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Speaker 3: Westwood one Sports presents this special report on the one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty third British Open sponsored by Prevagen. Prevagen
Speaker 3: made for your Brain Approaching Sunset at Royal Port Rush
Speaker 3: and if Scotti Scheffler.
Speaker 4: Keeps this up. The sun will set on this championship.
Speaker 4: Maybe it already has.
Speaker 3: Scheffler one revolution short of equaling a major record score
Speaker 3: of sixty three. He cards a seven under sixty four
Speaker 3: in vaults into the lead at ten under par.
Speaker 4: Scheffler putt it beautifully today.
Speaker 3: He made eight birdies and came so close to finishing
Speaker 3: with three in a row. Matt Fitzpatrick, the former US
Speaker 3: Open champion, made eight birdies as well.
Speaker 4: He's solo second at nine under one back.
Speaker 3: Rory McElroy ways back at three under seven back, but
Speaker 3: he will play the weekend, which he didn't do in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen at his home Open. Notables missing the cut,
Speaker 3: Brooks Koepka, Colin Morricawa, Patrick Reid. Also Adam Scott at
Speaker 3: plus nine after he was in contention at the US
Speaker 3: Open last month.
Speaker 4: I'm ted. Emrick Westwood won Sports.
Speaker 5: The Open Championship Round two in the books royal Port
Speaker 5: Rush Golf Club in Northern Ireland, and Scottie Scheffler finds
Speaker 5: himself the top the leaderboard. No surprise there. Paul Pugmyer
Speaker 5: Friday Afternoon, Paul, Happy Friday, sir, how are you.
Speaker 3: Yeah doing great.
Speaker 6: It is Open Championship Week. We love it.
Speaker 5: We do, we do, and as I ask you every
Speaker 5: time you join us when one of these tournaments going on,
Speaker 5: let's start with the track Royal port Rush Golf Club
Speaker 5: over in Northern Ireland.
Speaker 4: Paul fill us in what should we.
Speaker 6: Know, one of the greatest courses in the world. It's
Speaker 6: in the top top ten of every list. You'll see.
Speaker 6: One of the things that really stands out in ranking
Speaker 6: this course is the number of great Irish players who
Speaker 6: have dozens of great courses to choose from, and consistently
Speaker 6: they all say that the Royal port Rush is their favorite.
Speaker 6: You know, the Shane Lowry's, the Paul mcginley's, the Darren Clark's.
Speaker 6: People like that. They all say, yeah, we love port
Speaker 6: Rush the most. I think that says an awful lot
Speaker 6: about it. The course is built among sand dunes. It
Speaker 6: is truly a links course. That word gets mess used
Speaker 6: a lot in America, but this is truly a links course.
Speaker 6: And the holes wind among the dunes and then greens
Speaker 6: are capped on top of smaller dunes, which means you
Speaker 6: get a lot of false sides, false fronts. Really difficult
Speaker 6: in every way. No three holes in a row are
Speaker 6: facing the wind the same day. The wind can come
Speaker 6: from any direction. The course is on the very top
Speaker 6: of the island and overlooking the Irish Sea, and it
Speaker 6: gets wind from every direction. But no three holes, say,
Speaker 6: face the same direction in a row, and so no
Speaker 6: matter where the wind is that day, you're going to
Speaker 6: get it from all sides. It is a great, great
Speaker 6: test of golf.
Speaker 5: So, Paul, I'm reading that Royal poor Rush hosted in
Speaker 5: fifty one and then not again until twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: So why is that.
Speaker 5: That seems like a big gap for a course that
Speaker 5: everybody seems to love so much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it gets wrapped up in politics, national politics, certainly
Speaker 6: with the troubles that were going on in Ireland in
Speaker 6: Northern Ireland. This is in Northern Ireland and just strife
Speaker 6: between Britain and Ireland, and then internal golf community politics.
Speaker 6: For the longest time, people only wanted the British Open
Speaker 6: as it was called then the Open Championship, to only
Speaker 6: be in Scotland. There was even resistance against taking it
Speaker 6: to some of the British venues like Royal Saint George's
Speaker 6: or Royal Liverpool at toy Lake places like that. So
Speaker 6: it's politics, both within the golf community and national politics.
Speaker 6: That's really the reason. And it was a big deal
Speaker 6: when it went back in twenty nineteen, and it was
Speaker 6: hugely successful. And now it's just in the road. We're
Speaker 6: going to see it every few years.
