From Royal Troon: Xander's Ridiculous Weekend, Rory's Surprising Admission And 16 More Parting Thoughts From The 2024 Open Championship

ANDY BUCHANAN. Getty Images.

Xander Schauffele just became the first man since Brooks Koepka in 2018 to win multiple majors in one year after a ridiculously good weekend of golf—he shot two-under 69 in the most miserable conditions imaginable on Saturday and followed it up with a bogey-free 65 on Sunday to win at Royal Troon. There is so, so much to discuss. Here are 18 Parting Thoughts from the grounds of Royal Troon. 

1. Well, well, well…do we have a little Player of the Year debate on our hands? In this bifurcated era of professional golf, where the best talent is split between two tours, the majors take on more importance than ever. It’s how legacies are measured. Xander Schauffele won two of them this year. Scottie Scheffler won one. 

I’d vote for Scheffler personally. The body of work is incredible—six wins, the Masters, the Players, top 10s in the U.S. Open and Open Championship, zero missed cuts. It’s not like he won six tournaments but didn’t knock off a major. Which player you vote for is sort of an indictment on how much non-majors matter. If you truly believe there’s only four tournaments a year worth remembering—and there are people who feel this way—2 is greater than 1. I really hope our sport isn’t going that way, however. The Memorials and the Rivieras and the Bay Hills have to matter for golf to remain in a healthy place. We don’t want to go the way of tennis, where everyone only pays attention four times a year. Scottie’s got my vote as of right now. 

2. The two-major club welcomed its newest member today in Xander Schauffele. That’s a very popular number in world golf at the minute. It now includes:

—Xander Schauffele (PGA, Open)

—Scottie Scheffler (Masters 2x)

—Jon Rahm (Masters, US Open)

—Bryson DeChambeau (US Open 2x)

—Collin Morikawa (PGA, Open)

—Justin Thomas (PGA 2x)

—Dustin Johnson (Masters, US Open)

Who finishes with the most?

3. You have to feel for Justin Rose, who wanted this tournament so incredibly badly. He burst onto the scene 26 years ago at this tournament and has accomplished so much in the world game. But, approaching 44, his world ranking had dropped so low that he had to qualify in at Burnham & Barrow. He got the wrong end of the draw and was essentially swimming upstream on Friday afternoon, somehow managing to shot 68 when the scoring average for the afternoon wave was north of 76. You could argue he played the finest golf in this tournament—he just couldn’t get the putts to fall on Sunday. For a young guy, that’s no bother; you take the positives and get ready for next year. When you’re in your mid 40s, the near-misses hit that much harder. Just ask Matt Kuchar. 

4. This marks the first American clean sweep in the majors since 1982. (All three majors in 2020 were won by Americans, but there was no Open Championship that year). In fact, each of the last seven majors have been won by Americans, who occupied 7 of the top 11 spots in the world rankings entering this week. On an individual level, the U.S. game has never been stronger. On the Ryder Cup level, we know it’s not the same story. Looking at you, Keegan. 

5. We often joke on the pod that it’s almost impossible to not let the way you played impact your opinion on a golf course. Shoot your career round, odds are you’re going to love the course. Get your teeth kicked in and maybe you don’t see why it’s rated so highly. It’s only human nature. 

Justin Thomas, however, has been able to remove his own personal shortcomings from his take on links golf courses. It’s been one of the great mysteries in golf in the last decade: why has Justin Thomas, who’s done so much winning around the world, who shapes the ball all over the place, who plays with an old-school flair, had such a poor record in Open Championships? Coming into this week his finishes were as follows: T53/CUT/CUT/T11/T40/T53/CUT. So after his opening-round 68 I asked him if there was something specifically about Royal Troon that fit his eye. 

“I love them all,” he said. “I have yet to play a links course that I dislike or I think is bad. I think they're all so unique and so fun. They can play so differently, obviously, with the conditions.”

The type of maturity that comes in your 30s. 

6. A few British terms that are far superior to their American counterparts. Saying someone is “level” is way cooler than saying they’re “even par.” And the term “car park” beats “parking lot” 5 and 4. It’s just far more intuitive. 

