bad (or not), but I did thoroughly enjoy two preview stories looking at Brian Watts.

You may remember he was the fellow that nearly won last time at Birkdale, which ESPN.com's Bob Harig reminds us in catching up with Watts, now on the comeback trail. And in Golf World, Lorne Rubenstein takes us through Watts' odd series of misdiagnosis' and those unforgettable 18th hole bunker shots.

BARKLEY: "Live blog? What's that?"

Rick Chandler at Deadspin will be live blogging Charles Barkley's play at the Tahoe celebrity event for NBCSports.com He checked in with Barkley at the range and the round mound of rebound did not know what a live blog was! Then again, I don't know if anyone has ever lugged a laptop around a golf course tracking someone's round. Blackberry maybe, but a laptop?

Deadspin featured this shot of Barkley on the range, accompanied by three friends named Corona. And msnbc.com is sharing this cruel video of his swing for all to study that mind-boggling pre-impact hesitation move.

"I feel it is not out of character. It's simply an extension of the bolder featuring I had attempted at 11 and 15"

I'm trying to get in the mood for the Open and know I will when I get that first whiff of links in HD next Thursday (and no Bobby Clampett!). Perhaps the most interesting pre-tournament item will be the new 17th green and the R&A's ability to manage it.

I was skeptical when they first announced in 2005 that they were redoing the green (a redo of a new green for the last Open at Birkdale) and even Peter Dawson, in his now infamous "the game has moved on since then" press conference understands they have to be careful with the speeds.

Golfweek ran a cartoon lampooning the new No. 17 this week, but Golf Digest's Ron Whitten likes it.

Prior to the 1998 Open, the club also cut down some 6,000 trees that had cluttered the dunes and buffered the mighty winds. Even with a new two-level green, the par-5 17th was the easiest hole in the 1998 Open, so Martin Hawtree rebuilt it a second time, using the back half of the old green as the front half of a new one, and running the remainder up into hand-carved dunes. The contours give the green real character, in contrast to Birkdale's other, more docile greens. He admits some club members don't like it, finding it freakish and out of character. "I feel it is not out of character," he says. "It's simply an extension of the bolder featuring I had attempted at 11 and 15, which were also somewhat controversial after the rebuild."

Ahhhh...the green is not out of character because it matches the other two Hawtree redid.

Now that's an architect who has been spending way too much time around The Donald!

"Where does the "w" go in awkward?"

I prefer Michael Bamberger's reasons for Tiger's Ryder Cup assistant captain invite rejection over the rationale Tiger offered. Especially the last two:

6) In the team room, I'd have to act like I feel we have a better team than the Euros. My acting's pretty good, but there are limits.

7) I have more good friends on the Euro team than the American team -- where does the "w" go in awkward?

"Both Opens need to introduce a multi-tiered entry-fee system whereby tour players are charged a sum they may think twice about relinquishing so easily."

John Huggan talks to agent Brian Marchbank, who helps explain the WD disease that keeps hitting the U.S. Open and Open Championship international qualifiers.

I'm not quite buying this from David Fay in year three of the WD shenanigans.

"I want to know what the players are thinking," said Fay. "Why are they entering in the first place? Has something happened? Or are we doing something wrong?"

"(I thought) what did we shoot here? Sixty? I didn't know. I didn't realize it."

Looks like Paula Creamer has recovered from her U.S. Open final round...Rusty Miller reports.

"I'm having a great summer"

Thanks to reader Steven T. for this story detailing the final (let's hope) chapter in the Norman divorce saga. Final tally for the Shark, who is labeled "golfer/vinter" in the story: $103 million. Understated quote from the ex leaving court: "I'm having a great summer."