PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – We have a long way to go here at the British Open, but the lines have been drawn, and before they get washed away, let’s be clear: This is a battle between Yes, Please and No, Thank You.
Rory McIlroy? Scottie Scheffler? Yes, please.
Brian Harman? Matthew Jordan? No, thank you.
This is not a character assessment or even a rooting interest. It’s a theatrical question. Over the last 15 major championships, McIlroy and Scheffler have combined for four wins and nine other top-five finishes, yet they have never gone toe-to-toe down the stretch against each other. This is as good a time as any. No golfer anywhere is as beloved as McIlroy in Northern Ireland, except perhaps Phil Mickelson in Phil Mickelson’s car, and no golfer anywhere is as likely to be unaffected by the roars for somebody else as Scheffler.
McIlroy followed his opening 70 with a 69 to get to 3 under par. Given the conditions for much of his round—sunny with no chance of the wind knocking your hat off—the 69 was good but not great.
“I feel like I maybe could be a couple closer to the lead,” McIlroy said, “but overall in a decent position heading into the weekend.”
McIlroy carries the hopes of a nation, but he needn’t worry about the hopes of Team Yes, Please. The roster is deep, and there are enough recognizable names hanging around the leaderboard to give fans hope that one of them will win.
Jordan Spieth, Ludvig Åberg and Viktor Hovland played the first two rounds together as part of the R&A’s new directive to group players by cheekbone, and they all smiled their way into rounds in the 60s. Åberg is two under for the week, Spieth and Hovland are at even par, and since you asked, we absolutely are overdue for Spieth to chip out of a bush, off the grandstand and into the hole on his way to a 65 at a major.
Hey, if Haotong Li or Rasmus Hojgaard wins the Claret Jug, then good for them. But it would be a lot more fun if they had to beat a big name to do it. We definitely do not need a repeat of the 2023 Open, when the slow-playing Harman meandered away from the field, leaving the local media to ask probing questions about his hunting habit, as though nobody in the British isles has ever shot a cute little defenseless animal. Harman opened this Open with a 69-65, pleasing his hat sponsor, MegaCorp, and its umbrella organization, The End of the World. If he wins this week, he should announce that he is now a mushroom-foraging vegan, just for the comedy.
Speaking of comedy: Tommy Fleetwood hit his tee shot on the 18th hole Friday into the right rough, which was also the wrong rough, thick enough to make him hit a provisional. That was not funny—Fleetwood comes off the bench for Team Yes, Please—but what happened next was.
While Fleetwood surveyed his lie, and McIlroy and Justin Thomas waited by their balls, the sky opened up. It poured so hard that Thomas—who had one swing left in his day—put on a full rain suit. It was like putting on your ski suit to check the mail. (Thomas, by the way, went to Alabama and lives in Florida—two of the five rainiest states in the U.S.) Meanwhile, Fleetwood kept walking around, trying to figure out what to do, as though he had not noticed it was raining.
As Fleetwood, McIlroy and Thomas walked to the green, the crowd chanted “Ole … Ole-ole-ole,” Ryder Cup-style, and that, friends, is why Keegan Bradley is on Team Yes, Please. Bradley, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain, is in the clubhouse at four-under, and if he is battling a European for the Claret Jug on Sunday, it will be a Ryder Cup kind of atmosphere. Now that would be fun.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as If Things Break Just Right, This British Open Finish Could Be Epic.
