Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we still have the same number of U.S. Opens as Scottie Scheffler — but we’re losing ground everywhere else. To the news:
I’m on a direct flight home from Dublin to Seattle, which takes a shockingly northern route, so I’m currently cruising over some fascinating, seemingly uninhabitable stretch of Northern Canada, on the lookout for Santa Claus. (Nunavut, I think? Is that Qikiqtarjuaq I see out the window?!) But my mind is stuck in Northern Ireland. It was a joy to spend the week at Royal Portrush, to be at the Open, to witness a little slice of history, to soak in peak summer from such a special summer place. This weekend I wrote a little about Scottie and a little about Rory — now, for this Monday Finish, I’m here to empty my notebook with a few sights, sounds, joys, gripes and takes before we put this men’s major season to bed.
The towns get smaller as you head north from Dublin towards Country Antrim; from the airport the easiest route is a bus to Belfast’s Grand Central Station and then a train to Coleraine followed by a smaller train to Portrush. Things get greener as you go. The cow count goes up. Your blood pressure goes down. There’s something about the rhythm of a train that’s good for the soul, and when you can walk from the train right into town that’s even better. There are a lot of good trains on the Open rota. That’s an excellent thing.
This feels like a slightly needier request, but after a week commuting by walk-across-the-beach it’s going to be tough to get used to anything else. Portrush (in good weather) is a fun, cheery little beach town, filled with bars and restaurants and arcades and ice cream shops. But the really cool thing is the way its “town centre” — which includes the Harbour Bar, the center of the social scene, which you likely saw on the broadcast — sticks out into the ocean, a jagged peninsula flanked by wide, flat, welcoming beaches. And if you cut directly across one of those beaches you just so happen to get to one of the best golf courses in the world. At every Open venue, the walk from course to town means something special and different. This walk is better than most.
But his name sure was. Several times I heard groups of lads breaking into Rory chants outside the bars or on their walks home, like he was their favorite football club. I wrote on Sunday that McIlroy seems clearly to mean more to Northern Ireland than any other golfer would to their respective home crowd — this felt like strong supporting evidence.
(Sidenote: Jon Rahm actually was at the bar…)
From what I can tell, just about everybody loves Royal Portrush. It’s challenging. It’s scenic. There’s a ton of variety. And it plays “fair”. (Pros understandably care about that last one more than viewers.) Golf fans hoping for carnage were likely disappointed by the weekend’s benign weather, which led to uncharacteristically low scores. But several different players mentioned that it’s jumped immediately into their top three Open venues. (Their consensus: St. Andrews, Portrush and a wild-card third.) There’s talk of adding a stop at Portmarnock in Dublin, which would be awesome — but I hope the Open comes back here soon, too. I’d just ask for a little bit more wind when they do.
This is the sort of ridiculous story that could only happen in golf, but it’s sort of interesting for that reason, too: Heading into the tournament, the R&A made a change to its bunker-raking policy. Rather than each group having a designated raker, as has been tradition, this year they decided to leave the raking to the caddies. I understand a couple possible explanations: it’d be nice to limit the number of people inside the ropes, plus isn’t bunker-raking an integral part of the caddie’s weekly job, anyway? But given an already sluggish pace and given these rakes have particularly wide tooths (yes, this is real), the process takes a little longer here than in your typical Tour bunker.
In one high-profile incident, Tommy Fleetwood ended up standing in a footprint at No. 5 on Thursday. And caddie-raking is something that you don’t really notice until you do; on No. 17 on Sunday, Rory McIlroy for at least two minutes after finishing out on No. 17 as his caddie Harry Diamond perfected his rake job. The caddies and even players I talked to said they’d like to see the rakers reinstated, that it was a great tradition of this tournament. They’re biased, of course.
