Royal Birkdale is set to be the fastest and most fiery Open Championship of recent years and that has the likes of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler considering their strategy.

Players said fairways are as firm as Carnoustie 2018 and while Muirfield in 2013 was fast, probably the closest in terms of overall conditions and weather was 28 miles down the coast at Royal Liverpool in 2006.

Tiger Woods took one look at Hoylake’s burnt, yellow fairways baked by weeks of sun – although nothing close to the sustained highs of this summer’s heatwave – and binned his driver, using it just once over 72 holes on his way to his third and final Open victory.

Many players have already made changes to their bag, replacing seven-woods with long irons to take advantage of the extra roll-out on the fairways.

“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” said Masters champion McIlroy, chasing his second Claret Jug after success at Hoylake in 2014.

“All this dry weather and sun and a little bit of wind is obviously great for the course in one way, but when I was here a couple weeks ago the rough was a lot more penal than it’s going to be this week. It’s definitely burnt out a lot.

“The big thing, especially off the tee here, is avoiding the fairway bunkers. You might see some guys being more aggressive off the tee, taking driver, trying to take the fairway bunkers out of play.

“It might be in the rough, but it’s not that penal, so you get a wedge in your hand and you can figure it out from there.”

Defending champion Scheffler’s most recent experience of links golf saw him miss the cut – his first in four years – at last week’s Scottish Open.

And while that allowed him an extra day’s practice at Birkdale he is still fine-tuning his strategy.

“The ball’s just going to run for forever pretty much,” he said.

“There’s a lot of thinking off the tee on whether you want to just hit driver up there somewhere and play from the rough most likely or start hitting some irons, getting it in some fairways and hitting some longer shots into the greens.

“If it wasn’t as firm as it is now there wouldn’t be as much decision-making but with the firmness it creates a whole lot more challenges just to try to control your ball and figure out where it’s going to end up.”

The challenge of 21 Englishmen trying to end a drought for the country stretching back to Sir Nick Faldo in 1992 will be led by Ryder Cup team-mates Justin Rose, Southport’s own Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton and reigning US PGA champion Aaron Rai.

Rose, who in 1998 announced himself to the world here as a 17-year-old amateur by holing out at the last to finish fourth, hopes to ride the wave of home support.

“There is a bit of an X factor to that, not using it as a pressure but sort of playing with a sense of freedom with the crowd,” he said.

“You can’t force it. You can’t have that weight of expectation being a home player.

“I think the crowd really kick in when you’re on the leaderboard. There’s that real energy they provide. I think it’s having a bit of an ace up your sleeve.

“That can be worth a shot or two down the stretch that can keep you going.”

Organisers of this week’s Open currently have no plans to alter Sunday’s schedule should England reach the World Cup final.

R&A chiefs are planning for a 6.40pm (1740 GMT) finish at Royal Birkdale – should there be no need for a play-off – and believe that would allow sufficient time before the 8pm (1900 GMT) football kick-off.

However, they say they will make a final decision once the outcome of England’s semi-final against Argentina is known.

R&A chief executive Mark Darbon said: “I’m an England football fan, so it would be a great problem to have.

“But I guess also, because I’m an England football fan, we should also wait to see how the semi-final goes before we get too far ahead.

“Of course in the background, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Our final putt is currently scheduled for around 6.40pm on Sunday.

“We think that, even if we go to a three-hole play-off, we’ve got time to complete the championship.

“So at this stage, no plans to alter anything, but we’ll maintain that under review and finalise our position after the semi-final.”

Around 300,000 spectators are anticipated at the Merseyside links throughout the week, which includes four practice days as well as the championship, which starts on Thursday.

Incidents at last autumn’s Ryder Cup and June’s US Open have highlighted concerns over spectator behaviour in golf, prompting the R&A to introduce a new code of conduct.

Darbon said the organisation is generally “very proud of the way our spectators behave” at the Open but trouble-makers would be ejected.

He said: “We feel it’s within our gift, if someone does step over the line, to ask them to leave the venue.”

Players are also being made aware of the standards of behaviour expected of them.

Darbon said: “We believe that we have a responsibility to play a leadership role, to ensure that fans watching see appropriate behaviour from the world’s best players as they participate in our championship.”

Birkdale has undergone significant course changes, arranged in collaboration with the R&A, to host this week’s Open, but other venues on the rota – notably Muirfield – have been more reluctant to make similar alterations.

Darbon said changes are a matter for each course, with “a lot of the decision-making driven by” their members, with no ultimatums from the R&A.

“At no stage would we threaten a non-return to a venue on that basis,” he said.

