
We started as the sun set and finished as the moon rose. Festooned with contrasting golds and greens and blues, ancient roads and stone walls crisscrossed a golf course so compelling it felt as if God built the earth around those 18 holes. Unfortunately, there were no cameras to make it appear lighter than it was.Ĭrail was a riptide of beauty. On both nights, we played until we couldn't see the golf ball and could barely see each other. To call them "the other courses nearby" is to do neither justice, for one could fly the Atlantic Ocean and have experienced the heart of Scotland in only those two tracks. Tuesday and Wednesday before The Open began, a group of friends and colleagues played a pair of courses, Crail and Elie, that stand in the shadows of St. What can be done? There are plenty of ideas - we discussed every iteration of them over pints last week - but no course of action may matter if money keeps getting flung at folks with a flippancy normally reserved for ceded 1-foot putts.Ĭan we reconcile that future? Can LIV live, and can we be OK with it? I've been convinced that it has some good components (the team portion is truly compelling on a secondary level), yet there's a vapidness to it that's difficult to shake - a soullessness that could not be more opposed to the Scottish spirituality of the game.
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There are rumblings of a Very Important Meeting at PGA Tour headquarters this week to discuss … what exactly? How to fight against a sovereign nation with endless wealth that could be on the verge of landing both the Open champ and one of the pieces the PGA Tour can least afford to lose, Hideki Matsuyama? The current presumed future of split tours and a mangled Ryder Cup is maddeningly bleak.
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Nobody knows the answer, at least not on a professional level. The weekend was a reprieve, but the question overheard at pubs, on the streets, inside the media center and even at the airport was unanimous: What in the world is going to happen to golf? LIV, of course, snaked its way through last week like the winding burn at the Old Course runs through its two most famous holes. If the folks running the now-ephemeral LIV Golf have their way, Golf in the Kingdom might mean something different over the next 20 years than it has for the last 200.

That phrase, much like the sport at a professional level, is completely under siege. There may have never been a grander union between land and man and sport. Those words likely evoke either one of the great experiences of your life or the hope of what's to come. Though the book is great and critically acclaimed, the synopsis can be found in that four-word title. "Golf in the Kingdom " by Michael Murphy is the type of book in which the title tells you all you need to know. Is anyone is ready for the nine months in between? It seems unfair that the last two holes of majors take just as much time as the first two, and then it's suddenly over with 262 days standing between Sunday of The Open and Thursday of the 2023 Masters. There is so much anticipation, so much energy, so many years fed into the previous week that the end can leave everyone involved in a staggered state of stupor. The Monday after majors is always sobering and maybe even hollow. This was the same leaderboard Rory McIlroy said he gazed upon from his hotel room at night, hopeful that his name would stay at the top of a structure that now contains nary a name at all.

It was a reminder that even the pomp and circumstance of a historical Open eventually fades away. At the top of the buoyantly yellow leaderboards, a handful of workers slowly and quietly began to remove the names and numbers that defined the 150th edition of this event.

With all the Open Championship regalia still intact, a curious scene unfolded at the 1st and 18th. Andrews regained their property and their sanity, a handful of the luckiest folks in Fife finished up their rounds. Monday afternoon at the Old Course, as the townspeople of St.
