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Top Storylines from Day 3 at The Open Championship

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Once again, a delay greatly impacted play at the Open Championship.

On Friday, there was a three-hour stoppage because of rain and on Saturday that delay jumped to nearly TEN-AND-A-HALF HOURS due to heavy winds.

Played was suspended at 7:32 a.m. local time (after 32 minutes of golf) and resumed around 6 p.m. There was only enough time for the remaining groups left to finish their second rounds, so not much action to parse through.

Regardless, here are a couple of headlines to take away from this odd day.

Dustin Johnson Remains out in Front

We finally have 36 holes in the books (the third round will resume at 8:15 a.m. local time Sunday with twosomes off of No. 1 tee, the final round will be contested on Monday), and Dustin Johnson is still your leader.

The 31-year-old American closed out his final five holes in even par, posting a birdie and a bogey en route to a 10-under 36-hole total, which puts him in the lead by one.

He controversially had to play two holes in sketchy conditions, but he retains his top post. Oddly, despite his many major contentions, this is Johnson’s first 36-hole lead at a major. We’ll see if the redemption story he is authoring right now will have a happy ending in two days.

The R&A vs. the Weather

This is really the main storyline today.

It’s easy to bash the R&A and plenty of people are doing it (the players especially). I’ll preface then by saying, the organization did some things right.

For one, the R&A was correct to delay play for this lengthy period. The balls were rolling on the greens after players had already marked them and placed them back.

The craziest example came at the expense of Louis Oosthuizen.

To force players to deal with that would be patently unfair.

Brendon Todd made a good point about the fear of the ball potentially moving back into the putter at address (which would cost the player a stroke).

Also, if the ball blows away further from the hole like it did with Oosthuizen, players must putt from the longer distance, even though the ball originally stopped closer to the hole minutes before.

The R&A came out correct as well in halting play as soon as possible at the 11th hole, as that green was the most exposed and clearly unplayable very soon in the action.

However, there was plenty that went wrong.

Play started at 7 a.m. and went on for about 30 minutes in the fierce wind. It was a curious decision to play in the first place considering the conditions proved quite quickly to be unplayable.

The R&A came up with this explanation:

If you trust this reasoning, well, the R&A is not out of the clear. After all, the 11th green proved too exposed almost instantly and play was halted there while it continued elsewhere on the golf course. Weird. It’s tough to justify having some players battle the conditions while others remain put. Even if just one hole is unplayable, the action should be suspended.

Most egregious, though, was that St. Andrews should have been designed to remain playable even in these high winds. It has for centuries in the past. The greens are kept slow in anticipation that strong winds will come and balls won’t move because the surfaces aren’t slick.

Well, Brendan Porath of SB Nation put it best, these St. Andrews greens that should be stimping at 6, 7 or 8 were pretty much at 10. That is way too fast for a links that should hold these winds fine.

Also, remember how the R&A restructured that 11th green in order to avoid wind delays? Welp, that green was still the biggest culprit in this wind suspension.

Now, we have the full third round on Sunday and an Open that is finishing on Monday. Part of this is the product of weather the R&A can’t control. But some of it is the R&A’s mishandling of the situation.

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Kevin's fascination with the game goes back as long as he can remember. He has written about the sport on the junior, college and professional levels and hopes to cover its proceedings in some capacity for as long as possible. His main area of expertise is the PGA Tour, which is his primary focus for GolfWRX. Kevin is currently a student at Northwestern University, but he will be out into the workforce soon enough. You can find his golf tidbits and other sports-related babble on Twitter @KevinCasey19. GolfWRX Writer of the Month: September 2014

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Chuck

    Jul 19, 2015 at 2:28 pm

    For anyone seriously interested in the fine points of golf equipment, this post by Geoff Shackelford at his blog is required reading:

    http://www.geoffshackelford.com/homepage/2015/7/18/old-course-news-pushing-green-speeds-to-the-brink.html

    The Saturday wind delay was directly related to green speeds. And green speeds are directly related to modern standard tricks with golf architecture, intended to protect par (never mind the overall integrity of the character of play in general) from ever-increasing distances produced by equipment technology.

  2. You're worse than Ben

    Jul 18, 2015 at 9:07 pm

    Why did you leave tiger missing the cut out
    That’s what we wanted you to write about
    So we could comment “why does everything have to be about him”
    I feel cheated

    • other paul

      Jul 19, 2015 at 12:38 am

      Yeah, where are the poor Tiger stories?

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