Speaker 5: Okay, So let's dig into the leaderboard a little bit
Speaker 5: and let's start this. Let's just start at the top,
Speaker 5: because well, you know, it's Scottie, because of course it's Scotty.
Speaker 5: Once he you know, once he became healthy again after
Speaker 5: the surgery and the hand injury, and then once he
Speaker 5: found his form, he's either winning tournaments or has something
Speaker 5: to say about it.
Speaker 4: He carted a sixty four today.
Speaker 5: I read that's one shot off the record for a major.
Speaker 4: With the Open Championship situation.
Speaker 5: I don't know how much you saw, but when I
Speaker 5: was watching yesterday, he was not driving it well at all,
Speaker 5: yet he still carted a sixty eight. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: just wild how he problem solves. But let's start with
Speaker 5: the leader. What are you seeing so far from the
Speaker 5: world number one?
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's go back to yesterday. You're exactly right. He
Speaker 6: was all over the park yesterday and didn't have his
Speaker 6: swing down with the driver, but she was striking his
Speaker 6: irons well, and really, Scotty's best statistical play is with
Speaker 6: his irons. He is the best iron player on the planet,
Speaker 6: straight up. And he was able to stay in the
Speaker 6: round yesterday with his iron play. Got a little bit
Speaker 6: of good breaks a couple of times with wayward drives,
Speaker 6: but so what. Nobody ever wins a major championship without
Speaker 6: getting a handful of good breaks. It's just the nature
Speaker 6: of a major. So he was getting a few yesterday
Speaker 6: in the Thursday round, and he took advantage of them
Speaker 6: and was able to sign for sixty eight, in large
Speaker 6: part because he's really been putting well this week well
Speaker 6: today for his sixty four, which you're right, is one
Speaker 6: stroke off the lowest round ever shot in any major,
Speaker 6: and is the lowest score Scheffler has ever shot in
Speaker 6: a major. He never went this low in any of
Speaker 6: the three majors he's already won. He had his driver working,
Speaker 6: his iron were working, his putter was working. Obviously. For
Speaker 6: sixty four. At a place like Port Rush, everything has
Speaker 6: to work, and it was it was doing that for
Speaker 6: Scotty today and so shock me, shock mee. Top of
Speaker 6: the leaderboard Scotty Scheffler. But I want to point out
Speaker 6: something else. You go down just a couple spots on
Speaker 6: the leaderboard, second place, Matthew Fitzpatrick, T three, Brian Harmon.
Speaker 6: What do they all share in common? They are all
Speaker 6: major champions. Again, no surprise, port Rush will bring out
Speaker 6: the best from the best.
Speaker 4: Among the top twelve golfers.
Speaker 5: We have Fitzpatrick, we have Terrell Hatton, we have Jordan Smith,
Speaker 5: we have Rory McElroy. And if you go down a
Speaker 5: little bit, there's Lee Westwood. There's Harry Hall, of course
Speaker 5: he's a britt his name is Harry Hall. There's Justin Rose,
Speaker 5: Matthew Jordan, Tommy Fleewood and Aaron Aaron Rye, Matt Wallace.
Speaker 5: All these golfers are within the top thirty. So you're
Speaker 5: looking at you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Speaker 5: eleven Brits in the top thirty. Uh what does that
Speaker 5: say to you about just kind of you know their
Speaker 5: origin and how they can figure out how to play
Speaker 5: a course like this.
Speaker 6: They have they have more experience with it. There's certainly
Speaker 6: that and I do think that you know, earlier this
Speaker 6: year Rory McElroy was talking about how it matters where
Speaker 6: you win. There's no question that everybody wants to put
Speaker 6: port Rush on their resume, and so I think there's
Speaker 6: that driving them as well. And then of course the
Speaker 6: top brit is Matt Fitzpatrick. We've already mentioned he has
Speaker 6: won a US Open. He has shown that he can
Speaker 6: survive the rigors of a major championship. You got to
Speaker 6: take him seriously.
Speaker 5: Eight birdies for Fitzpatrick and Scheffler, I mean, Paul, that's
Speaker 5: tough to wrap your mind around at Nibley, like let
Speaker 5: alone port Rush, you know, like eighties in one round
Speaker 5: a golf course that's playing as tough as this is
Speaker 5: in conditions today the looked wet and cold.
