Rory McIlroy says ‘burnt out’ Birkdale Open could play easier — and harder

The first two days of Open Championship week have been headlined by one thing: the firm and fast conditions at Royal Birkdale and the challenges they’ll present to the best players in the world.

As my colleague Sean Zak wrote, the arrival of The Brown™ this week suggests we are in store for a classic Open Championship to cap off the major season. That’s something that excites Rory McIlroy. But the two-time defending Masters champion also sees how the drying out of Royal Birkdale will alter the strategy for some chasing the Claret Jug this week.

“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” McIlroy said on Tuesday. “I think all this dry weather and sun and a little bit of wind is obviously great for the course in one way, but when I was here a couple weeks ago, the rough was a lot more penal than it’s going to be this week. It’s definitely burnt out a lot.

“The big thing, especially off the tee here, is the fairway bunkers and avoiding those. You might see some guys being more aggressive off the tee, taking driver, trying to take the fairway bunkers out of play. OK, it might be in the rough, but it’s not that penal, so you get a wedge in your hand and you can figure it out from there.”

The firm and fast conditions at Birkdale will cause some, like Justin Rose, to alter their bag setups a touch. Rose, who burst onto the scene as an amateur at Birkdale in 1998, is going to have a 2-, 3- and 4-iron in the bag this week, meaning he’ll need to drop his normal 7-wood and lose one of his wedges. For world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who will have a 3-iron in the bag this week but make no other changes, the “browned out” Birkdale increases the mental challenge by giving players different options on most of the holes.

“The ball’s just going to run for forever pretty much,” Scheffler said. “The fairways this week are really tight, so you get a lot of crosswinds. They can be difficult to hold just because they’re so fast and they’re so firm. So there’s a lot of thinking off the tee on whether or not you want to just hit driver up there somewhere and kind of play from the rough most likely, or do you want to start hitting some irons, getting it in some fairways and hitting some longer shots into the greens?

“On each hole there’s a good bit of strategy; there’s a decent amount of thinking. If it wasn’t as firm as it is now, there wouldn’t be as much decision-making, but I think with the firmness, it creates a whole lot more challenges, I think, for us as players, just to try and control your ball and figure out where it’s going to end up. You’ll get a couple weird bounces here and there as well.”

Royal Birkdale has also made several changes since it last hosted the Open in 2017. They altered the 5th hole to make a true risk-reward drivable par-4, elevated the green at the par-3 7th and changed a cluster of holes on the back nine, including the 13th, 14th and a new par-3 15th.

McIlroy likes most of the changes despite what he calls some “unnatural” greens. Those greens, combined with the firm and fast conditions and a forecast without rain in sight, should make for a proper finish to the major championship season.

“Some of the greens are maybe a little unnatural with the runoffs and sort of what they’ve tried to do with the mounding,” McIlroy said. “But it creates a good challenge, and it creates options for if you do miss the green, whether it’s a putter, a bump-and-run, some guys might choose lob wedge, and I think what we all know, even going back to Shinnecock a few weeks ago, when you give professional golfers options and you can create a little bit of doubt in their minds in terms of should I play this shot or that shot, that’s when things start to get fun, especially for the viewer. Not so much for us. … That to me is the sign of a good championship test.”

And it appears that’s on the horizon at Royal Birkdale.