That’s twice in the last three seasons that the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship hasn’t made it to the end.
Bob MacIntyre won the shortened 54-hole Pro-Am on Sunday afternoon after battling the same attritional weather that Matt Fitzpatrick faced when lifting the trophy in Scotland two years ago.
The second round was squeezed into the books on its last page on Saturday morning, and there were 20 minutes played of the third round when the wind put pay to that idea.
In 2023, the Old Course at St Andrews was virtually underwater, and Storm Amy contributed to chopping a quarter of the popular links championship last week. Surely this all points to a wider issue with this event.
If we are going to hold it at the home of golf, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, maybe we shouldn’t play it during a time of the calendar when there is no good weather for the foreseeable future.
We might grow tired of the world’s best rarely playing in adverse conditions and sauntering around ideal, green, A.I.-like facilities, but the Dunhill has fallen victim again to the extreme end of the spectrum. It’s time for a change.
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Weather-wise, let’s reschedule this event. Why not showcase these links beauties in their best light in the summer, allowing the players to prepare for The Open? A links swing, if you wish. Why not run it consecutively with the Irish Open and the Scottish? I’m good at this.
Golf course-wise, they’re essentially naked, exposed. When they’re in a soft state of defencelessness, whereby shooting 7-under through three rounds is good enough for tied for 40th, and 18-under is the winning score after three rounds, they aren’t themselves.
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We have the Sanderson Farms Championship for our fix of pitch-and-putt in the pro game.
The Old Course, in particular, is at the centre of the distance debate and is one of many venues that fans believe becomes obsolete when the big, bad hitters of the game’s best tours roll into town.
Then there’s the Pro-Am. The week Bill Murray, Piers Morgan and Kevin Pietersen wait for all year round. They book these four days in their diaries before their waterproof trousers can dry from the previous year.
I like having fun, and other people are allowed to have fun. But four rounds of celebrity amateurs? Really? Sir Andy Murray plays golf, don’t you know?
The format dictates that 168 players are paired with a Pro-Am partner. A 54-hole cut puts the top 60 and ties in the championship leaderboard through to the final round, plus the top 20 leading teams.
They aren’t all celebrities, I should say. Fitzpatrick won the team event with his mother in 2023. That was heart-warming, so maybe we should just do family members, or someone of sentimental value to the competitors.
Don’t worry about offending Boyzone’s Ronan Keating, or Dragon’s Den’s Peter Jones, or horse racing’s AP McCoy. Let them play 36 holes at most. Then, get down to business and let the field fight for the title at the weekend.
It’s always a good field, too. MacIntyre, Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson were a handful of top stars battling the elements.
The event isn’t being done justice in its current form, which includes a mightily bloated field, at golf courses which take hours to play with redundant qualities, and during a time of year when scoring is astronomically low and the weather is completely miserable.
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