Head to your physician promptly; you may be suffering from UsOpenivitis. It's not a pandemic, but it does get infect golf fans and amateur golfers, the way Augustaphrenia sickens green chairs at clubs. In the case of the later, they want their conditioning to mirror that of AGNC during a two-week period in April. In the case of the former, you dance a tarantella of par is the measuring stick, when it is not.
These are expert golfers. They would be plus-eight handicaps at any of our courses. They should shoot under par. The Old Course welcomes people who figure out its mysteries, and it allows the basher and the strategist alike to do this.
Ask the fellows who missed the cut, how easily the Old Course played that week. When you winnow the field to half, you usually keep the better half for the final 36 holes. It stands to reason that they would continue to play well, having figured out what to do over the first half of the championship.
Other championship sites feature golf in a vacuum: the club alone. St. Andrews is about the town and the surrounding area. The event extends beyond the OOB stakes. How wonderful that is. We should see it every five-six years (Depending on how you count.) If that happened, golfers would figure out how to play it.
There will always be enough hole locations to trick the golfers. We don't mind when they hide the flags at ANGC, inspired by TOC. Why should we mind when they do so at TOC?
Here is a rotation for the event.
TOC
Portrush
Muirfield
RSG
Troon
TOC
Carnoustie
Birkdale
Lytham
Liverpool
TOC