7. The Tiger Situation has been clear for years now. He will never, ever be able to contend unless he plays more golf. We know it and he knows it. He’s tried to do the impossible these last couple years: show up four times a year on the hardest courses, against the hardest fields, and somehow piece together 72 holes of major championship golf. It’s been a huge failure. Even if he were perfectly healthy he wouldn’t be able to show up 4 times a year and summon the magic. 

Advertisement

He admitted he got overly optimistic at last year’s Hero World Challenge when he said he hoped to play once a month in 2024. He maintains he’s getting stronger, that he can do more in the gym than he could at the beginning of the year. That’s all well and good. And I have no doubt that he’s shot a bunch of 65s on home on flat Florida courses outside of competition. But Tournament Golf is a different sport. A great example of that this week: Tiger played the par-3 8th Postage Stamp twice in practice this week. He hit it to a combined 6 feet. Then the tournament started. On Thursday, he blasted one long and right of the green. On Friday, he flared one short. He didn’t hit any shots like that in the practice rounds. It’s impossible to simulate tournament pressure. 

Woods did say he hopes next year will be better, that he’ll be able to play a bit more and get into a “competitive rhythm.” But that’s what he said last year. 

8. I’m officially concerned about Wyndham Clark, who early this year emerged as the top challenger to Scottie Scheffler’s throne. He has faded, considerably. Despite still ranking high in the OWGR he has had a terrible summer—he missed the cut by a million this week, wrapping up a major season of CUT/CUT/T56/CUT. That is brutal, and you have to wonder what’s going through his head. As Full Swing highlighted, he did so much work on his mentality last year and largely credited that with his almost overnight transformation from rank-and-file tour player to major champion and Olympian. But what happens when a player who’s made such a leap regresses? Is he worried that 2023 was a flash in the pan? How can the mind not wander there? Or is the work he’s done so substantive that he’s above such knee-jerk reactions? Is he unbothered by a lost year in the majors? Is he extra motivated to show he deserves his place on the Olympic team?

Speaking of the Olympic team. I’ve said this before, but I’m no fan of handing out spots to represent the United States based on a points list tied to the very faulty Official World Golf Ranking. Why not take the top 16 finishers on that points list and have them play a one-day, 36-hole qualifier, with the top 4 earning the privilege of representing our country? The quick reply is the guys would never do it; they don’t play golf for free. Fine, then don’t play. We want the four guys representing us to feel passionately about it, and that qualifier would weed out those who aren’t. And it’d give a guy like DeChambeau a chance and, hopefully, avoid a situation like Clark’s, where he’s on the team but is playing like garbage. Most every other sport has Olympic trials. Why not golf? It’d sell as a TV product. 

9. Bob MacIntyre’s enjoying a breakout 2024—an emotional win with his dad on the bag at the Canadian Open, and then an even more emotional win at the Scottish Open where he became the first Scot to win it in 25 years. He’s developing a reputation as something of a big-time performer; he does seem to shine brightest in the nerviest moments. He says that’s possible because he stays within himself, and the way he described how emoitons impact your game resonated with me. 

“In Canada, I remember birdieing… I've holed that putt, I think it's to go four or five ahead, but they'd been giving (me schtick) all the way up the hole, which is totally fine. I loved it. And I gave probably the biggest fist pump I've done in my career, in my life, and then I've hit the worst 4-iron I've ever hit in my life. Again, I just learned from that, and I knew the minute you get too high or low, you lose all the fine motor skill, you lose all the touch, and I wasn't going to allow that to happen last week. It's just about learning from the good or the bad. It's just keep on taking them steps forward.”

I’m not sure why that clicked but it did: getting upset or pumped up quite literally makes you a worse golfer. Like, tangibly so. You don’t have the same feel in your hands. Try keeping that in mind next time you play. I know I’m going to. 

Advertisement

10. The cut, the cut, the cut, It’s a dying breed in our sport. LIV Golf made abandoning the cut a central piece of its pitch to players and advertisers, and the PGA Tour quickly followed suit—more than half of its signature events don’t have one. I understand why. But we must never, ever abandon the cut in the major championships. 

