J - the refrain from those down the leader board today was about missed opportunities. The conditions were benign (as Tiger noted) and the scoring chances were plentiful (as Phil noted), and those who are 10-15 shots back are the ones who haven't played quite well enough and/or haven't made the most of the potential birdies that the course offered. And yet, even setting Rory and his 16 under aside for a moment, there are a good number of golfers who are taking advantage of those chances -- golfers as different as short hitting Jim Furyk and bomber Dustin Johnson, and Garcia and Clarke and Fowler shooting 3 and 4 and 5 under pars over the past three days. All of which suggests that, while Hoylake is not a penal course or a particularly severe one (especially not for a major championship), the difference in results between a well struck shot and a mediocre one can be significant -- and this in turn means that a golfer playing top notch golf won't be artificially held back or hemmed in by the architecture and/or the maintenance, such that the scoring spread can and likely will be bigger/higher than it will be at Valhalla. In short, perhaps architecture that's more interesting and nuanced doesn't automatically lead to more exciting tournaments, especially if what we mean by exciting is having a whole bunch of golfers bunched together coming down the stretch on Sunday.
Peter