Muirfield has not hosted the Open since 2013 and there will not be another opportunity until 2029 at the earliest.

Darbon said the East Lothian links “requires a few tweaks” both around the golf course and across the site, but there was “good dialogue” with the host club.

Darbon also confirmed discussions to add Portmarnock, near Dublin, to the rota were ongoing but there were presently “no plans beyond that”.

The last time Jordan Spieth was on top of the golf world was nine years ago when he strolled down the 18th fairway at Royal Birkdale with the Claret Jug in hand. That Sunday, Spieth joined Jack Nicklaus as the only player to win three different majors at age 23 or younger. Everything was in front of him.

Things have been different for Spieth since that day at the 2017 Open when he painted his masterpiece. He has won only twice on the PGA Tour since and no majors. No longer golf’s wunderkind, Spieth arrives back at Birkdale changed by time and life.

“Both [on course and off] I’m very different; I’ve changed a lot,” Spieth told GOLF at the PGA Championship at Aronimink when asked about morphing from golf’s young hero to a star trying to find an ember to re-spark the flame.

That day outside Philadelphia, Spieth was adamant his game was in the best place it has been since his prime. Everything hadn’t clicked at the same time, but the game is all there, back at a level close to where he was that day in Southport. Something was just missing. Find it, and perhaps the dominoes would start to fall.

So, of course, when Spieth arrived back at Royal Birkdale, he went back to the place where he last was that Jordan Spieth.

“Walking up the 18th and remembering what it was like to walk up that 18th hole nine years ago, [I putted] to the pins that I putted to [that Sunday],” Spieth told the media on Monday.

There’s something to be said for returning to a place where you achieved your dreams and letting those memories fill your soul, pointing you to the path back. But you can also never be what you once were. Perhaps in that sense it’s perfect that a different Jordan Spieth arrives at a different Royal Birkdale.

When Spieth triumphed in Southport, he famously made an improbable bogey 5 on the 13th hole after he blew his tee shot right, hit a fan in the head and had to take an unplayable, eventually playing his third shot from the driving range. That won’t be an option this week. In the years since his victory, Royal Birkdale has made some changes. The area right of the 13th will be considered out of bounds this week; it’s now a fan village and the OB will start at the cart path right of the dunes.

That’s not the only change at the host of this year’s Open. The par-3 14th, where Spieth hit a brilliant 6-iron to 5 feet to kick off his winning birdie run, is no longer. The hole was removed during the renovation and the par-5 15th, where Spieth made a 50-foot eagle putt and shouted “Go get that!” to caddie Michael Greller, is now the 14th hole and that green has been moved to a more elevated position.

“Obviously, some of those holes coming in have changed,” Spieth said. “That [6-iron at 14] was maybe the best shot and [the eagle at 15 was the] best putt I’ve ever hit. They don’t exist anymore, which is a little unusual. Hope to create some more great memories here.

“In some regard, it’s kind of nice because I’ll never hit a shot that — this last time, it was like a walk-off. I go back and try to do it again and I don’t hit as good of a shot, then it’s not as cool.” Spieth said.

Time only moves forward. Living in the past can be a prison. Trying to get back to who you used to be is a maze with no exit, a poison that only dooms.

Nine years have passed for Jordan Spieth. Nine years that didn’t go how anyone thought they would, most of all him. But Spieth returns to Birkdale not in search of the past but filled with unfettered hope that the future holds something greater.

“I’ll never believe that until I’m at a point in my career where my health or whatever would be that because, I mean, if you give up on reaching your ceiling, then I don’t see a point in playing anymore,” Spieth said. “For me it’s always about I’ll do everything I can to be trying to be at the very best in the world because I know that I can be. I have been. It’s nice to have the blueprint.”

Spieth’s play has been consistently erratic this season. He has made 16 of 18 cuts and has eight top 25s but has zero tops 10s. When the ball striking has been there, the putter has abandoned him. When the flatstick is rolling, a few big numbers have derailed a promising week.

“I feel like I have a lot of great golf in front of me,” Spieth said. “I feel like I’m way more optimistic than I’ve been at a lot of different points in my career. I’m quite frustrated with the results considering I know where my game is at. It’s better than it was four or five years ago when I got back to top 10 in the world. It’s without a doubt better than it was then; it’s just not quite showing up in results.”

Spieth, now 32, knows that there is still much runway ahead of him. Time is of the essence, major championships only come around four times a year and opportunities to further etch your name into history can’t be wasted. But he’s not trying to outrun the fading sun just yet.

He can still be everything he wants to be — everything many thought he could be.

