The first round of The Open Championship at Royal Troon has come and gone and, as always, it delivered from a number of standpoints. Great golf course? Check. Challenging conditions? Check. Bad and lucky breaks and exciting links shots? Check. A variety and narrative-rich leaderboard? You guessed it.
This last point is pertinent. The Open Championship is genuinely ‘open’ and there are multiple routes to a place in the field. It’s the same situation with the US Open. Not only does this bring drama before the Major in question, but it really enhances the tournament proper.
Before The Open, there were 15 regional qualifying events. Those lucky enough to advance to final qualifying then fought it out for 16 spots across four great golf courses, including Burnham and Berrow.
The list of those securing their places for Troon was incredibly varied – ranging from former World No.1 and Major Champion Justin Rose to LIV Golf players, former PGA Tour winners and journeymen pros.
Not many people assessing the list of qualifiers would have spent too much time dwelling on the name of Dan Brown, but he thrust himself into the spotlight with a bogey-free opening 65 at Troon.
This is what’s so great about our game – a relatively unknown player (on the global stage at least) can temporarily become the focus of column inches, Google search queries and chit-chat at golf clubs all around the world. The same thing happened when Michael Block produced a performance for the ages at the 2023 PGA Championship.
You’d struggle to find anyone who thinks these storylines don’t enhance golf tournaments. Brown has missed six of his last eight cuts (he also withdrew once, too) and spent years playing on the EuroPro and Challenge Tours. In 2023, he won his first DP World Tour event at the ISPS Handa World Invitational. You simply have to root for someone like that.
We’re conditioned as humans to love an underdog story and Brown, in the context of a Major Championship field, is a rank outsider. But he led The Open after round one (and who knows, he might stay at or near the top of the leaderboard) and played better golf than Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau and Tiger Woods. He was 13 shots better than McIlroy on Thursday.
I’ve said many times before, and I’ll continue to say it for as long as anyone will listen, that lesser lights/journeymen/second- and third-tier professionals play such a huge part in golf tournaments.
If they force their way to the top of the leaderboard or contend for the title on Sunday, it produces excitement, passion and intrigue, especially when they’re up against some of the best players in the world. And if they don’t, it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t detrimentally affect the product or the viewing experience.
What has detrimentally affected most golf fans’ enjoyment of regular tour golf is the emergence of LIV Golf. Its lucrative, no-cut, closed-shop, 54-hole model has not only fragmented the men’s professional game – the DPWT and PGA Tour are tangibly weaker as a result – but it’s convinced everyone involved at the sport’s top level that money is the be all and end all.
The PGA Tour was forced to respond to assuage players who felt they deserved even more money for staying loyal. The result? A series of limited-field signature events – some with no cut, others with a pointless cut – with huge prize pools and mostly the same fields.
For the most part, these events have been dull and uninspiring. Great golf courses – like Bay Hill and Muirfield Village – feel empty for the first two rounds and excitement is contingent on a packed leaderboard, which is harder to come by with fewer players. Scottie Scheffler’s dominance hasn’t helped matters.
To be clear, I’m not opposed to limited-field events at the end of a season (even if I don’t love watching the Tour Championship). There should be a reward for playing consistently good golf throughout the course of a year. But in-season limited-field events should be abolished as far as I’m concerned.
The trouble is we’ve convinced ourselves that’s what people want because that’s what the top professionals want. They say it’s better for TV, better for sponsors and better for fans, but actually it’s just better for their pockets. They don’t want to share enormous prize pools with players who aren’t their equals and who don’t move the needle like they do.
Generally speaking, the more people in a field, the better. The Open has 156 players this year and tee times in the first two rounds start at 6.35am and finish at 4.27pm. The door is open for anyone to have the week of their life. What would you rather see: Dan Brown winning The Open or Scottie Scheffler landing his third Major title?
I genuinely hope signature events and LIV Golf are scrapped and things can go back to the way they used to be (with some improvements to the TV broadcast and some more innovation). Sadly, I don’t see that happening.
