The opening day of the 2022 Open is very long
The tournament took place on the Old Par72 course of St. Andrews Golf Club in Scotland, bringing together 156 players for the 150th session. In the first two rounds, the organizers – Royal & Ancient arranged three players for each start. It all goes in the same direction from the 1st hole instead of adding one more dimension from the 10th hole commonly seen in the us Open and PGA Championship, or PGA Tour.
Meanwhile, most old pits are parallel, but in the opposite direction of fighting, there are no trees demarcating boundaries, not to mention that a green serves two holes, such as holes 3 and 15, holes 4 and 14, holes 5 and 13. Such sharing occurs in a total of 14 holes with pairs of 2-16, 3-15, 4-14, 5-13, 6-12, 7-11 and 8-10 pairs.
And when combined with hard fairways that cause the ball to roll and stray address more, round 1 jams progress. According to the schedule, the first group enters at 6:35 a.m. and the last group at 16:16.
Rory McIlroy is on the bright feeder, in the same group as reigning champion Colin Morikawa and world No 5 Sander Schoeffler. But it took the Northern Ireland golfer five hours and 43 minutes to finish. "In a lot of short PAR4 holes, I had to wait for the first group to leave Green to be released," McIlroy said after finishing the first round at 66 and finishing second at-6, two shots from Cameron Young's top of the table.
At this stage, McIlroy completed the 4th hole, but was unable to enter the 5th hole because his previous group did not play. Therefore, McIlroy, Morikawa and Shaofer had to stay and watch the group after the 4th hole. The waiting time takes 20 minutes.
Morikawa complained in Golf Digest: "I calculated the probability of slow lap, but didn't expect it to drag on for so long. My team waited from the tee to the fairway, and repeatedly let the audience reluctantly let the team of the same hole be in the front and side holes.
Tiger Woods, Max Homa and Matt Fitzpatrick started at 14:59 and left the 18th hole six hours and nine minutes later. As for the 14th hole, the 5th hole, Woods' group waited for 20 minutes before being distributed like McIlroy's group on the 5th hole. In the PGA Tour, they spend an average of 4 hours and 40 minutes on a lap.
The first round of this year's Open ended at 22:30, while the sun set at 21:51.
Congestion is expected to happen again when the second round starts again at 6.35 am, with 156 players still starting in the same direction from the first hole. After two rounds, the competition process remains unchanged, but when the organizers cut the elimination according to the principle of getting Top or T70, the competition progress will be improved.
