Tiger: "He sticks almost slavishly to his strategy of conservatism at all costs"

John Huggan analyzes Tiger's conservative strategy of just five drivers through three rounds and comes away impressed but also points out why it might not work with Sunday's breeze.

And this week is similar. So far, the longest club in his bag has made only five appearances, as the 14-time major champion has plotted his way around a sadly soft and almost becalmed Royal Lytham.

James Lawton in the Independent was less impressed.

It was not the scoring, which saw Scott denied an eagle by the barest margin and the Tiger always giving himself too much to do to glean a birdie, but the profound difference in their strategies.

Really, it was a gulf. Scott slugged a drive with immense power and control. The Tiger once more elected to go with an iron. Scott powered his second shot beyond the pin. Woods was well short of the green. Even after the years of crisis, the convulsions in his life and the disruptions brought by injury, it did seem like another small defeat among many.

Oliver Brown's Telegraph story was headlined, "Tiger Woods' refusal to gamble leaves him struggling to reel in leader Adam Scott."

He sticks almost slavishly to his strategy of conservatism at all costs, refusing to swap his long irons for the driver as he resisted flirtation with Lytham’s 206 bunkers, but the approach succeeded only in increasing the deficit to Scott, the more enterprising Australian.

Why did he not take a few gambles? Why would he not try to intimidate Scott with his power-hitting? The questions were left hanging in the air on Saturday night, answerable only by Woods’s apparent assumption that Scott, still a flaky performer in the type of stiff winds forecast on Sunday, could yet falter. For a man five shots off the pace, though, that seems a bold supposition.

2012 Open Championship Round 3 Open Comment Thread

The sun was out, the wind is trying to blow and a key moving day at the 2012 Open Championship should provide for interesting viewing. Here's the current leaderboard.

The R&A's course setup notes and forecast:

Weather (provided on-site by the Met Office)

Fine and dry today with sunny spells and a gentle westerly breeze developing for this afternoon. West 5 to 10mph, becoming west to northwest later, Isolated gusts up to 15mph possible. High cloud amounts increasing this evening with a few spots of light rain possible overnight but no accumulations expected.

Cutting Regime and Green Speeds

The greens have increased in speed today. This morning, the greens were double cut at 3.25mm and they were rolled. The average pace this morning was 11 ½ feet on the stimpmeter, compared to 11.2 feet yesterday.

Bunkers
Many of the bunkers with casual water have dried out. However, despite pumping last night and again this morning, there is still casual water in approximately 8 bunkers, most notably right hand side of second green, left of 15^th green and left of 16^th green.

Total Course Yardage for Round Three (tee marker settings to flagstick)
7012 yards (as compared to the full yardage of 7086)

Hole-by-Hole Information
Hole 1 – Full yardage = 205y – Today = 198

Trickiest hole location so far for the first on left side behind front bunker

Hole 2 – Full yardage = 481y – Today = 482
Hole 3 – Full yardage = 478y – Today = 473

Mid right hole location should bring right hand greenside bunker into play

Hole 4 – Full yardage = 392y – Today = 384
Short left hole location that would have been used yesterday had it not been for the water in the bunkers left of the green

Hole 5 – Full yardage = 219y – Today = 208
Short right hole location may bring front right bunker into play

Hole 6 – Full yardage = 492y – Today = 496
Hole 7 – Full yardage = 592y – Today = 591
Hole 8 – Full yardage = 416y – Today = 405
Front right hole location may bring severe slope at front of green into play

Hole 9 – Full yardage = 165y – Today = 149
Hole 10 – Full yardage = 387y – Today = 377
Hole 11 – Full yardage = 598y – Today = 593
Hole 12 – Full yardage = 198y – Today = 200
Hole location on right hand tier for first time this Championship

Hole 13 – Full yardage = 355y – Today = 340
Interesting putting hole location at the front left of the green

Hole 14 – Full yardage = 444y – Today = 436
Hole 15 – Full yardage = 462y – Today = 465
Hole 16 – Full yardage = 336y – Today = 347
Hole 17 – Full yardage = 453y – Today = 450
Hole 18 – Full yardage = 413y – Today = 418
Back right hole location with a slope behind the hole will make for a difficult putt if the player is long

Tiger Bunker Shot Photo: Wrong Place, Right Time

Classic shot from Glyn Kirk of Getty Images who theoretically was in the worst possible spot to capture Tiger's 18th hole bunker hole-out, yet got the best image of Woods and the crowd.

