IT doesn’t feel quite right, does it? We’ve only just hit the halfway stage in the calendar and yet we’re on the brink of the final major championship of 2024. It’s all over far too quickly – crammed into a window barely more than 15 weeks long – but, nonetheless, the tournaments that truly define a player’s career have been a magnificent advertisement for the game.
It began with confirmation of Scottie Scheffler’s quality at the Masters, it included the World No. 1’s bizarre brush with the law in a PGA Championship that witnessed Xander Schauffele’s redemption from a series of near-misses and then, at the US Open, Rory McIlroy first mounted a remarkable charge for the line and then unravelled in front of our eyes.
Throughout it all, Bryson DeChambeau has been a brilliant constant. His challenge at Augusta National lasted 36 holes, at Valhalla he never wilted but came up just short, at Pinehurst he threatened to let McIlroy off the hook before playing one of the sport’s greatest-ever shots to land a second major championship triumph.
What do the majors have left for us in 2024? Hopefully there is plenty more drama and the site of this year’s quest for the Claret Jug, Royal Troon on the west coast of Scotland, has form for generating compelling narratives.
It first hosted in 1923 when the Englishman Arthur Havers holed a greenside bunker shot for birdie at the 72nd hole to deny the great Walter Hagen. 27 years later two titans of Open golf – South Africa’s Bobby Locke and Argentina’s Robert De Vicenzo – scrapped to the line before Locke claimed the second of his four titles.
1962 witnessed Arnold Palmer’s second Open title and the championship debut of Jack Nicklaus. The latter finished T34th but it would be another 19 Opens before he once again finished outside the top 12. In the 1973 tournament the 71-year-old Gene Sarazen made a hole-in-one at the famous par-3 8th hole better known as The Postage Stamp and Tom Weiskopf wiped the floor with the field.
A pattern of US dominance had set in and Tom Watson would maintain it in 1982, chasing down the five-shot halfway leader Bobby Clampett who limped home with rounds of 78-77. The stars and stripes were flying high again in 1989 and 1997 when first Mark Calcavecchia defeated the Aussies Greg Norman and Wayne Grady in the Open’s first-ever four-hole aggregate score play-off, and then Justin Leonard denied Jesper Parnevik.
Few picked the identity of the most recent US winner at Troon. Todd Hamilton was a Japan and Asian Tour specialist, a relentless winner on those circuits in fact, and he’d also claimed the Honda Classic earlier in the year but most overlooked his chances. Ernie Els played magnificent golf down the stretch to shake off Phil Mickelson but Hamilton wouldn’t budge and nor did he wilt in the play-off. Els, on the other hand, was flat in extra holes and handed the Claret Jug to his unheralded opponent.
And so to Royal Troon 2016 and the greatest Open duel of them all, when Phil Mickelson thrashed the field by 11 shots but one man did better: Henrik Stenson, who finished three shots clear of him. Some will baulk at the suggestion that this head-to-head was better than Jack Nicklaus versus Tom Watson at Turnberry in 1977 but Nicklaus himself rates 2016 higher and who are we to argue with that?
What can we expect this year? Fingers crossed for more of the same with regard to both 2024 major form and Troon’s history. We’re hopefully set for a cracker. Moreover, with the column picking two big-priced champions in the last four Opens (Shane Lowry and Brian Harman), and also tipping last week’s Scottish Open winner Robert MacIntyre, we’re in form.
Each Way – Tom Kim
Korea’s Tom Kim is an extraordinary golfer (he turned 22 at the end of last month and yet he’s been a pro since May 2018) and an extraordinary character (one who named himself after the fictional train that potters around the island of Sodor). More importantly, he’s thrived quickly and impressively at every level in the pro ranks, and that goes for the majors and linksland golf too. In the former he’s landed top 30s in his first two Masters appearances, he’s 3-for-3 at finishing top 30 at the US Open and he was tied second in the Open last year.
That latter effort came after he had made the cut in his Open debut and also recorded two top six finishes in the Scottish Open. Moreover, he landed that major championship career-best despite having a serious foot injury and also leaving himself behind the 8-ball with a 74 in the first round. He sniffed around the top 10 in last month’s US Open, lost a play-off to Scheffler a week later and closed last week’s Scottish Open with a 64 and T15th. A great adventure is well within his grasp at Troon.
Each Way – Jon Rahm
The top of the market doesn’t make a lot of appeal. Scheffler is brilliant but the bunkers have hurt many a contender at Troon and it remains a weakness of his. McIlroy bounced back from Masters agony in 2011 with victory in his next major, but he’s a short price for man with so much baggage. Ludvig Aberg is clearly a wonderful golfer but another who is short, while Schauffele, Morikawa and DeChambeau would appeal on the right side of 20s, but they’re the wrong side of it. Jon Rahm isn’t, however.
There will be many who baulk at this idea. The Spaniard has, after all, been chunteringly unhappy ever since he won the Masters last April and immediately had to play an event he would not have entered were the PGA Tour not battling LIV. Those frustrations have morphed into a general sense of being lost at his new LIV home and his 2024 majors have regressed from a poor defence of the green jacket, to a missed cut at Valhalla, to a week spent with an infected foot in the air whilst not at Pinehurst.
But might that be what he need to turn things around – sitting watching what he desperately wants to do?! He’s a two-time major champion, he’s finished third and second in his last three Opens, he’s won twice on the links (in the Irish Open), he was third two starts ago and T10th last week on a course he loves but which he isn’t a great fit for. The right side of 20s, he can contend again in a major.
Each Way – Eric Cole
We’ll add a bolter in the shape of Eric Cole. He’s yet to win on the PGA Tour but he did lose a play-off in the Honda Classic and that event does have a little link with the Open because plenty of golfers have recorded top two results in both, not least Todd Hamilton. That might well be coincidence, as might the fact that the pair are the two oldest winners of the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year title – but that record was discussed last year when Cole lifted that gong and might it play with his subconscious?
He’s also the son of former PGA Tour star Bobby Cole who was the then-youngest Amateur Championship winner in 1966 and led the 1975 Open through 54 holes. The family are also friends with the Palmer family – and Palmer defended the Claret Jug at Troon. There’s no doubt he’s an outsider but he was fifth after 54 holes in last year’s Scottish Open and carded a 64 in the second round last week. Before then he was bang in the hunt at both the Rocket Mortgage and John Deere Classics. Toss in that inspiration and an exciting week is not beyond him.
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