TROON, SCOTLAND | The Indian independence activist Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of western civilisation. “I think it would be a good idea,” he replied, and much the same might be said of the Scottish summer.
The first round of this year’s Open Championship at Royal Troon Golf Club was played beneath grey skies, the second round in a ferocious wind, and then the leaders contested the third round in a miserable downpour.
The idea that all of this was taking place in July was, quite frankly, a nonsense and, at times, so was the golf.
Between them, the post-cut field managed to record every number from 1 to 9 on at least one hole while 36-hole pace-setter Shane Lowry rounded off his day by nearly visiting the Marine Hotel from the 18th tee, and then scuttling his approach down a viewing platform at the front of a final green grandstand on his way to falling three back of the lead.
Not that American Billy Horschel will much care about this havoc.
After three rounds of action at Royal Troon, the 37-year-old Floridian leads the final major of 2024 on 4-under 209, one shot clear of South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence, Americans Sam Burns, Russell Henley and Xander Schauffele, and England’s Justin Rose and Daniel Brown, with world No. 1-ranked Scottie Scheffler of the U.S. a further shot in arrears.
It was a truly chaotic day, one in which Lawrence teed off fully 3 hours and 10 minutes ahead of the final pair and played a significant chunk of his 6-under-par 65 in dry and windless conditions.
Justin Thomas, who had started 50 minutes before Lawrence, posted a 67 that eventually would leap him 28 places up the leaderboard, to T10 on level-par. “You could feel it getting cold,” he said of the latter stages of his round. “You could smell the rain coming. It was quite bizarre.”
Those early finishers – Burns and Henley among them – returned to hotels and rented accommodation to warm their toes, dry their clothes, and cackle as the late starters tried to maintain dignity and scores wrapped in jumpers, rain jackets and, occasionally, sagging brollies.
Horschel flipped his cap backward, stuck his head down and plotted a route around a course that is a brutal enough test without nature flinging mayhem into the equation.
He reached the turn in 4-under to tie for the lead with the final pair of Lowry and Brown, and the three exchanged the top spot throughout the back nine. Horschel made two bogeys on his way to a 2-under 69 but, crucially, he avoided more errors than the Irishman and the Brit.
After the second round, Horschel noted that his Open record is somewhat underwhelming (a best of T21, on the Old Course in 2022, from nine starts) but insisted that the log books are deceiving.
“I’ve been unfortunate enough to be on the bad side of some draws, like at Hoylake in 2014,” he said. “I also remember that at Troon in 2016 I shot 4-under 67 the first round, and then I proceeded to shoot 85 [and miss the cut]. But this was the nastiest weather I’ve ever played in. It was blowing 30 miles per hour, raining sideways. It was a brute that day.”
Though his fingers were burned by that experience, he stood tall this Saturday. It also helped that, although it was windy in round two and wet in round three, it was never, as eight years ago, the deadly combination of both at the same time. Well, not quite.
“We knew we were getting rain, but the wind was down for the most part,” Horschel said after the round. “Then we got to 13 and it really picked up. We played five par-5s on the back side [four of them were par-4s on the card]. You just have to find a way to grind down and make a score.”
Horschel is an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, including the 2014 Tour Championship and 2021 WGC Dell Technologies Match Play, and he also won the 2021 BMW PGA on the DP World Tour. It is bewildering that his lack of major-championship success extends beyond the Open. True, he shared fourth place in the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion and was tied for eighth in this year’s PGA Championship at Valhalla, but those are his only top-10 results in 41 major starts as a professional.
“If it’s my time tomorrow, it’s my time, and I’m going to be ecstatic. If it’s not, then we’ll get on the horse again, and we’ll work hard to get back in that position again.” –Billy Horschel
He intends to make the very most of Sunday’s opportunity and remain sanguine if it doesn’t work out.
“I’ve been in the lead many times going into a final round,” he said. “Obviously this is a major, so it means a little bit more. We all know that. We know what this means to everyone. I know what it means to my legacy in the game of golf and what I want to do and accomplish. But I’m excited to be here. I’ve wanted to be here my entire life. I’m finally here. I’m embracing it.
“Something I’ve done this year, and I’ve done a better job of it this week, is to see myself holding the trophy before I go to sleep every night, envisioning myself holding that trophy on 18, walking out to the crowd and being congratulated as Open champion. That’s what I’m going to do again tonight, and hopefully that comes true tomorrow.
“If it doesn’t, then I’ll get back on the grind and work harder to get back in a position like this again. I’ve learned a lot about the game of golf playing 15 years professionally. I’ve learned how to handle my emotions. I’m not afraid to fail.
“If it’s my time tomorrow, it’s my time, and I’m going to be ecstatic. If it’s not, then we’ll get on the horse again, and we’ll work hard to get back in that position again.
“I’m content that I can look myself in the mirror in the next 10 to 15 years and say, ‘Hey, listen, I did everything I could to be the best player I could, and it just wasn’t in the cards for me to win a major.’”
Then again, it might be. But before that, he will have to defy a chasing pack that includes six major champions within four shots of him.
The hole-in-one, by the way, came from South Korea’s Si Woo Kim at the par-3 17th, which was played at 238 yards. France’s Matthieu Pavon had a 9 at the par-5 16th, and Chile’s Joaquín Niemann made a 9 at the par-4 11th.
In better news, the weather forecast for Sunday is cloudy and dry. Not remotely summer-like by any normal metrics but positively tropical compared with what we’ve witnessed the rest of this week.