Matt Wallace column: The Open is the biggest tournament you can win, it can change your life forever

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Matt Wallace13 July 2021

The Open at Royal St George’s in 2003 was the first tournament I attended. I was 13 and got taken down by a friend and I just remember the noise.

It was a huge roar, and honestly I’ve never heard it quite like that when you’re playing. I guess you just don’t hear it that much. I found it incredible those golfers dealt with the noise and the shots they were hitting. I got an absolute buzz from it.

Being a golfer wasn’t something that I wished to be at that point but I did want to play sport and be in that sort of an arena. I wanted to be a cricketer and be in that sort of gladiatorial stadium. I loved it.

But then dad got me into golf and I gradually realised where golf could take me. This week, it’s back to Royal St George’s for the Open.

I got asked the question this week which tournament I’d like to win most and I said the Open but also the Masters. But the Open is the biggest one, the biggest tournament that you can win. It would just change your life forever, it’s certainly changed Shane Lowry’s.

There’s a special way to be able to play the Open. My first ever one at Carnoustie, I was paired with Padraig Harrington and Bubba Watson, and remember thinking “oh my God, what a group, this is amazing”. But I missed a two-foot putt on 17 and a 15-foot birdie on 18 to miss the cut. I was gutted.

And the next year I was very fortunate at Portrush to play with Tiger Woods and Patrick Reed. That time, it was like “this is the best tournament in the world and I’m playing with my hero”. I remember back at Royal St George’s that time watching Tiger play. I didn’t start great but played pretty well from there.

For the Open, you need a bit of a luck on your side – it’s the challenge of links golf. In my last round of the Scottish Open last week, I had a shot that I could have played a safe chip shot to 20 feet or else a high tariff to bounce off the side slope. I went for the latter and managed to get it to five feet and rolled it in.

With links golf, you’ll get bad luck and bad breaks from good shots and good breaks off bad shots. You have to be very imaginative around the greens.

You need the mental toughness to not get fazed by those bad breaks and it takes a special type of person to just shrug it off. In tour events, you feel you have to shoot low the whole time, you get bad breaks and you’re behind the eight ball. At the Open, everyone gets bad breaks – dealing with it’s an art.

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The wind’s another factor – it’s usually pretty bad and varied because so many holes go off in different directions. The first is parallel to the clubhouse and the second a dogleg right to left at a completely different angle. And then there’s the blind shots, which spook a lot of people.

My preparation’s been good. I was in danger of missing the cut at the Scottish Open last week but then ended up top 30.

I’ve gone back to a similar type of putter I was using when I was winning with the neck bend. And I think it equated to just one three putt all week.

It’s a blessing in disguise I got to play the weekend as I could work with my coach Liam on the course rather than having to go back to Wentworth, which isn’t a links course, and do stuff over the phone.

I had a day off at home on Monday, nine holes planned on Tuesday and another nine on Wednesday. Then it’s time for the Open.

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