Speaker 6: So the conditions were all over the board, which is
Speaker 6: exactly what you would expect on the north of the island,
Speaker 6: out hanging over the Irish. They got rained, they got
Speaker 6: heavy rain, but interestingly other parts of the golf course
Speaker 6: were not as heavily rained on. And then twenty minutes
Speaker 6: later they were peeling off the clothes and the sun
Speaker 6: was shining. There were shadows again. It can move through
Speaker 6: the seasons very quickly in an afternoon at a place
Speaker 6: like Royal Port Rush.
Speaker 5: All right, we've done about twelve minutes without talking about
Speaker 5: our guy, Tony, who's looking good.
Speaker 4: Cards is seventy round once indeed follows.
Speaker 5: Up with a sixty eight today, so three hundred today,
Speaker 5: four under for the tournament.
Speaker 4: He is in the top ten now.
Speaker 5: And we'll get to this at the end because I
Speaker 5: always like to ask you who can actually win the thing?
Speaker 4: And when it's.
Speaker 5: Scotty at ten under, I don't know if Tony had
Speaker 5: four hunders get be able to catch him.
Speaker 4: But there's a chance I'm going to the Ryder Cup, Paul.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I'm going to be able to
Speaker 5: make it work, and I just so badly would love
Speaker 5: to watch him in that setting. So double, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of a two tiered question here, your thoughts on
Speaker 5: what we've seen from Tony over the first couple of rounds,
Speaker 5: and then if we expand the topic to what do
Speaker 5: we need to see from him? And it's getting late
Speaker 5: early if he wants to make that team, is it
Speaker 5: still possible?
Speaker 6: It's still possible, Yes, it is. Tony Fenow has always
Speaker 6: been an intuitive, reactive, artistic player, always even as a teenager,
Speaker 6: and we knew him here in Utah and he was
Speaker 6: winning the state am at age seventeen. Tony Fenow has
Speaker 6: been an intuitive, reactive player. He has always been comfortable
Speaker 6: at the Open Championship because links courses in whether require
Speaker 6: exactly that, They require the ability to react well and
Speaker 6: to intuitively feel and execute a shot, and we were
Speaker 6: seeing that with Tony. He had an early tea time today.
Speaker 6: I got up early and watched him, which is one
Speaker 6: of the things I love most about the Open Championship
Speaker 6: is the time difference. Get up at five or six
Speaker 6: in the morning and watch a major championship golf. That's
Speaker 6: good living. But Tony was just in control. He seemed very,
Speaker 6: very comfortable this morning. And the thing about his scorecard
Speaker 6: that stands out, Yeah, his eagle on twelve, the double
Speaker 6: circle there three on the par five to twelfth hole.
Speaker 6: That was really great. But the thing that stands out
Speaker 6: to me is there's only one square and a lot
Speaker 6: of pars and so his sixty eight today was solid
Speaker 6: steady and I love seeing that from Tony. We haven't
Speaker 6: seen as much of that solid steady play from him
Speaker 6: this year, but boy, Hattie, he looks comfortable this morning.
Speaker 6: And look, we're only thirty six holes into this now,
Speaker 6: granted the guy is starting to be asked, but really,
Speaker 6: certainly five shots back, maybe as far as seven for
Speaker 6: a couple of these players, and I am talking about
Speaker 6: Rory McElroy. Nobody's totally out of it. Now, maybe they're
Speaker 6: going to have to chase down Scotty. Scotty's not going
Speaker 6: to come back to him, and but but maybe somebody
Speaker 6: can chase him down.
Speaker 4: Yeah. See, that's the problem.
Speaker 5: Like, for instance, let's say, you know, and I'm not
Speaker 5: running down any individual golfer, but let's just pick a
Speaker 5: random Let's say Mattias Schmidt was ten under right, and
Speaker 5: then you're like, okay, maybe Matias Schmidt, but it's Scotty
Speaker 5: freaking Scheffler who has you know, And look, Fitzpatrick is there,
Speaker 5: Harmon's there. To your point, both those guys are major champions.
Speaker 5: But ultimately, with Scotty being the one on top after
Speaker 5: two already double digits, what does that do to the
Speaker 5: mentality of the other players? You know, it's I always
Speaker 5: go back to the tiger thing, and when I hear
Speaker 5: people talk about what it was like when they saw
Speaker 5: a tiger at the top of the leaderboard, and like
Speaker 5: wait a second, I got to catch that guy. I
Speaker 5: got to imagine the players that are underneath Scotty are
Speaker 5: looking at the fact that it is him with a
Speaker 5: little bit of a different prison if it was just
Speaker 5: kind of a random golfer.
