“I hear the rain may be done, but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

Larry Dorman is at Birkdale and offers this scouting report:

The case can be made that Royal Birkdale is in the same league, strategically if not aesthetically, with the other regular courses in the rotation. It can play hard and fast or it can play slightly moist and thick with heavy gorse and bracken that will gobble golf balls the way a Venus fly trap eats flies. This weekend, with the northwest wind whistling off the Irish Sea and the dull gray clouds sticking to the sky like a thick layer of lead tape, Birkdale rolled its shoulders and stirred awake.

Near the grandstand by the second tee, Willie Dunbar, a course worker, was busily checking the footing. In a thick Scottish burr, Dunbar explained he was checking the course for “trip hazards,” trying to ensure that spectators would not kick exposed TV cables or any other protrusions and take a fall. He seemed more concerned that a soft, green golf course would not have enough trip wire to keep the pros honest.

“I hear the rain may be done,” he said, quickly adding in a dour Scots manner, “but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

Recent rains have made the fairways green and the rough lush and thick, while chilly winds have dried greens and fairways enough to keep it from becoming too soft, the way it was back in ’61. That year some course signage was blown down by howling north winds and rain that delayed the start of the third round.

Meanwhile John Huggan shares this from Phil Mickelson:

"I'm really looking forward to this Open," he declares. "Birkdale is one of my fondest courses. It was there I played in my first Open back in 1991. It is in incredible shape, just immaculate. The greens were still pretty firm despite the rain. If it dries out and firms up over the next few days, as it is supposed to, it will be running hard and fast by next Thursday.

"I like those conditions; they will produce the right winner. The players today are so good and the equipment is so good that the temptation is always there to do something funky to the golf course to make par a legitimate score. I think winning scores should be between five and 12 under par. That is a hard test, a playable fair test. The best golfers in the world should be able to shoot that. That is what I would prefer. It would give the top players the chance to separate themselves."