“How old was [Phil Mickelson] when he won his first major?” Spieth asked. The answer is 34.

“There’s plenty of examples where guys have played their best golf from there on,” Spieth said. “Now, I’m always comparing myself a bit to myself at my best, but not to try to be the exact player. Just more so that I know that I can do it. I know my ceiling is where that level was, and so I’m going to strive for it with the type of player that I am now.”

The canvas from Spieth’s Mona Lisa might be gone, but the belief and confidence that allowed him to paint it still remain. All that let’s left is to find what’s missing at the place he last had it.

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Mondays at major championships are sleepy affairs: players milling about on the practice green, trading gossip and tinkering with their strokes; caddies pacing out yardages and scouting the pitches on the putting surfaces; fans aimlessly wandering, welcome to their pick of seats (or napping perches) in mostly empty grandstands. 

But this Monday at the 154th Open Championship offered something different: not just meaningful golf but also golf that could, if the stars align above England’s wind-battered northwest coast, change the trajectory of a player’s career.    

The opening morning of this 11th of Royal Birkdale’s Opens marked the inaugural playing of the so-called Last-Chance Qualifier, a clever Royal & Ancient concoction that gave a dozen players who narrowly came up short in Final Qualifying one final shot at nabbing a spot on this week’s tee sheet — and fans onsite a rooting interest on an otherwise uneventful day. 

The participants came by way of a handful of exemption categories, including but not limited to players who were barely boxed out from the Official World Golf Ranking cutoff; the 2026 British Amateur runner-up (Matt Moloney); and players who finished one position behind those who advanced via Final Qualifying (which is how YouTuber Wesley Bryan punched his ticket to LCQ). Eighteen holes of stroke play for a chance to play, beginning Thursday, for the Claret Jug, her good self. Cool stuff.     

But enough lede-burying!

The champion of this grand golfing experiment’s debut was exactly the kind of player you’d like to see win the Hail Mary Invitational, a pro with such a regular-Joe past that they call him … well, “Joe.” That would be Joe Dean, a 32-year-old from Sheffield who got up and down from a pot bunker on 18 to post a two-under 68 and edge his countryman, Andrew Wilson, for LCQ bragging rights.

If Dean’s name rings even the faintest of bells, that might be because he made headlines at the 2024 Open at Royal Troon for working himself into early contention just a few months removed from driving a delivery truck for a British grocery-store chain. “I had a great time doing it,” Dean said Monday. “Met some really good friends and grounded me really well.”

Dean took the job in early 2020, when he was struggling to find his way in the pro game and largely playing one-day tournaments and mini-tour events. Making ends meet as a competitive golfer isn’t easy in most corners of the pro game, so Dean did what needed to do, picking up a delivery job in the early days of COVID after some urging from his girlfriend, Emily Lyle. He stuck with the gig for the next four years.

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In the fall of 2023, a pack of Dean’s friends pitched in to cover his costs for DP World Tour Q-school. Dean advanced through every stage and earned his card for the 2024 season. But with few winnings to his name, he was still scraping by. That changed in February 2024, when Dean broke through with a runner-up finish at the Kenya Open, worth about $225,000. “Life-changing,” he said at the time. His fine play continued that season with his star turn at the Open (while bunking in a motor home) and, at season’s end, a 37th-place finish in the Race to Dubai standings. 

This year, Dean is 67th in the race, but his best form has come in recent weeks, with two top-10s in his last three starts and now his win at the maiden LCQ. “One-day events, I seem to play better,” Dean said after his two-birdie, one-eagle round Monday. “I don’t quite know why, the mentality of trying to keep the same [aggressive play] throughout any round and every round.”

Unlikely as it may be, Dean has an even bigger event next week. He’s getting married to Lyle, who also happens to be his caddie. Lyle first picked up Dean’s bag when he turned pro in 2016. The partnership didn’t last (professionally!) with another of Dean’s friends looping for him in recent years. But Lyle, who is an accomplished amateur golfer, rejoined her fiancée at the KLM Open last month (where they tied for third) and has been with him for his last three starts. 

“It is a very hard dynamic,” Dean said Monday. “Even when things are going well out there, it’s still not a nice walk in the park. It’s very stressful. It’s demanding. … I will say that the good thing is I’m self-sustainable. So I have the yardage book. I just literally need Em to carry the bag in, probably just to talk rubbish to.”

Come next Tuesday, that rubbish will be replaced with solemn vows and sweet nothings, on the occasion of the couple’s nuptials. 

Why the Tuesday date? 

“It was cheaper,” Dean said, laughing. 

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