Golf
‘On Brand’ Scottish Weather For Open Championship | Weather.com
Stewart Cink, the 2009 Open Championship winner, prepares to play a shot during a practice round ahead of the Open Championship at Royal Troon golf club in Troon, Scotland, Tuesday, July 16, 2024.
(AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
- Rain and wind are in the forecast for golf’s Open Championship in southwestern Scotland.
- Timing of the rain is key as far as possible impacts on play.
- The Open is well-known for challenging weather conditions on seaside courses.
Golf’s major championships each have their signature, but none is so closely associated with foul weather as the Open Championship, which returns to Royal Troon on Scotland’s southwestern coast beginning Thursday.
Played on a rotation of seaside courses spanning Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, the Open confronts golfers with everything from swirling wind, rain and occasional bitter cold to hot, dry, baked-out conditions – not to mention the unique topographical challenges of links golf.
A rainy summer on the west coast of Scotland has made Troon’s normally challenging rough even thicker, with dandelions shooting up in spots, Golf.com reported.
The forecast for this year’s Open calls for rain Thursday morning, then mostly dry on Friday before a chance of rain moves back in on the weekend. Expect high temperatures in the low to mid-60s, lows in the mid-50s and winds blowing 10 to 20 mph with higher gusts.
On its website, the Open predicted rain for Thursday’s opening round, possibly heavy at times. Its overall forecast was “uncertainty for the Championship, but expected to remain changeable with wet and breezy conditions.”
“The timing of each of these systems is the key,” said weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. ”If it arrives during play, at least some showers can be expected. But one or more of these systems may instead arrive in the evening.”
“In short, it’s weather that’s pretty ‘on brand’ for Scotland. Periods of showers at times, otherwise mainly cloudy and breezy.”
A scoreboard displays that play is suspended due to high winds during the second round of the 144th Open Championship at The Old Course on July 18, 2015, in St. Andrews, Scotland.
(Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
So it appears this year’s field won’t face anything like some of Open’s more recent weather follies:
-2019: Wind strong enough to break umbrellas and heavy rain invaded Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush during the final round. In conditions he called “unbelievably difficult,” Ireland’s Shane Lowry took home the Claret Jug.
-2015: The wind blew so strong on Saturday at St. Andrews that play was suspended for more than 10 hours, from shortly after 7:30 a.m. until almost 6 p.m. The tournament wound up finishing on Monday for only the second time.
-2002: Tiger Woods’ hopes for the calendar-year Grand Slam were blown away by a storm (described by one caddie as “a black mass”) that arrived halfway through the third round at Muirfield in Scotland. In sideways wind and pelting rain, Woods shot 10-over-par 81.
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