SOUTHPORT, England — Robert Duncan MacIntyre, 29-year-old lefthanded Scottish golfer with an endearing more-chips-less-fish approach to life, shot an opening 67 here. The first player to come to mind, at least for this reporter, was Tom Weiskopf. Weiskopf had a perfect look and a perfect swing, but he could run hot. Bobby Mac, a hugely inventive golfer, can run hot, too. Weiskopf won one major — the 1973 Open at Troon. MacIntyre is looking to win his first major.
You might remember the middle finger he gave the pond at 15 at Augusta National this year. It’s happened before and it will happen again, in some form or another. Maybe you saw MacIntyre on 18 at Royal Birkdale on Thursday, or heard his in-the-heat-of-the-moment analysis of it: “Such a shite hole, isn’t it?” And still, from a bad lie, he made an up-and-down 4. The hole is a par-4 on the card that was playing almost like a short par-5 in Thursday’s wind, but all together now: Par is just a name, and links golf will throw everything at you. MacIntyre knows this, of course. It’s easy to forget it from time to time.
“Links golf to me is the best form of golf,” MacIntyre told me about an hour after he signed his card, his calm very much restored. “You don’t have to be perfect. You do have to miss in the right places.”
Weiskopf once told me almost the exact same thing. For a while there, in the last days of persimmon, Weiskopf looked like he was going to rack up U.S. Open titles and Augusta wins, the second coming of Jack Nicklaus, a fellow Buckeye. But Weiskopf’s one major came at quirky Royal Troon. Weiskopf said he knew good shots would get bad results, as is the case on any links course, and that bad shots might get lucky. It was a better way for him to play. He said, “It’s too bad I was born in the United States — I should have been born a Scot.” But he was born in Massillon, Ohio.
Well, Bob MacIntyre was born a Scot. He’s won a Scottish Open. If he wins a British Open — the Open Championship, the tournament his (broadly speaking) forebears made famous — his life in golf will be complete.
Talking to reporters, MacIntyre was asked if he could retire if he won the Open.
“I could, happily,” he said. “If I won an Open, if I won any major, if something happened, I could happily walk away from the game of golf. I’ll openly say it. I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face. It would be all my goals that I ever dreamed, complete.”
If it’s going to happen here, perfection over these next three days cannot be his goal. Linksland golf is not old-timey fairways-and-greens U.S. Open golf. Jack Nicklaus at Augusta in his prime, that was perfection golf. Ben Hogan at U.S. Opens, the same. Not here. Not at Troon in 1973. Not at any Open.
Every golfer in the field of this Open Championship would like to pull a Tiger-at-Hoylake and go 72 holes without finding a single bunker. The best links-golf advice Tom Watson ever received from Jack Nicklaus was this: Stay out of the pot bunkers.
But MacIntyre found two bunkers on two holes on Thursday, and played them in one under. He got a little lucky. You need some of that. He could have played those two holes in two over. If this son of Scotland can take a page from a son of Ohio, he might have a chance. He might have more of one. He might not like 18 here, but he’s going to have to play it three more times. If he’s the last man standing on it Sunday night, he might have a different view of it.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
