SOUTHPORT, England — At the 12th hole at Royal Birkdale, a 183-yard par 3 with a green long and narrow like a Band-Aid, Matt Kuchar pulled a mid-iron from his bag. As he stood over the ball during the second
SOUTHPORT, England — At the 12th hole at Royal Birkdale, a 183-yard par 3 with a green long and narrow like a Band-Aid, Matt Kuchar pulled a mid-iron from his bag. As he stood over the ball during the second round of the British Open on Friday, the crosswinds morphed into crossbones.
Kuchar knew his shot would be dead on arrival if he tried hitting into the 30-mph gusts, so he backed off. He began the day tied for the lead, and through 11 holes he had two birdies and two bogeys breaking up the string of pars on his card.
He had ground too hard to make a careless mistake on the shortest hole on the back nine. While he waited for the wind to die down, a few doubts crept into his head.
“Is this enough club?” Kuchar asked his caddie, John Wood.
Wood, who has worked for Kuchar for the past 19 months, told him, “It is, but not right now.” He counseled Kuchar to wait for the wind to subside. Several seconds later, Kuchar hit his shot to 20 feet. From there, he two-putted for a relatively low-stress par.
“I must have aimed 30 yards left of the pin into the crowd,” Kuchar said. “It’s really tricky, really trying, to try to figure it out.”
On Friday, when the high winds and heavy rain that are the typical twin terrors of the British Open finally showed up, it helped Kuchar to have Wood in his ear. Kuchar finished with a 1-over 71 and is 4-under for the tournament, 2 shots behind the leader, Jordan Spieth.
“I love days like this, to be honest with you,” Wood said. “I wish we had more of them. A windless day and sunshine, everyone is going to have a chance to play well. When you get a day like this, half the field is gone already — they’ve mentally checked out.”
Those swept out of the tournament Friday included a dozen former Open champions: Darren Clarke, Stewart Cink, John Daly, David Duval, Todd Hamilton, Padraig Harrington, Paul Lawrie, Tom Lehman, Sandy Lyle, Mark O’Meara, Louis Oosthuizen and Phil Mickelson, who chased a 73 with a 77 to miss the 5-over cutline by 5 strokes..
Mickelson, the 2013 champion, was in the morning wave that played in blustery weather. Harrington, who won the last time the event was held at Royal Birkdale, in 2008, was in the afternoon wave that battled scattered and sometimes heavy showers. The difficult conditions made it easy to lose faith or focus, or both, accentuating the utility of caddies, whose jobs include sheltering players from all manner of heavy weather.
Zach Johnson, the 2015 winner, was staring into a weekend abyss after opening with a 75 in the mildest conditions Thursday. Johnson credited Damon Green, who has been his caddie for more than a decade, with keeping his mind from checking out before Friday. With Green’s help, Johnson came back and shot a second-round 66, the lowest score of the day, to make the cut with 4 strokes to spare.
“It’s not his responsibility to try to pinpoint what’s going wrong out there on a day like yesterday,” Johnson said, referring to Green. “To me, a sign of a great caddie is he can help you stay in it by saying, ‘Get this one up and down, or ‘Just keep grinding.’ He’ll say, ‘Just hit a quality shot.’”
Johnson added: “He’s able to pinpoint one or two things because we’ve been together so long. That’s the luxury of having the same guy forever.”
When Adam Scott bogeyed the 16th to fall to 4-over for the tournament, he knew he could not afford another mistake. He stood statue still over the ball for several seconds before his approach at the par-5 17th, prompting his caddie, Steve Williams, to intercede. He encouraged Scott to back off and reboot his preshot routine.
“He knows my routine so well,” Scott said, “that if I’m standing over the shot a bit too long, thoughts come to my head like I’m trying to find my balance or I’m feeling uncomfortable. He knows that certainly in those conditions it’s better to start again.”
Scott, who has three top-5 finishes in this event since 2012, birdied the 17th and then parred the 18th — after again stepping away from his approach to let a gust play through. He posted a 74 and a 36-hole score of 3-over, and made the cut.
“On the 18th, it was gusting so hard it will knock you slightly off balance,” Scott said, adding, “You’re not going to hit a golf shot until you’re centered.”
Williams, he said, encouraged him to take his time, to wait a few seconds.
“Stevie’s great attributes are he feels what’s going on so much — more like a player than a caddie, I think,” Scott said.
“On a day like today you really want to heighten your senses,” he added. “It’s just a day to focus because errors get magnified on a day like today, and as much as the player doesn’t want to make an error, the caddie doesn’t want to, either, or it could look pretty bad.”
Mickelson was competing in his first major since Jim Mackay, whom he had employed on his bag since 1992, left the caddie shack for the broadcast booth. After swearing off his driver during his practice rounds, Mickelson had it at his disposal Friday. He used it three times on the back nine, missing the fairway each time.
Mickelson, 47, lost a ball on the par-4 third when he hit a fairway wood off the tee, leading to a triple bogey. Starting at the seventh, Mickelson bogeyed six of seven holes for a 77. It was the first time in 17 starts in the wraparound season that Mickelson had failed to advance to the weekend.
“It’s just one of those things where if it starts to go bad in these conditions, it’s just going to go bad,” said Mickelson, who bypassed last week’s Scottish Open, which he usually plays to prepare for this event, to squeeze in one last vacation, in New York, with his family before his daughter Amanda starts college.
Mickelson’s younger brother, Tim, is filling in as his caddie, and he tried to keep the mood light.
He whistled as he returned Mickelson’s putter to his bag off the 16th green and hoisted it onto his shoulder. In his regular job, Tim Mickelson is the manager of Spaniard Jon Rahm, 22, who was playing directly in front of Mickelson’s group.
“I’ve been trying to see how he’s doing,” Tim Mickelson said to a photographer during the short walk to the 17th tee.
Rahm is at 3-over, so at least Phil Mickelson’s brother will get to stick around.
“What Tim did was kept it fun,” said Mickelson, who was headed back to California to prepare for his next two tournaments, the World Golf Championships event in Ohio and the PGA Championship. “And we made the best of it.”
