Handicapping Time For The 2015 Open Championship

I’ve made my usual trip to Ladbrokes and William Hill storefronts after much consternation and study, though the pricing this year made wagers a tad more simple than recent Open Championships.

Here’s the up-to-the-minute spreadsheet of the various betting entities here in the UK where it’s perfectly legal to wager on the golf.

As for The Old Course, I talked with Todd Lewis about how the changes look and how it's playing. It's hard to imagine that a slightly greener course makes it much easier for those with less experience here, as it's the wind and angles players need to understand how to deal with. Which is why, as you'll see below, I am leaning towards good links players and those with good experiences here.

Heading in I have each way wagers that pay top 6 finishes on the following:

Rickie Fowler 20-1 - Placed that just an hour before his Scottish Open win.

Branden Grace 40-1 - Tremendous record on the Old Course

Phil Mickelson 33-1 - Will reliably hang around and hope the putter gets hot.

Marc Warren 150-1 - Final round 64 in the Scottish Open almost got him to a playoff

Geoff Ogilvy 200-1 - Prepped at Barnbougle, loves the Old Course, solid week at Chambers Bay.

Few other prices were very enticing, though Justin Rose's pre-tournament confidence (Mark Tallentire reports for The Guardian) in his track record over the Old Course and the state of the game makes him an attractive 25-1 option, despite his Open Championship record as a pro.

I'm also going to check in on some missed-cut opportunities, as they've been good to me in the past. But as of yesterday the various entities weren't offering anything on that front.

For some other ideas, the tour two sites (go figure) offer some good options. EuropeanTour.com's five players to keep an eye on is here, and PGATour.com's usual group offers their views.

Update on 2015-07-15 14:19 by Geoff

**Forgot to mention the luck of the draw. Will the late-early or early-late times be affected more?

The current forecast calls for light winds Thursday morning gradually picking up as the day goes, with gusts up to 25 mph.

Friday's forecast is dire, with heavy rain forecasted overnight and into early play. Winds are expected to strengthen as the day goes with a direction change throughout the day. Gusts of 40 mph are possible, "particularly late afternoon and evening."

Good luck with that!

Video: A Visit To Old Tom's Shop

The Links Trust has reimagined the historic Old Tom Morris shop at St. Andrews with a new clothing line and many of the shop design features exposed after years of layer-upon-decorating layer.

The storefront today looks eerily close to what it looked like in his day:

The result is very special place to go for worshippers of Old Tom. Getting to walk on the original stone floors of his most prominent and final shop is an honor. But to see markings left over from the club making days is a bit like stumbling on an archaelogical site:

And it's irresistable to not at least touch the dinged up wood counter top where Old Tom and his artisans finished clubs over looking the 18th green that he created (a view that had long been mysteriously covered by recent shop lessees). The playground, workspace and house of worship for the first and most important Golf God. (Don't forget all of the storied visitors who walked those floors too, from Bobby Jones to A.W. Tillinghast to C.B. Macdonald, for starters).

For a Golf Channel segment this week, I was joined by Laurie Watson of the Links Trust and Roger McStravick, author of a beautiful new book on Old Tom Morris. We chatted about the significance of the shop as a place to remember the man who is more responsible for shaping the game than any single figure in our sport.

Video: Old Course Fifteenth And Sixteenth Hole Flyovers

"Cartgate (in)" at the Old Course looks narrower than ever to me and the green is one of the most intricate on the course. Aim at the church steeple, so the locals say, and place your drive through Miss Grainger's Bosoms (named for Miss Agnes Grainger). Still, at 455 yards anything avoiding trouble off the tee sets this up as a birdie opportunity if a player has a good sense of this large green.

The video:



"Corner of the Dyke" is one of the best spectator holes here, as fans lean on the boundary fence and are withing just yards of the players hitting their approaches. The Principal's Nose is just 220 yards or so to carry on this 418-yard hole.  The key bunker to avoid is Deacon Sime, about 290 off the tee.

The video:

Tiger Would Love To Play The Old Course In Reverse

Tiger revealed in his 144th Open Championship press conference he's still "right here in front of you" and insisted he's not done.

But more fun for golf junkies, he revealed that he would love to play the Old Course in reverse, as they do every April 1st.

Ewan Murray of the Guardian with the Tiger news from St. Andrews:

Of St Andrews, Woods added: “Obviously it’s the home of golf, we all know that. But to me it’s brilliant, how you can play it so many different ways. I’ve always wanted to play it backwards, one time before I die. I want to play from 1 to 17, 2 to 16, so forth and so on. I  think that would be just a blast because I can see how certain bunkers – why would they put that there? And then if you play it backwards, you see it. It’s very apparent. That’s totally in play. That one day would be a lot of fun to be able to do.”

Jeremy Glenn filed this excellent look at the reverse Old Course for GolfClubAtlas.com

One Day Olympic Golf Test Event On The Docket For 2016

Though generally thought to have needed to be a year out from the Games, the International Golf Federation has pushed a rumored test event for Olympic golf from Thanksgiving weekend to closer to the games.

Alex Miceli reports from The Open where officials revealed that when the even it s played, it'll be a one-day event and sounds more like a contractual obligation than any kind of serious competition. This should ensure that the

The International Olympic Committee had scheduled a test event for the last week of November, but after a thorough review by the PGA Tour agronomy staff and IGF representatives in June, the IGF recommended that the test event be delayed until early 2016.

“We think it would be better to have the test event take place after having had the benefit of a second grow-in season,” IGF vice president Ty Votaw said during a news conference at St. Andrews, site of this week’s British Open. Votaw, a PGA Tour executive, added that the timeline was a better fit “taking into consideration the availability of players, world-class players, on a November-December time frame.”

Recap Of The Opens At St. Andrews

Doug Ferguson has put together capsules on all of the previous Open Championships at St. Andrews.

This was fun:

1876: In one of the most bizarre endings, Bob Martin and David Strath finished at 169. On the 17th, Strath's third shot hit a player in the group ahead that was putting out, keeping the ball from going on the road. The committee decided there would be a playoff in two days, enough time to review whether Strath should be disqualified for hitting to the hole while players were still on the green. Strath refused to take part in a playoff under such conditions, and Martin was declared the winner.