An event with a vast array of big names, located in an area blessed with golfing beauty and played on a links course?
I’m describing The Open, aren’t I? Or at least something resembling golf’s biggest event?
The ambiguity, and likely your common sense, are clues to say I’m not describing The Open Championship, and indeed not a major but with each passing minute and hour, it dawns on me I’m not at any old event this week.
I’ve had the privilege of attending The Players Championship this year and now the Genesis Scottish Open. One has the spiritual name of golf’s fifth major and the other should share this title.
Having grown up in the Southeast corner of Kent and now residing on the Northwest coast of Merseyside, I can’t describe the passion I have for the links. The whispy grass, the dunes imitating the ocean’s waves and the soft sand piled to the brim in hard bunkers.
Quite frankly, any event that is held on one of the UK’s many masterpieces is automatically elevated, so the Genesis Scottish Open has ticked this box with the ever-improving Renaissance Club.
So now for the players. 10 of the world’s top 15 players are in East Lothian this week and 10 of the top 15 players in the FedEx Cup rankings are too. Other than majors, only elevated PGA Tour events can boast better fields which sometimes offer $4 million to the winner, might I add.
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Is the fifth golf major really in Scotland?
In Scotland this week, a strong selection of the best golfers on the planet will be required to dodge traps, find spaces and hole putts that are alien to their everyday track on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. There is no limit to describing how unique links golf is and how it forces you, the club golfer and the professional, to think hard.
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This is not just an ode to the links, but an ode to the event. There is a buzz, an excitement. UK fans, who watch figures like Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, and Bryson DeChambeau week in-week out from afar and late at night, are starved of seeing them on the ground, in person. Hence, the excitement.
This is also not to take away from the Players at The stunning Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, the flagship event of the PGA Tour. The setting is grand and the fans can be thrilled at so many corners of that golf course where the championship has been so memorably won and lost in recent years.
It is rightfully regarded as a fifth major. You will be remembered if you win it. Perhaps this is the acid test: Will you be remembered if you win this tournament? With the Genesis Scottish Open, I think ‘Yes’ is becoming a louder and louder answer as the years go by.
Last week, I spoke to Louis Pargeter, the 15-year-old member of the Renaissance who captured a superb video of McIlroy’s piercing 2 iron into the 72nd hole at the 2023 Genesis Scottish Open. It was the shot of the year and the video of the year, and it was hit at what some could say was the tournament of the year. It had a grandstand finish anyway.
If we are pedantic for a moment, there won’t ever be a fifth major. The Players Championship is like 0.5 of a major, is that fair? I don’t see why the Genesis Scottish Open doesn’t have that status, or why it can’t have that status soon.
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If you don’t agree, you’ll have to answer to the RBC Canadian Open winner and European Ryder Cupper Bob MacIntyre (from Scotland) who I put the question to after the second round on Friday:
“It depends how you look at it. As an American, Americans will see The Players Championship as a fifth major because it’s got all of the top PGA Tour players. This week, we’ve got all of the best European Tour players and PGA Tour players.
“I’m a Scottish person and the Scottish Open is the one that I want to win. The Players, I’ll take it, but the Scottish Open is the one that at the end of my career I want to have.
“The Players would be nice, but if I’ve not got The Players in the bag, I’m not going to worry too much about it. If I don’t have a Scottish Open in the bag, I’ll be quite disappointed.”
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Genesis is the title sponsor of the Genesis Scottish Open, the first ever co-sanctioned event by DP World Tour and the PGA Tour. For more information visit www.genesis.com
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