WHY IS IT SO EASY FOR PLAYERS TO COME UNSTUCK ON THE POSTAGE STAMP AT ROYAL TROON, ASKS DOMINIC KING

The 152nd Open Championship takes place at Royal Troon Golf Club this week

For the breakdown on why something so apparently straightforward is actually so complex, who better to ask than the greatest of all-time?

You only need 114 paces to walk from the tee to the green on Royal Troon's iconic eighth hole – better known as The Postage Stamp – but as Tiger Woods explained to Mail Sport, distance is dangerously deceptive on this fascinating battle with nature.

'I hit 9-iron and a pitching wedge the last two times I played it,' said Woods. 'I've hit as much as a 7-iron. You don't need a 240-yard par-3 for it to be hard. But it's a very simple hole – just hit the ball on the green. That's it. Green, good. Miss green? Bad.'

He should know. A triple-bogey here in 1997's final round put an irreparable hole in what he thought at the time might be a winning challenge.

Yet standing between the pegs with his words in mind, it does seem straightforward. The green is inviting, the carry is minimal but the reality is different – a scorecard will threatened in the same way as a lone swimmer in a river where crocodiles rest on a bank when the elements unexpectedly flip.

'The public love a short par three,' says Ryder Cup winning captain Paul McGinley. 'It is such a small hole but it's incredibly difficult if there is a crosswind. You need to take a wedge but, because of the loft on the club, shaping a ball is hard.

'If there is a crosswind (this week), you'll see lots of high numbers. Doubles, maybe even a triple (bogey). If you play straight into the wind, it's fine. Downwind, it's hard. A crosswind is harder still. The stands make it hard to get a read on the wind. If you go in those bunkers, you're in trouble.'

You really are. It was a lesson to be around the hole yesterday afternoon as group after group spent time studying the undulations, the depths of the traps (so deep you can barely see the top of the flag) and working out how a good shot can suddenly turn calamitous.

Take this point: in benign conditions around 2pm, the Japanese player Jeung-Hung Wan hit a 50 degree wedge to four foot for what would have been a nailed-on birdie. His playing partner and compatriot Si Woo Kim was similarly accurate.

Their caddies, though, took them to the back of the green and showed what could happen with a slight miscalculation. They rolled a ball slightly to one side, then watched as it picked up pace, swinging down and down like a helter-skelter into the sand.

More revealing, however, was the 15 minutes English amateur Dominic Clemons and 2009 Open Champion Stewart Cink afforded themselves. Clemons drew a thunderous ovation after hitting a gap wedge to two feet, at one point it seemed as if it might turn into an ace.

Cink's tee shot was short and left. Rather than aim for the where the hole was, he asked his caddy Chris P Jones to put markers at the back of the green, envisaging where the pin could be on Saturday and Sunday.

'If you play there holes in one-and-half or two over par for four rounds, you will not lose ground,' the vastly-experience Jones insisted. 'That is going to be average.'

It made sense to listen. A little while after, Byson De Chambeau arrived with his entourage. The wind had picked up significantly and the US Open Champion was caught in two minds about what club to take. His first two shots made the green but they weren't close to the target. Then came the third.

His connection was meaty but, immediately, there were gasps.

'Oh no…' De Chambeau groaned. It was long, left and ended in thick rough that would have made his second shot impossible. He walked off, not bothering to see where it had landed. He wasn't the first to feel this way. He won't be the last.

2024-07-17T21:55:55Z dg43tfdfdgfd