In Tiger Wood's most recent blog post, he touched on his past experience playing in Open Championships and described the strategy needed for being successful at Muirfield.
This marks my second trip to Muirfield. My first visit in 2002 didn't go very well. I caught the worst of the weather and wound up tying for 28th. That's just the nature of links golf. Luck plays a big part in it, and you never know what you're going to get.
Tiger shoots 81 at Muirfield in wind and rain
Muirfield is one of the hardest courses in Scotland. The front nine is basically played clockwise and the back nine is played counter-clockwise and on the inside of the front nine. You have to shape the golf ball both ways, and you never know what's going to come off that water as far as wind. It can change directions. If the wind switches, you can be aggressive on certain holes and others you have to be conservative. That's the neat thing about a British Open: You just never know what type of conditions you're going to get each day.
I love the creativity of being able to hit shots and utilize the ground as an asset. That's something that we don't have in the states; we don't really play that game here.
It takes a little bit of understanding about how to control the ball on the ground and how much it's going to release that particular week. Some weeks, it releases a lot more than others.
The majority of the fans at the Open Championship understand how difficult some of the shots are. If you hit a 3-iron into a green and wind up 50 feet away, you get pretty good applause because they know how difficult a shot that is.
As far as strategy, it's all dependent on setup. I don't know how fast the fairways are going to be -- if drivers are going to be running out 60 or 70 yards. And will it be hard to control the ball on the ground, or will it be soft and the ball is not running out as much?
