There is nothing better than golf in wind

St. Andrews, Scotland — You don’t have to strain to find evidence of the unforgiving conditions on the Old Course Thursday. Balls flew off tees. Sand was blown out of bunkers. Hats flew off heads. Even Hinako Shibuno, rightly nicknamed the “Smiling Murderer,” frowned. That’s what happens when you shoot 80 shots.

The first round of the AIG Women’s Open was a major golf tournament at its most exciting. At least for the spectators.

“My head is like Stamping,” said Rose Zhang after shooting an even-par 72. “I think this is a first, honestly.”

Zhang played driver and 3-wood until the 375-yard first hole, and she was far from the only one. A handshake opener that must have felt like playing in handcuffs.

“To be honest, I don’t know how you can play in it,” said Gemma Dryburgh, who was born further up the coast in Aberdeen. It’s always the best sign of brutal conditions: when a Scotsman tells you the weather is too bad. That’s when the earmuffs and mittens came out.

But that was part of the genius that Thursday offered golf fans. It was golf on the edge of a cliff. And a sunny cliff at that! The girls had to play. The tournament organizers watered the course on Wednesday to grow the greens in the hopes of making them a little stickier. But if there had been any more wind, the tournament organizers would have postponed play. They almost had to.

The Old Course may feel like an out-and-back course, but in reality it winds its way through the coast in the shape of a fishhook, slowly changing direction with each hole until you reach holes 7 to 11, at the very end of the property, next to the Eden Estuary. There are no buildings there. No hills to act as buffers. Just a bare expanse of muddy sand that seems to act as a wind accelerator, blowing everything out into the North Sea.

By midday, the gusts on the 11th hole lived up to the ominous weather forecast the R&A had sent out on Thursday morning: 40-45 mph. A wind that would knock you over. A wind that had players taking cover behind gorse bushes. Or turning their bodies and taking a wider stance, not to hit but just to watch, for fear of falling into a bunker. The vicious hawks brought into town to keep the seagulls out of the sky had nothing to do. Mother Nature kept the seagulls on the ground.

Thursday helped answer an important question in golf: How do you tell 20 mph winds from 30 mph? From 30 mph to 40 mph? Over 40 mph? You feel it. And you hear it. Not in the flapping flags or the whipping of wind equipment, but in the stands. With that much wind blowing into the stands, there’s not so much a creaking as a humming — and a loud one, too, a constant in the background — as the air rushes quickly through the iron corridors.

Out there on the 11th hole – in the part of the course known as the Loop – this round was as close to a shift as one can get. Nicole Broch Estrup stood on the 11th green, looking at a 20-foot putt heading downhill. She had marked her ball at least 10 minutes ago, but every time she put it back on, it refused to stay still. She lined up for the hole, stepped away from the ball, and within 15 seconds, it rolled. Once, twice, three times. Broch Estrup called an umpire to look at it a fourth time. Then another umpire came, with no sympathy. Keep playing.

The trio in front had played from the 12th tee, the 12th fairway, the 12th green, the 13th tee and were on their way to the 13th green. The rest of the round was a backlog as rounds come to a standstill even on calm days. It was about 20 minutes before Broch Estrup was actually able to make a putt. Of course, that 20-foot putt ended in bogey.

Poor Gabbi Ruffels watched the whole thing from the 11th tee. A few minutes later, she played a chip shot from the corner of the 11th green, hit it too high into the wind, and watched it drift left like a paper airplane. That was probably the first time she ever chipped off the green into a bunker so quickly. Triple bogey.

Only a true British golf fanatic could wake up like Georgia Hall, look out of her bedroom window and smile.

“I looked out of my hotel room and could see the range,” Hall said. “The flags on the range – that’s a good indicator for me. It was 5 a.m. and it was storming. I thought: That’s great. Hopefully it stays that way.”

Why?

“This is natural, pure golf.”

More like golf with sore lips without lip balm. Hall made an eagle on her final hole, shot 71, and smiled. She was one of only four players to stay under par during the morning surge. Ruoning Yin shot an absurd 68, the round of the morning, the round of the day, and perhaps the round of the summer. She credited it to a simple attitude: “I just try to make the wind my friend.” That friendship, however, was hard work. It was the first time in her career she had factored the wind into judging her putts. The birdie she made from the rough on hole 17 was her favorite birdie of the season. It looks like an easy 3 on the scorecard, but it was a links 3 at the Open – a low 7-iron that rumbled along the ground, up onto the green, and rolled to 5 feet.

Remember how hard it was to shoot 3s last month when the men played at Royal Troon? Thursday on the Old Course brought that back to mind. Those heavy, wet winds on Scotland’s west coast exposed most of the world’s best players to the wind. Thursday also brought back memories of the 2022 Open, when the men played on the Old Course in the mildest conditions St Andrews has ever seen in competition. During that final round, with the outcome of the tournament still uncertain, the dozens of flags lining the 18th hole lay limp on the flagpoles. There were birdies galore in that match-winning 64 from Cam Smith, who finished the week at 20 under par. I bet the R&A R&D team wish they’d developed a weather machine.

As for the AIG Women’s Open, we had strong winds on Thursday. Rainy tees are planned for Friday morning. Then some wind again on Saturday. And even more on Sunday. The Open as it should be.