Major-championship season is a season unto itself in the now fractured world of professional golf and, like the song “Defying Gravity” in the play “Wicked” or Eric Church doing “Springsteen” in concert, the extended major-championship moment stands apart.
The majors are like chapter marks in the game’s history, and some years are more profound than others.
Ben Hogan winning the three majors he played in 1953. Tiger Woods winning three in 2000 (plus the first one in 2001). Jordan Spieth coming one stroke shy of potentially winning the first three in 2015.
And some years are like 2003 when Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel won the four majors, good men all around but not exactly 1962 when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer (two wins) captured the majors.
As the Open Championship arrives this week at Royal Troon on Scotland’s Ayrshire Coast where the big cargo jets lumber over the layout into the typically gray skies from the nearby airport, another major-championship season reaches its culmination.
It has three tough acts to follow.
For all the talk about what’s wrong in professional golf – and that discussion will be ongoing – the first three major championships this year have produced a captivating kaleidoscope of brilliant golf, competitive drama and what the old ABC “Wide World of Sports” introduction called “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
Royal Troon is where Palmer, Weiskopf and Watson won. It’s where Todd Hamilton found himself holding the Claret Jug and where Henrik Stenson won a spectacular duel with Phil Mickelson eight years ago.
This week, it’s where Scottie Scheffler arrives as the undisputed world No. 1, where Bryson DeChambeau rolls in on a lingering U.S. Open high and where Rory McIlroy carries his decade-long chase for a fifth major victory to have another go at changing the narrative of his journey.
Now, it’s Royal Troon and the Open Championship, a classic setting for the last major of the year.
It’s just down the road from where Robert Burns, considered the national poet of Scotland, was born in 1759. Among his many compositions, Burns may be best known for writing “Auld Lang Syne.”
There isn’t another major championship to be played until the spring flowers bloom again in Augusta. Although the Olympics, the FedEx Cup playoffs, the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai and the Presidents Cup offer their own independent storylines, the Open Championship promises an engraved spot on the Claret Jug as its enduring reward.
Think about what the 2024 majors have given us thus far:
Scheffler won his second Masters less than a month after winning the Players Championship, and while he drained some of the drama out of the closing holes, it’s worth remembering that four players – Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Åberg and Max Homa – were tied for the lead near the midpoint of the final round before three made critical mistakes and Scheffler did not.
Scheffler starred in the PGA Championship for all the wrong reasons, getting arrested as a rainy morning was dawning in Louisville, Kentucky, but it was Xander Schauffele who won a scintillating battle with DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland at Valhalla while setting a major-championship scoring record.
Four weeks ago at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, DeChambeau hit the bunker shot of his life on the final hole to beat McIlroy, whose excruciating finish – missing putts inside 3 and 4 feet on the 16th and 18th greens, respectively – painted the finish with a bittersweet brush.
Scheffler. Schauffele. DeChambeau.
Who’s next?
McIlroy can’t escape the attention and, at this point, it’s just part of every major-championship story until he eventually wins another one, which could be this week. Maybe it’s grabbing at straws, but he won his first major after kicking away the 2011 Masters with a Sunday meltdown.
Scheffler and DeChambeau can hardly be more different in personality and playing style, but both lean into the big moments. Scheffler does it with his laconic demeanor while DeChambeau is a fist-pumping iconoclast. Green jackets and red, white and blue, they cover the spectrum.
Major championships define the top players – not every time but over time. Winning the PGA Championship redefined Schauffele, who had been building an impressive career but needed a major to fully validate it.
Brooks Koepka has been the best major player over the last seven years, winning five of them. The funny part is the knock on Koepka is that he doesn’t win enough other events, but that hardly matters. It’s been a lost year in majors for Koepka, who does not have a top-25 finish in the three he’s played, but winning at Troon would further buff the shine on his career the way winning at Muirfield in 2013 did for Mickelson.
Beyond McIlroy, the most intriguing player entering this Open Championship is Jon Rahm, whose major season has been a bust. He finished T45 at the Masters, missed the cut at the PGA Championship and withdrew from the U.S. Open because of an infected toe.
Whatever it is, whether Rahm is disillusioned by his move to LIV Golf or just going through one of the game’s inevitable downturns, he’s been essentially absent this year.
It has opened the door for others. Ludvig Åberg is a star. Tom Kim is poised to win a big one. So, it seems, are Sahith Theegala and Viktor Hovland.
It already has been a major-championship season speckled with moments.
Woods making his 24th consecutive cut at the Masters. Morikawa, Homa and Åberg making Sunday afternoon double bogeys almost concurrently to clear the Masters path for Scheffler.
The pedestrian death that preceded Scheffler’s arrest at Valhalla. Scheffler’s remarkable 66 immediately after being released from jail and ultimately exonerated. Schauffele and Shane Lowry shooting 62 in Kentucky. Schauffele making a birdie on the 72nd hole to beat DeChambeau by one for the Wanamaker Trophy.
Åberg holding the 36-hole lead at Pinehurst. McIlroy chasing down DeChambeau on Sunday, turning a three-stroke deficit into a two-shot lead with five holes to play. McIlroy’s face when DeChambeau holed the putt to beat him. DeChambeau sharing the U.S. Open trophy with fans.
It’s too soon for that, but perhaps Sunday evening as another major-championship season fades into the slowly arriving darkness, it will fit the moment with a wee dram raised to the champion golfer of a year that will be remembered.
E-MAIL RON
Top: World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler hopes to celebrate at Royal Troon much as he did at Augusta National in April.
JOEL MARKLUND, COURTESY AUGUSTA NATIONAL