Here's a Zapruder version of the shot and reaction.

The ESPN interview and highlight package:

Adam Scott, The Long Putter And 36-Holes To Go

The dreaded, seemingly non-conforming long putter and the act of bracing it against the torso is 36-holes away from capturing the third leg of its dreamed of Grand Governing Body Headache...errr Slam.

But for John Huggan, that's reason enough to root for someone other than Adam Scott.

Still, it is all but impossible to blame Scott for going down the long-putter alley, no matter how dark it might be. Before making the switch from short to long, the 31-year old Australian was approaching basket-case status on the greens. Now, he is a man transformed, someone who scoffs at even the slickest downhill left-to-right four-footer.

"My putting has improved out of sight," he admitted after his opening round of 64 here at Royal Lytham. "Two years ago I was 180th on the tour and now I'm pretty good. Better than average, I would say. So that's a big difference. A shot or two on average makes a big difference to my scorecard."

The ESPN highlights from round 2 and Scott's post round interview:

"They're deep with steep walls, much like a miniature swimming pool."

Doug Ferguson on the water bunkers at Lytham, where the saturated earth is sending ground water into many of the 205 pits, leading to some strange dilemmas.

No one said it was unfair. No one said the bunkers should have been declared out of play, as was the case for one bunker in the U.S Women's Open at Newport Country Club in 2006. After all, bunkers are supposed to be hazards.

These certainly were.

''A lot of bunkers out there are pretty much out of play,'' Branden Grace of South Africa said. ''That was the main goal for myself today, to stay out of them.''

Update on 2012-07-21 11:18 by Geoff

**The Telegraph's Matt Scott, quoting Graeme McDowell about the bunkers following a second round 69 that left him T5:

"I saw one in particular left of the 16th green, if you hit it in there, there’s nowhere to drop and there’s a foot of water. That’s not golf.

“It’s not fair. A few of these bunkers that are question marks need to be taken out of play. Hopefully they can get them dried out overnight.

“The golf course has remained unbelievably dry considering how much rain we’ve had. The bunkers are a little dodgy in some places, unfortunately.”

More On Surprising Karlsson's WD

Derek Lawrenson reveals just a bit more about Robert Karlsson's Wd earlier in the week and it seems it was more than just an issue with pre-shot routine.

How touching it was, then, to see Sergio Garcia consoling Robert Karlsson on the second fairway in practice, moments after an attack of the yips forced the Swede to withdraw. Garcia has conquered mental swing issues of his own in the past and spent 10 minutes with his arm round Karlsson's shoulder.

Stricker: "I bet if we really go back and look at each pin, there was half of them are up on a little knob."

Steve Stricker spoke candidly about Friday's setup at Royal Lytham and was not particularly enthused about what he saw as an extreme ratcheting up of the hole locations. Speaking after the round of the many holes cut on knobs:

No, I mean, but there was a lot of them like that.  There were.  I mean No. 15, you know, it's almost 500 yards and it's sitting basically up on a little deal like this.  If you go past it, it rolls away, and short of it you're putting up the hill.  But a lot of them are like that today, right on a little knob.

Asked by Alex Miceli if the R&A could claim the course setup was pre-planned early in the week and was merely his imagination, Stricker was emphatic.

No, because, you know what, it was so different from yesterday.  I mean yesterday was pretty fair, benign, you know, you could be aggressive to some of the pins.  It looked like even if you short‑sided some of your shots yesterday, you could get it up‑and‑down.  Today it was not the case at all.  I mean, I'm telling you, every pin was on a little knob.  Maybe they thought they were going to have casual water.  But ‑‑ no, I'm kidding.  I'm really kidding.  There's casual in the bunkers, but I don't think they'll have casual on the greens.  But there was that much of a difference.  It wasn't like one or two or three through the course of a round.  I bet if we really go back and look at each pin, there was half of them are up on a little knob.

Update on 2012-07-21 11:47 by Geoff

**My Golf World Daily item on Stricker and other players lamenting the R&A's hole locations Friday.