5 Reasons Why The 151st Open Has Been Underwhelming So Far

With just one round to go, Golfshake Ambassador Matt Holbrook has shared his thoughts on The 151st Open, which he has thus far found to be an underwhelming championship, as he explains in this opinion article.

First up, let me be honest with the timing of this opinion piece. I’m sitting here on Saturday evening, the third round has finished around an hour ago and American Brian Harman is leading The 151st Open Championship by five shots. 

I know for a fact that I’m not the only one feeling this way as I write this, various WhatsApp groups and some others that are involved in the golf industry all feel the same. We're all a bit flat. (Apart from my mate, Matt, who had the insane insight to back Harman for some reason at the start of the week and stands to win £600 should he see it through).

But why do we feel so flat? Hopefully Sunday will chuck up some drama for us in some shape or form - and if it does I’ll take this all back.

The 17th Hole 

So much was made of the new 17th hole at Hoylake in the build-up to this year's Open. ‘Little Eye’ - presenting an upturned bowl designed green on a par three measuring anything from 120 yards to 140 yards was supposed to be part of a dramatic finish of the course and one coach even stated beforehand that it could "ruin a player's career".

But let's be honest, over the three days so far, it’s played +0.013 over par and ranked the 8th hardest. On Saturday it played under par with no worse than a bogey - with only eight dropped shots from the 78 players, this compared to 13 birdies. 

In fact, during the championship, the Fitzpatrick brothers have made the biggest scores, both making a six with Matt’s coming on Friday following Alex’s on Thursday. There was also a triple bogey for Lucas Herbert and Zach Johnson on Thursday - but hardly the career ending 8s, 9s and 10s that we were led to believe would be dished up. 

For the record, I think it’s a cracking hole!

The Weather

Maybe, one of the reasons why we didn’t see the expected drama on the 17th hole was due to the weather. Leading up to the start of the week, we were led to believe that the winds would pick up and the rain would pour - but again, nothing really seemed to materialise on that front either. In fact, Sky Sports' Iona Stephen was heard on TV saying ‘it's turning into a lovely evening, it's very warm and humid out here" and she was commentating from the course. 

Whilst I’m not into torture on a golf course, with the links being fairly green and soft due to the conditions in the run-up to the event, some tougher weather would have introduced an extra layer of drama. 

Rory & Tommy

I suspect I wasn’t the only one that had everything crossed for a Saturday charge from Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy (amongst others, obviously).

Tommy started the day five shots back of Harman, Rory a further four shots back. 

Rory's start made us sit forward with huge expectation that we were about to witness one of those spectacular Saturday charges. When he made a birdie three at the sixth hole to move three-under on the day, he even crept onto the leaderboard in the bottom right hand corner of our screens. But that was where the fun stopped as a stone cold putter meant he missed chance after chance after chance and laboured to a two-under round of 69 to end the day still nine shots off the lead. 

In fact he even declined all media duties following his round and headed straight to the putting green. 

It was a similar story for Tommy, his level par round included one birdie and one bogey as he also failed to capitalise on a plethora of chances he created for himself. Sitting at five-under, he is also seven shots off the lead and needs something crazy to happen to be in with a shout. 

The Leader

Let me start by saying this is absolutely, categorically, nothing personal towards Brian Harman. He has played incredible golf for three rounds and carved himself out a five shot lead going into the final round of The Open Championship and deserves every bit of that lead. 

BUT. It isn’t Jon Rahm, who shot an incredible 63 to come through the pack, it isn’t Rory, Tommy, Jordan Spieth. The smiling assassin Viktor Hovland is seven back. You know what I’m getting at. In fact, there is a crowd of great names that we can all get behind on the first page of the leaderboard, but with Cameron Young in solo second five shots back, it's going to take something of epic proportion on Sunday from someone to make it a really interesting final day. 

I’ve got everything crossed. 

The Crowd

I know from some social media posts that I’m not the only person that is completely unenthused by the whooping and hollering of the crowd. This week seems to have been taken to a whole new level of stupidness. I’ve heard shouts of ‘beans on toast’, ‘I’ve abandoned my children’, ‘can I have my child back’ amongst a few as well as the good old fashioned ‘Hoooyeeeeaaahhhh’ that was popular on the internet about three years ago. I think I also saw Bob MacIntyre have a pop at someone in the crowd and told them to cut it out. 

When will grown adults stop this absolute nonsense - or have a word with their children if it's them. It's not big, it's not clever and - most importantly - it's not slightly funny. Please, make it stop.

Do you agree with Matt's assessment of The 151st Open so far and what are you hoping to see happen in the final round? Let us know in the comments below!