The new prince of the linksland, Chris Gotterup, won last week’s Scottish Open and finished third at Portrush. Everything is now on the table — Tour Championship? Ryder Cup?! — but on Sunday night he confirmed something important: he does not consider Scottie Scheffler a New Jersey golfer. Scheffler was born in Jersey and spent the first six years of his life there but his family has called Dallas home ever since; Gotterup said that makes him Dallas, through and through. As a result Gotterup is the clear top dog in New Jersey golf. That should make him a particular fan favorite if he tees it up at Bethpage in two months.
Viktor Hovland went to see Giant’s Causeway on Saturday night, a breathtaking and bizarre set of cliffside geologic formations. Hovland is as curious as they come; he’s likely the only Tour pro to go see Shawshank prison multiple times while in Ohio for the Memorial, for instance. So it was no surprise that he posted a picture of the Causeway’s strange hexagonal basalt columns to his Instagram story on Saturday, captioned, “aliens”.
I asked him about the visit post-round Sunday (after he’d finished answering several questions, somewhat despondently, about his T63) and he lit up, though he clarified the “aliens” thing was a joke.
“There was some pretty good lore about some giants, though,” he said.
In the last several years Haotong Li has been so embattled with swing yips off the tee that he has considered giving up the game. To make a long story short: it’s good he didn’t! Because on Sunday he played alongside Scheffler in the final tee time in the final round of a major.
Li admitted something interesting on the eve of battle: he was ready to play free.
“Nothing to lose,” he said. “Especially from two years ago, swing yips, couldn’t even pull the trigger until now. It’s a massive step for me.
Li admitted that he didn’t expect to catch Scheffler from four shots back — “playing for second, especially playing with [Scheffler]. I’ll just try to play my best out there and hopefully make something happen.
I want to write more about this, so I won’t go too deep, but just know how cool it was that my mom and her sister planned an Irish adventure that centered on a pair of Friday tickets to Portrush. The absolute highlight of my week. More to come.
I write this every major, but I cannot believe these guys finish an event like this and then just go do it again the following week. Granted, the very top tier aren’t playing the 3M Open, but the likes of Gotterup, Mav McNealy and Sam Burns headline a pretty deep field chasing valuable points. Not me — I’m headed home.
Things just started to get very real.
Team USA faces a slew of new questions after Sunday’s results at Portrush. Is Harris English a lock after his T2? Is Gotterup a serious contender after finishing third? Is there legitimate concern around Collin Morikawa? Did Ben Griffin peak early? Could J.J. Spaun slip outside the top six and if so, what are his chances? Does captain Keegan Bradley need one more top finish to pick himself? At the moment it feels like there are five locks — Scheffler, Schauffele, DeChambeau, Henley, Thomas — and then a whole bunch of guys who will look to prove their worth come playoff time.
Team Europe didn’t experience the same level of shake-up but its core remains rock-solid. One interesting plot point was both Hojgaard twins, Rasmus (No. 7) and Nicolai (No. 25) in and around contention for much of the week, though they faded slightly to T14 and T16. Harry Hall (No. 24) is another promising pro who’s further down the rankings than he feels like he should be. Matt Fitzpatrick made the biggest move of all, though — he’s up to No. 13 and trending better every day.
1. Scheffler 2. Schauffele 3. Spaun 4. Henley 5. DeChambeau 6. English 7. Thomas 8. Morikawa 9. Griffin 10. Bradley 11. McNealy 12. Harman 13. Novak 14. Cantlay 15. Burns
1. McIlroy 2. MacIntyre 3. Fleetwood 4. Hatton 5. Lowry 6. Straka 7. R. Hojgaard 8. Rose 9. Aberg 10. Hovland 11. Detry 12. Wallace 13. Fitzpatrick 14. J. Smith 15. Norgaard
Complete standings here.
Monday Finish HQ.
I have no news to provide other than I’m excited to re-enter real life. And I’ll triple down on my gratitude that Seattle has a direct flight to Dublin. It’s the little things.
We’ll see you next week!
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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