The Open starts Thursday: How to watch + a quick preview

18 Jul 2018 23:00

Carnoustie hosts The Open for the eighth time.

The 147th Open Championship starts Thursday at Carnoustie in Scotland. Coverage starts at 1:30 a.m. ET on Golf Channel (streaming here) and runs until 4 p.m. ET.

It’s the eighth time the tournament has visited Carnoustie and the first since 2007. That year, Padraig Harrington won with a score of 7 under par, beating Sergio Garcia in the championship’s customary four-hole aggregate playoff.

Some of the sport’s grandest names — Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Tom Watson — are among the winners at Carnoustie in the past.

Like every course in the Open rota, Carnoustie is one of golf’s most hallowed venues.

It’s a challenging links course that plays around 7,400 yards. It’s the most northern course anywhere in the rota, and conditions there are often difficult when the championship’s in town. Harrington’s 7-under mark in ‘07 was an exception; In the seven Opens there so far, the winner has scored above par four times, including Paul Lawrie at 6 over in 1999.

The course’s last four holes are among its most difficult. The most famous moment in the course’s history happened at the 18th in 1999, when leader Jean van de Velde made a grisly triple-bogey to slide into a playoff with Lawrie and Justin Leonard. The course’s deep bunkers, hazards, and frequent bad weather make it an easy place to mess up at.

Depending on your personal taste, The Open could either be golf’s best tournament or merely one of the top few. It’s certainly one of the two most prestigious, along with the Masters. But for the golf-obsessed American who enjoys the annual chance to watch a major while staying up late into the night on a Wednesday, there’s nothing like it.

Per usual, The Open field includes all of the planet’s best players.

Among them is world No. 10 Tommy Fleetwood, who in 2017 set the course record by carding an 8-under 63. Fleetwood finished second at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and June and is a not-so-under-the-radar pick to make a charge this weekend at Carnoustie.

Tiger Woods might have a better chance at this event than he did at either the Masters or U.S. Open earlier this year. Woods is a historically great links player, and the softish greens at Open courses might be kind to a guy who’s struggled with the putter this year. (Woods is 56th on the PGA Tour in putting strokes gained, a far cry from his vintage brilliance on the greens.) Older golfers do better at The Open, generally, than at any of the other three major championships. All told, there probably isn’t a more Tiger-friendly major than this one.