40-mph winds push Women’s Open field to brink

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — You need not work hard to find proof of the merciless conditions Thursday at the Old Course. Balls blew off tees. Sand blew out of bunkers. Hats flew off heads. Even Hinako Shibuno, rightly nicknamed the Smiling Assassin, was frowning. Shooting 80 will do that.

The first round of the AIG Women’s Open was major championship golf in its most tantalizing form. For spectators, at least. 

“My head’s, like, pounding,” Rose Zhang said after shooting an even-par 72. “I think this is a first, honestly.”

Zhang played driver, 3-wood into the 375-yard 1st, and she was far from alone. A handshake opener that had to feel like playing in handcuffs.

“I don’t know how it’s very playable, to be honest,” offered Gemma Dryburgh, born up the coast in Aberdeen. It’s always the best sign of brutish conditions: when a Scot tells you the weather is too much. Out came the earmuffs and the mittens.

But that was part of the brilliance in what Thursday offered golf fans. It was golf on the edge of a cliff. A sunny cliff, too! The girls had to play. Tournament officials watered the course on Wednesday to grow up the greens, hopeful they could make them a bit stickier. But any more wind and tournament officials would have postponed play. They nearly had to. 

The Old Course may feel like an out-and-back layout but in reality, it curls through the coast in the shape of a fish hook, slowly changing direction each hole until you reach holes 7 through 11, out at the furthest reach of the property, next to the Eden Estuary. There are no buildings out there. No hills providing a buffer. Just a barren expanse of muddy sand that seems to act like a wind accelerant, blowing everything out to the North Sea.

By midday, gusts out at the 11th lived up to the ominous weather report the R&A sent out Thursday morning: 40-45 miles per hour. Wind that’ll knock you over. Wind that had players ducking behind gorse bushes for cover. Or turning their bodies and widening their stance, not to hit shots, but just to watch, for fear of falling into a bunker. Those villainous falcons brought into town to keep seagulls out of the sky had nothing to do. Mother Nature kept the gulls on the ground.

Thursday helped answer an important golf viewing question: How can you tell 20-mph winds from 30? From 30 mph to 40? North of 40? You feel it. And you hear it. Not in the flags flapping or windgear whipping, but in the bleachers. When that much wind flows into the grandstands, it doesn’t creak as much as it hums — loudly, too, a constant in the background — air flowing rapidly through the iron corridors. 

It was out there at the 11th — in the part of the course known as the loop — that this round got as close as you can to postponement. Nicole Broch Estrup stood on the 11th green looking at a downhill 20-footer. She had marked her ball at least 10 minutes ago, but every time she replaced it, it refused to stay still. She’d line up to the hole, step back from the ball and within 15 seconds it would be trickling. Once, twice, three times. Broch Estrup brought in a rules official to watch it happen a fourth time. Then another official arrived, without sympathy. Play on.

The threesome ahead had played from the 12th tee, the 12th fairway, the 12th green, the 13th tee and were headed to the 13th green. A backup was building through the rest of the loop, where rounds grind to a stop even on still days. Only after about 20 minutes was Broch Estrup actually able to putt out. Of course, that 20-footer rolled in for bogey.

Poor Gabbi Ruffels watched it all from the 11th tee box. A few minutes later, she played a chip shot from the corner of the 11th green, hit it too high into the wind and watched it bank left like a limp paper airplane sent off course. It had to be the first time she’s chipped from a green into a bunker on the fly. Triple bogey. 

Only a true British golf sicko could wake up like Georgia Hall did, peek out her bedroom window and smile. 

“I looked out my hotel room and I can see the range,” Hall said, “The flags on the range — that’s a good indicator for me. It was 5 a.m. and they were blowing a gale. I was like, That’s great. Hope it stays like that.”

Why? 

“This is natural, raw golf.”

More like raw-lips-without-chapstick golf. Hall made eagle on her final hole to shoot 71 and smile. She was one of just four players who snuck in under par during the morning wave. Ruoning Yin carded a preposterous 68, the round of the morning, the round of the day, and maybe the round of the summer. She attributed it to a simple mindset: “Just trying to make the wind my friend.” This friendship was hard work, though. It was the first time in her career she was calculating wind into the reads of her putts. The birdie she made from the rough on 17 was her favorite birdie of the season. It looks like a simple 3 on the scorecard but it was a links 3 at the Open — a low 7-iron trundling along the ground, up onto the green and rolling to five feet.

Remember how hard 3s were to come by last month, when the men played at Royal Troon? Thursday at the Old Course brought that to mind. Those heavy, wet winds on Scotland’s west coast exposed most of the best players in the world. Thursday also called to mind the 2022 Open, when the men played the Old Course in some of the most benign conditions St. Andrews has seen in competition. During that final round, with the tournament in the balance, the dozens of flags lining the 18th hole laid limp down the flagpoles. There were birdies galore in that winning 64 from Cam Smith, finishing the week at 20 under. Bet the R&A’s R&D team wish they’d developed a weather machine.

As for the AIG Women’s Open, we had wild wind on Thursday. We’ve got rainy tee balls set for Friday morning. Then some wind on Saturday. And more of it Sunday. The Open as it should be.