Smylie Kaufman Relives His Experience at The Open in 2016
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00:00At your open 2016, a true, you played the back nine, even par over two days. In fact,
00:10if you'd not doubled the 18th hole on the first round, you would have played it two
00:14under and played so good on the back. You came back and you birdied 18, uh, in the,
00:20in the, the, the second round to get you a little closer to that cut line. So it was,
00:24it was the front nine that really kind of did you some damage there? Uh, so I made a
00:28triple I think. Yes. Uh, let's see here. Let me go around to, yes, you tripled, you tripled
00:34the postage stamp, but in the damn right bunker. And, and I looked at it today too, because
00:39I got into that bunker and hit a shot. Cause it's, you get in there and it's deep. And
00:47the reason why the postage stamp is hard is because that bunker is not green side on the
00:53right. Like it's not up against the right side of the green. So you can't, you can't
01:00chunk and run anything. If you hit anything chunky, it's coming back to you. So you have
01:04to hit it. You have to clip it perfectly and you have to hit it, you know, in a seven yard
01:10gap. And if you don't pull it off and you hit it thin, you're on the other side, then
01:14you're going to be going back the other way. So that's, that's why it's hard because you
01:18have to commit so much to the shot and being able to hit it precisely in that little distance,
01:26which is not a difficult shot. But when you get in there in the tournament, all you're
01:31thinking about is don't screw this up. And it's a virtual impossibility. If the wind is up like
01:37it was for you, where you talked about hitting a seven iron in the morning wave and Phil Nicholson
01:41having a gap wedge in the afternoon wave. And so that, that can really play a huge difference.
01:45And so we are, we are going to get into that weather. Now you mentioned Valhalla and the
01:50PGA championship earlier this year and the scoring. And if you went back and you looked
01:54at the very top of that 2016 open championship leaderboard, you might think, Oh, we're in for
01:59another scoring fest. That is not the case. You know, it is a really interesting study
02:04and major championship history to go back and look at that year where Hendricks Stinson wins
02:09at 20 under Bill Mickelson, Bill Mickelson finishes second at 17 under and talks about
02:15how stunned he was. He'd never played that good and not won a tournament ever before in his life.
02:20And third place in the B flight was JB Holmes at six under. And so, I mean, just mind-blowing
02:26stuff from Henrik and Phil at the top of that leaderboard that week. I think it's interesting
02:30looking at what they did well and, and how they got to the top of the leaderboard famously
02:35Hendricks Stinson hit that three wood off the tee and, and was incredibly accurate with that.
02:40And then played, you know, hit his long irons phenomenally well all week long. And so in
02:45looking at that and trying to construct a profile for who we think is going to succeed this week.
02:49So he, he led the field that week with 25 birdies and an Eagle made seven bogeys,
02:54no doubles fill at 17 under made 19 birdies also made an Eagle for bogeys, no doubles. And then
03:02you go to JB who has six under four bogeys and three doubles. So, you know, effectively,
03:06you know, mathematically that's it's 10 doubles. So it feels like a week where man driving accuracy
03:13is going to get rewarded a lot. And then precision with the approach game is going to get rewarded a
03:18lot because to your point, if you, if you miss those greens and you end up with some of those
03:22pop bunkers, that's where you start bringing those big, big numbers into play. And Royal
03:29Troon is similar to like Royal St. George's and that the, that the pop bunkers are, are big,
03:35big problem from the, from the fairway. If you, if you drive it in one of these fairway bunkers,
03:40it's, you're not going to be able to get to the green. There's not one fairway bunker that I saw
03:45that allows you the opportunity to advance it onto the green. So the whole week, it's all about
03:54being comfortable about knowing the rollouts of how far your ball is going to be rolling on the
03:59ground. So the first hole today, I was talking to John Ellis. He said he was watching Xander's group
04:04play the first hole, first two holes. And Xander is hitting five iron both into the bunker on one
04:10and two. So the ball in the morning was already rolling out. And that's something that I picked
04:14up on with the fairways, although it's been a wet season, the fairways are firm and especially
04:20downwind, really firm. And I'm looking at the, the book here and it's 254 yards to that first
04:30fairway bunker on one, five irons getting there. Today down off the right, 252 to that same bunker
04:36on two, one, two, and three are very similar starts and five irons we're getting there.
04:42So it's a golf course that I thought Adam Scott today, watching him on the back nine, he said
04:48of something that was so intelligent. He said, you know, I like to get to open championships 10
04:55days early. So I came, you know, before the Scottish to play, to get comfortable with the
04:59golf course, because I feel like if you're looking at the yardage book at an open championship,
05:05like you're, you're not doing it right. Like you need to have the
05:09feel and understanding of the golf course and how it plays.