Speaker 6: Totally they are. And I love your Mattia Schmidt example,
Speaker 6: because he's a heck a good player, but he has
Speaker 6: not demonstrated that he can thrive breathing thin air. Well,
Speaker 6: we know that Scheffler can breathe thin air and be
Speaker 6: just fine. Fitzpatrick and Harmon again both major winners, we
Speaker 6: know they can breathe thin air. Tarrell Hatton is absolutely
Speaker 6: an elite player in this world. Robert McIntyre is scott
Speaker 6: He's won the Canadian Open, he's won in America, he
Speaker 6: has won in Europe, and he's won the Scottish Open.
Speaker 6: I think he's a guy who has to be taken seriously.
Speaker 6: But look, you are so right. It is Scotty Scheffler.
Speaker 6: Everybody knows they're going to have to go reel him
Speaker 6: in good luck. It can be done, but tough lift
Speaker 6: to do so.
Speaker 5: An interesting story that they kind of became public prior
Speaker 5: to the start of the first round. Harris English caddy
Speaker 5: was not allowed entrance in the UK and our guy
Speaker 5: is top five. You know, he had a great, great
Speaker 5: round one with a sixty seven, files it up with
Speaker 5: a seventy today. What sort of commentary is that on
Speaker 5: the lack of importance of a caddy or is this
Speaker 5: just a moment in time?
Speaker 6: This story is funny, so many different layers, but let's
Speaker 6: start with how good of a player Harris English is.
Speaker 6: He is absolutely a top tier player. He's a writer cupper,
Speaker 6: He's a president's cupper. You don't get to those events
Speaker 6: by accident. He has had an absolutely rock solid career
Speaker 6: on the PGA Tour four years now. He hasn't broken
Speaker 6: through and a major yet, but in many ways that's
Speaker 6: kind of surprising. His swing is one of the most
Speaker 6: repeatable swings on the PGA tour. It is It is
Speaker 6: Adam Scott esque in both it's it's mechanical function and
Speaker 6: its rhythm and so very very reliable. And so it
Speaker 6: means that this thing with his caddy is I don't
Speaker 6: I'm not surprised at all that he's able to do
Speaker 6: just fine because he is. He has such a repeatable swing.
Speaker 6: The thing about the caddy that's so funny to me
Speaker 6: is hello, everybody, we've known about Port Rush being on
Speaker 6: the calendar for a few years. Now, you're only dealing
Speaker 6: with the visa issues the week before. I don't get it.
Speaker 6: This was this was six months AGO's problem and but
Speaker 6: for whatever reason, they didn't deal with it, and so
Speaker 6: here we are.
Speaker 5: Paul, Kegan Bradley might give you no choice but to
Speaker 5: just the fact that he's going to be on the
Speaker 5: Ryder Cup. You know, like he's just playing high level golf.
Speaker 5: He's right now T twelve three hundred parr along with Rory.
Speaker 6: I know, I know. Well, look if you get if
Speaker 6: he gets in on points, he gets in on points.
Speaker 6: It is still my view, as we have discussed that
Speaker 6: being the Ryder Cup captain is a lifetime event and
Speaker 6: it is consumptive. But uh, he has he added he's
Speaker 6: been adding assistant captains, so he's been preparing for this potentiality.
Speaker 6: We'll see how it plays out. That you're right, he
Speaker 6: is playing high level golf right now, and go Keegan.
Speaker 6: I congratulate you for it. Look, Kegan's another one. He
Speaker 6: has won a major championship. He know, we all know
Speaker 6: that he can close the deal, and so got to
Speaker 6: take him seriously.
Speaker 5: All right, Paul, before we find out what's on the
Speaker 5: show tomorrow and get the latest with the local golf scene,
Speaker 5: I've got one more question here. I'm happy to report
Speaker 5: that I set the over under on my club breaks
Speaker 5: this year at one point five and I am still
Speaker 5: I'm still under because I have not broken a club yet.
Speaker 5: It is my goal not to do that. There have
Speaker 5: been a couple of throws. Okay, I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 5: but nothing is broken. I bring that up because I've
Speaker 5: told you before, I've had more than a few people
Speaker 5: on a golf course say, yeah, you kind of look
Speaker 5: like Wyndham Clark.