Both Tours are clearly operating increasingly as entertainment products. The goal is to make a return on investment. So having the stars around all weekend, even if it takes a smidge away from the competitive integrity of the event—that’s a trade they’re willing to make in the name of dollars and cents. But the majors are not the tour events. They stand alone as the true legacy-makers in our sport. And they also stand alone as having far more diverse fields than LIV Golf or the PGA Tour’s signature events. There are amateurs and 50-year-old past champions and mini tour pros who got hot at the right time. And for these guys, just making the cut is a massive achievement in and of itself. It’s a tournament within a tournament for the guys who don’t have a chance to win the actual tournament. Take Tommy Morrison, for example. The rising junior at Texas became the first American to win the European Amateur, which got him into the field this week. And he made the cut on the number. He didn’t do much on the weekend, but making the cut in his major debut is a major confidence builder—far more so than finishing, say, 120th out of 156 at week’s end.

The cut also weighs heavily on far more accomplished players. Max Homa let out a guttural stream when he canned a 30-footer on his last hole Friday to make the weekend. Padraig Harrington was thinking about it his entire back nine. 

“Yeah, cuts are always a nasty thing. Definitely if there was no cut line, I would have been a couple of shots better. You do start thinking about -- and I shouldn't have.”

It plays mind games on guys. Consider the Curious Case of Sungjae Im. Entering this week, Sungjae Im had finished T12 or better in each of his last eight non-major starts…and yet he missed the cut in the first three majors of the year. Making the weekend here—he made a six-footer for par on 18 on Friday to get in on the number—was a significant moment for him. It’s embarrassing for a player of his caliber to miss a cut. There’s something romantic about everyone starting at 0 and not getting paid unless you earn it with your play that week. Not with your play in the past, but your play that week. Eat what you kill.

11. Rory McIlroy can’t help himself. So many of his headaches are self-inflicted wounds. On Friday afternoon he made a triple-bogey 8 on the fourth hole to essentially remove any chance of making the cut. He turned in six-over 42 but played the easier closing nine (it was playing downwind) in two-under 33. He gave the fans something to cheer about with a hole-out from the bunker on 14. Then he stepped to the microphone.

“Once I made the 8 on the 4th hole, that was it. 22 holes into the event and I'm thinking about where I'm going to go on vacation next week. Yeah, that was basically it. I mean, I knew from then I'd sort of resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to shoot, whatever it is, 4- or 5-under from there on in to make the cut. Yeah, it was a pretty meaningless 14 holes after that.”

Advertisement

Why would you say that?! You did the hard part—not throwing in the towel on the back nine to shoot a respectable score. Get up there and say yeah, I wanted to give the fans a show, and I have professional pride so always going to try my hardest.” 

It seemed especially tone-deaf after Bob MacIntyre did the exact opposite after he got off to a similarly disastrous start. His, actually, was even worse: he started triple-bogey/bogey/bogey/triple-bogey. Instead of mentally resigning to missing the cut, he dug in harder and played his final 14 holes in four under—exactly what Rory said he wasn’t going to do. 

“I didn't think I was going to make the weekend, but Mike said, Look, fans are here to watch. Just give them what they want, a severe dig and fight, and that's what I done. I just tried my best and managed to turn it around.”

12. Matthieu Pavon’s been on the show a few times, and it’s been fun watching him develop from DP World Tour grinder to PGA Tour player to PGA Tour winner to major contender/Ryder Cup level player. He’s living his dream, and he’s bringing us along for the ride in real time. 

I caught up with Matt after his round on Friday, which saw him safely make the weekend. It’s been a fantastic year: in addition to that win at Torrey Pines, he finished T12 at the Masters and solo fifth at the U.S. Open. He’s made $5.2 million already this year, more than he’d made in the entirety of his career on the DP World Tour. He just bought a house in the Palm Beach area and joined the Bears Club, the ritzy Jack Nicklaus-designed South Florida hangout where so many PGA Tour pros practice out of. That, too, has been a lifelong dream of his. 

“I remember I played there when I was 17, and it was like a poster in my room. I wanted to play in America and practice there. It is so amazing.” 

At 31, he’s finally doing the thing. Great to see. 

