I’ve been hearing all over the place that the rough at Turnberry this week is ‘savage’. When people used to playing on west-Scotland links claim the rough is like a jungle, then you’d sure as hell better not be missing many fairways!
Tiger Woods has 3 Open titles to his name- 2 at St Andrews in dry and (comparitively) calm conditions, and 1 at Hoylake when things weren’t much more difficult. With missing fairways likely to be so penal at Turnberry this week, I’m finding Woods fairly easy to oppose. The main problem is with whom, given some of the more obvious choices (Garcia, Harrington etc) can’t be backed with much confidence.
I’m liking the look of Steve Stricker, and have already helped myself to some 50, with a small insurace bet for a Top-10 finish. He’s better than ever this year, winning last week to emphasise the point, and has made the top 10 in the last 2 Championships in both ‘easy’ (Carnoustie) and ‘difficult’ (Birkdale) conditions. However, possibly the main issue behind my backing of Stricker is his approach off the tee. If I’m reading my stats off pgatour.com correctly, he’s only used the big dog 106 times out of a possible 736 this season, and that sort of patient approach looks destined to do well this week.