What a surprising Open championship with Tiger missing the cut and Tom Watson leading heading into the final round!  It has been a great week weather-wise and the final day today is no exception.  Unfortunately, Matt Kuchar missed the cut so we have had the last two days off.  Yesterday we ventured up to Prestwick to play.  Prestwick is rich in golf history having hosted the first 12 British Opens with Old Tom and Young Tom Morris winning eight of those.  The golf course is entirely different than those days with the exception being #17.  It is a 390 yard tight hole with heather on both sides of the fairway.  From there you are faced with a blind second with a forced carry over a large bunker fronting the green.  Being on the same grounds where the British Open originated was quite the experience.  Today I am in for a real test as we head up to play Troon with the famous Postage Stamp par 3.

Matt Kuchar hit the ball wonderful the first two days and uncharacteristically was not in the scoring mode.  He is normally very efficient in maximizing his scores, but took 65 putts over the first two days.  He was very disappointed in not taking advantage of his good ball striking, but is in good form heading towards the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

For those of you who seem to be playing your worst golf do not despair.  We played all three practice rounds with Bryce Molder.  Matt and Bryce were college teammates and remain close friends.  Bryce’s ball striking had deteriorated each day until Matt offered my help to Bryce on the 7th hole of Wednesday’s practice round.  I am never one to offer unsolicited advice as I hated that myself as a player.  I’ve know Bryce since his college days and you won’t find a better guy out here.  Having played so well heading into the Open we simply visited about the swing keys that he and his Plane Truth instructor Mike LaBauve from Scottsdale, AZ had been focusing on.  Jim and all of the Level 3 instructors assist one another in a team effort with each other’s students when we can’t all be present.  We pared down his thoughts and decided we first needed to eliminate one side of the golf course.  For Bryce he likes to work the ball left to right so we got him more on top of the ball and swinging to the left in the downswing.  I told him if it got too steep or started to slice, he just needed his upper left arm lower and tighter in the backswing.  He has hit the ball a little bit better each day and now finds himself four shots back heading into the final round.  How can a golfer go from no hope to winning in such a short time?  When a golfer is off plane he is only off in one way.  He is either above the plane (too steep) or below the plane (too shallow).  You move that player closer to neutral with a swing thought and all of a sudden they feel like they can play golf again.  The worse the player is, the greater the severity in distance from neutral.  A player of Bryce’s caliber was only slightly too shallow and needed to be steepened up a bit.

I’ll be pulling for Bryce today, but what a story with Tom Watson.  He is so beloved over here having won 5 Claret Jugs that I think the locals will be pulling more for him than any Europeans in the mix.  He is a classic 2 planer who does two things to shallow out a golf swing which can inherently get too steep.  He lifts the left heel in the backswing so as to not restrict any hip turn which is paramount for a 2 planer, especially as one gets older.  I’ll even allow a 1 planer who is too steep with flexibility problems to lift the left heel in order to shallow out the golf swing.  This allows for a full turn and puts the golf club a little bit across his line.  With the golf club across the line he can then deliver the club on a shallow angle of attack from the inside.  Both of these moves are signature, hallmark motions of his golf swing.  What a championship day it should be.  Pulling for Bryce and Tom, but my pick is Lee Westwood.  He is a fabulous ball striker who I think is overdue for a major championship.