Getting Ready For Three Weeks Of Links Golf

Thursday's kick-off of the Ricoh Women's British Open and the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open will be followed by The Open and finally, the Senior British Open.

With the Ryder Cup headed to an inland Jack Nicklaus design, this is our first and only chance to soak up links golf. I set up the next three weeks in this Loop post and add some pithy lines from the great Bernard Darwin to whet your appetite. I also added this short post on the wackiest entrance drive I've ever seen, the one-lane road to Royal Aberdeen's next door neighbor, Murcar.

As for Royal Aberdeen's Balgownie course, it's a sensational links with a brutal outgoing nine and a more reasonable incoming nine that is marred slightly by a modified 12th green (Martin Hawtree) and a bland 17th hole. The penultimate hole is not poor, it's just that the club's shorter Silverburn course's sporty 17th sits next to the Balgownie 17th and easily could be confused as the hole you are supposed to go to after the 16th. I've included it at the tail end of this slideshow from 2012 when the course was especially lush from spring rains.

Coverage of the Scottish Open starts Thursday on Golf Channel in the U.S., with 90 minutes each weekend day airing on NBC.

Rory: "Nonsense" That "Strained" GMac Friendship An Issue

Martin Dempster reports on Rory McIlroy shooting down any tensions with Graeme McDowell over his claims against Horizon Sports Management. He also denies that the lawsuit's timing was orchestrated to put a damper on GMac's wedding.

However, he needed to come up with a more believable excuse than this...

It is also claimed McIlroy’s team referred to McDowell’s marriage in emails as “D-Day”. McIlroy’s team has denied this, insisting the “D-Day” references related to the day when the lawsuit would be filed and that the date was selected due to a “simple gap” that emerged in his busy schedule.

McIlroy did use the strained word, so take his assurances that this is not a tension-creator with a grain...

“I am still as close to him (McDowell),” said McIlroy on a visit to East Lothian yesterday to officially open the world’s first Nike’s performance facility at Archerfield Links, where he stayed during last year’s Open Championship at Muirfield. “There’s obviously been a few things that have gone on that have strained the relationship, but I still talk to him regularly and catch up with him.

“He has stayed out of everything as much as he can and there’s no ill feeling towards him in any way from my side. He’s been one of my best friends on Tour and showed me the ropes. I will always be grateful for what he’s done and for going out of his way to make me feel comfortable out here.”

The Guy Who Defeated Michelle Wie When She Was 11

Scott Lipsky leads off some U.S. Senior Open notes with an item on Doug Williams, making his Senior Open debut and who, at 43, faced an 11-year-old Michelle Wie in the Hawaii State Amateur Match Play Championship.

Lipsky writes:

“At 11 years old, she had an unbelievable swing, she hit the ball farther than any woman I had ever seen, and almost as far as the guys,” said Williams of Wie, who had already won the state women’s stroke-play championship and had made her USGA championship debut a year earlier in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links at age 10. “It was a bit of a circus, there were about 50 people watching. Her family was there, Hawaii press, national press.”

Wie tees off Thursday at Royal Birkdale in the Ricoh Women's British Open as the reigning U.S. Women's Open champ.