13. I don’t have the Data to back this up, but I feel like we see more drivers off the deck than we did 10 or even 5 years ago. It used to be a proper novelty. No longer. And back in the day you only saw DoDs result in low burning cuts. Now guys are able to hit them pretty high and pretty straight. I don’t know if it’s an advancement in technology or better understanding of ball flight laws or, probably, both. 

Advertisement

14. “They keep trying to make holes longer, but the best hole on this course is 100 yards.”

That came from a miffed SHANE LOWRY on Saturday afternoon after the back nine had just punched him in the face. He’s exactly right—the best par 3s are, unless you’re hitting over a literal ocean (like at 16 at Cypress), typically under 150 yards. A good short par 3 is perhaps the most exhilarating hole template in golf; a well struck shot can yield a birdie or even an ace, while a poor one can mean double or worse. 

The Postage Stamp is the perfect short par 3. Nothing more than a wedge in calm conditions, but there are almost never calm conditions. A tiny-ass green surrounded by misery everywhere—but particularly the coffin bunker on the left, which guys were just rightly terrified of because of how much the green slopes from left to right. Hit it in that bunker and you’re doing well to keep your next one on the green. 

“It's just a testament to what a great designed hole that is,” says Jon Rahm. “What is it, 115, 120 yards today? We're all very thankful if we hit the green or if we just leave with a par. That coffin on the left, it makes its presence felt, and with that wind today, you know you have to start it left. But it was just very difficult to do.”

He wasn’t alone. Guys bailed out right all week. Check out this graphic from the braodcast on Sunday.

The hole yielded plenty of birdies but also plenty of big numbers—Rory McIlroy doubled it on Thursday. Shane Lowry birdied it the first two days then doubled it on Saturday. Joaquin Niemann made an 8 on Friday. Here’s to the short par 3. The Postage Stamp. The 12th at Augusta. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass. The 7th at Pebble Beach. Just so, so good. 

15. It’s a shame Cameron Young is so aloof on the golf course, because his golf agme is one of my favorites to watch. His swing is badass—load, pause, explode. He’s one of my favorites to watch hit wedges with how much he flights them down. He’s underratedly creative around the greens. But he often looks like he’d rather be anywhere besides a golf course. 

Advertisement

16. I walked all 18 with Xander Schauffele’s group on Saturday afternoon in the worst of the weather. I enjoy watching the best players in the world in any conditions, but I’m in downright awe of their golfing abilities in conditions like those. It’s impossible to overstate just how hard that back nine was playing. Scottie Scheffler called it the hardest nine he’s ever played. Dustin Johnson called it the hardest nine holes possible in golf. 

“Not since I was a junior have I played a round of golf where I've hit 4-iron into 10,” says Justin Rose, “a 2-iron short at 11, 8-iron into 12, 3-wood into 13, 4-iron into 14, 3-wood into 15. 16 is a par-5. 3-wood into 17, 2-iron into 18. Yeah.”

Granted, I was not properly dressed, but I didn’t move my hands out of my coat pockets for 5 hours. It was bitterly cold. It didn’t let up for one second. And Xander Schauffele managed to shoot two-under 69. I can’t even fathom the patience, discipline and sheer grit required to shoot that score in those conditions. You know the “what would a scratch golfer shoot in these conditions” hypothetical? A scratch golfer would’ve quite after 4 holes. 

17. On a similar note, I do believe a scratch or a bogey golfer would’ve struggled more on this course than any of the other major venues this year—including Pinehurst No. 2. Pinehurst is obviously an extremely difficult layout but it was warm and mostly windless. It was a test of execution. This week was a test of execution and mental fortitude. You had to, somehow, try to embrace the chaos. Let up for one second, start to feel sorry for yourself, and you’re going to shoot a million. 

18. That’s the end of major championship season, and we’ve got nine long months until the Masters. Thank you all for following along with the major coverage this year. You guys make this possible. 

Download the Barstool Golf Time app now. Book the best tee times at the best prices all in one place. Leave course reviews. Redeem rewards for free Barstool Golf merch. Follow Barstool Golf Time on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.

NEW GIVEAWAY: Win a free 2-night stay at Riggs' Cottage for you and up to 7 friends. Book at least one round of golf through Barstool Golf Time app to enter. The more rounds you play through Sept 30, the more entries you get. See app for more details.