Speaker 4: Well maybe it's not just looks.
Speaker 5: Maybe we both need to work on not damaging things
Speaker 5: and not throwing things and not throwing clubs and such.
Speaker 5: But a ban by Oakmont for damaging the locker after
Speaker 5: a disappointing performance at the US Open, and they're gonna
Speaker 5: host another Open, it's not until twenty thirty three.
Speaker 4: He has the ability to appeal, and.
Speaker 5: He's an Open champ, so I would imagine he's going
Speaker 5: to try to figure this out one way or the other.
Speaker 5: Just give me your thoughts on this story that Oakmont
Speaker 5: Country Club his banned Wyndham Clark after he damaged to
Speaker 5: locker following last month's US Open.
Speaker 6: I'm okay with it. What he did was so childish
Speaker 6: and just just so wrong, and then his reaction to
Speaker 6: it was tone deaf. He had an opportunity, this moment
Speaker 6: has passed, that he had an opportunity to own it,
Speaker 6: to go to Oakmont to make reparations, both with the facility,
Speaker 6: the physical facility itself and the people. Oakmont is a cathedral,
Speaker 6: Oakmont stands almost alone. Is such an impactful facility and
Speaker 6: golf course in the history of the game. I'm okay
Speaker 6: with Oakmont saying no, that doesn't happen here. You are
Speaker 6: not welcome here anymore. It'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 6: this plays out when the US opened was back there
Speaker 6: in a few years, because you're right, every reason to
Speaker 6: expect that Wyndham Clark otherwise would be in the field.
Speaker 6: I think there are things yet to play ount on this.
Speaker 6: Maybe they're just trying to get his attention and say, hey, dude,
Speaker 6: you have to respond to this better. I can't believe
Speaker 6: the people around him haven't grabbed him by the neck
Speaker 6: and said get this right. But whatever, and then otherwise,
Speaker 6: when it comes to launching a club now and then Spence,
Speaker 6: always throw them horizontally like a helicopter wrote, rather than vertically.
Speaker 6: And that way you don't get the vibrations in the
Speaker 6: shaft and you won't break them if you're throwing them horizontally.
Speaker 5: Excellent advice, Paul, excellent advice. I will take that to heart.
Speaker 5: And you know it's too bad because he's such an
Speaker 5: entertaining player when right.
Speaker 6: He's a great player. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 4: I hopefully you can figure it out.
Speaker 6: But yeah, he's got to get a grip on this,
Speaker 6: no question.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: Latest on the local golf scene, what's coming up on
Speaker 5: the program tomorrow before I set you loose.
Speaker 6: We will be teeing up the women's State Am that
Speaker 6: starts Monday at Wassatch Lake Course. And then there's another
Speaker 6: really fun thing going on this next week that will
Speaker 6: also be teeing up. The National High School Championship is
Speaker 6: being played at Pinehurst in North Carolina. And this is
Speaker 6: so fun. The number one high school team in the
Speaker 6: nation Corner Canyon right here in the Salt Lake Valley.
Speaker 6: And this is an event that the Skyline High School
Speaker 6: team who's won a few years ago. They won it
Speaker 6: twice when Simon Kaan and Tyson Shelley were both on
Speaker 6: that really great Skyline team. So we're going to be
Speaker 6: tea and all that up. The Utah golf scene has
Speaker 6: a bunch happening and it's really fun to see Paul.
Speaker 5: Thank you sir for the time. Have a great show
Speaker 5: tomorrow and enjoy the rest of the Open Championship and
Speaker 5: we'll chat zoom.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Spence, We'll see it.
Speaker 5: Augmi are the one hundred and fifty third Open Championship
Speaker 5: going on right now at the Royal port Rush Golf
Speaker 5: Club in port Rush, Northern Ireland, and through two rounds,
Speaker 5: Scottie Scheffler, the world number one, is your leader of
Speaker 5: ten hunder par. Britain's on Matt Fitzpatrick is loone and
Speaker 5: second nine under. Brian Harmon is at eight under. A
Speaker 5: couple of notables before we break Terrell Hatton, Harris English
Speaker 5: five under par are very own Tony final four under
Speaker 5: par as is let's see Nikolai Hoyguard and then Keegan Bradley,
Speaker 5: Rory McElroy, Sam Burns three hundred par so was Lee Westwood,