By Neil Squires
Birkdale, ENGLAND, July 14 – Jon Rahm will resist the temptation to try to overpower sun-baked Royal Birkdale when the 154th Open Championship starts on Thursday.
The firm and dry conditions in the northwest of England are set to offer players the chance to hit the ball huge distances but the Spaniard believes it would be a strategic mistake to go for broke in the final major of the year.
“From what I’ve learned in the past, if you start pulling out drivers in an Open Championship, you can do a good job short term,” said Rahm, who finished tied for second in the 2023 Open.
“You can maybe get away with it one round. Over four rounds, you’re going to start finding spots you don’t want to be in and you’re going to pay the price.
“I think here I may draw a little bit of inspiration from Carnoustie in 2018 because I think right now it is playing somewhat similar. I thought: ‘Oh, the rough is thin, you can miss fairways’ and I tried to hit one too many drivers and ended up going home on Saturday.
“I think more so than ever, when it’s firm, you want to be in the fairway so you can have more control over the golf ball because out of the rough you start having fliers and the ball can release so much where even if you’re 100 yards away, it’s tricky to find the greens.
“I think putting the ball where you need to put it off the tee is going to be important.”
The forecast for the championship is for a continuation of the current heatwave in the UK.
“If it keeps getting firmer and stays warm with the same wind direction, you could have quite a few holes where that 6-iron is going 280 yards. It’s unprecedented for sure,” said Rahm.
(Reporting by Neil Squires; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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