Stricker: "I bet if we really go back and look at each pin, there was half of them are up on a little knob."

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Steve Stricker spoke candidly about Friday's setup at Royal Lytham and was not particularly enthused about what he saw as an extreme ratcheting up of the hole locations. Speaking after the round of the many holes cut on knobs:

No, I mean, but there was a lot of them like that.  There were.  I mean No. 15, you know, it's almost 500 yards and it's sitting basically up on a little deal like this.  If you go past it, it rolls away, and short of it you're putting up the hill.  But a lot of them are like that today, right on a little knob.

Asked by Alex Miceli if the R&A could claim the course setup was pre-planned early in the week and was merely his imagination, Stricker was emphatic.

No, because, you know what, it was so different from yesterday.  I mean yesterday was pretty fair, benign, you know, you could be aggressive to some of the pins.  It looked like even if you short‑sided some of your shots yesterday, you could get it up‑and‑down.  Today it was not the case at all.  I mean, I'm telling you, every pin was on a little knob.  Maybe they thought they were going to have casual water.  But ‑‑ no, I'm kidding.  I'm really kidding.  There's casual in the bunkers, but I don't think they'll have casual on the greens.  But there was that much of a difference.  It wasn't like one or two or three through the course of a round.  I bet if we really go back and look at each pin, there was half of them are up on a little knob.