The former Masters champion has played several practice rounds with Smith at Royal Liverpool and says the 29-year-old Queenslander has even more swagger than he did last year.
Adam Scott and Royal Liverpool have history. The Australian star is the only player in the 151st Open Championship field who finished in the top 10 in both the 2006 and 2014 Opens at Royal Liverpool.
Against a changing golf and socio-economic landscape, the head of the R&A said he would not rule out the governing body getting into business with Saudi Arabia.
So far the proposal has elicited strong, emotional responses from all walks of the game, but R&A boss Martin Slumbers said there have been two areas receiving the most interest.
The hope is that the African Amateur Championship will give players from Africa a pathway into the top amateur and professional events, and is part of a wider R&A effort to develop the sport in the continent.
The 43-year-old New Zealander was one of 13 Australasian players to earn a place in golf’s most feted major championship, yet in a heartbreaking Instagram post on May 15, he announced publicly for the first time that he had withdrawn after being diagnosed with leukaemia.
For the better part of two years, in the void of true, public-facing leadership in the PGA Tour’s battle against an existential threat, Rory McIlroy has stepped into the role and took a stand for what he believed was right.
Hoylake is a venue known perhaps as much for its legacy of world-class winners as it is for its historically insidious holes where out-of-bounds plays a somewhat outsized role.
It has happened before, but not since 1985 when Manuel Ballesteros joined his wee brother, Seve, in the Open Championship field at Royal St George’s alongside another pair of siblings, Tateo and Naomichi Ozaki from Japan. So the sight of Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick and Rasmus and Nicolai Hojgaard in the starting line-up this week is unusual rather than unique.
Golf’s civil war is over. Well, it might be over. Depends who you ask. The professional game has at least reached detente, and though no one knows for certain where the sport is going and who will be guiding it and what it all means, there is one incontrovertible takeaway from two years of drama, conflict, instability, and struggle:
Australian Golf Digest
