Renaissance Club (North Berwick, Scotland)

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    The Joys of Links Golf Never Get Old

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    No matter which seaside, windswept course hosts the British Open, the final major tournament of the year puts a golfer’s imagination to work, and captures ours.Tired of the whole golf-gone-wild thing? The one that has turned the men’s professional game into a new toy for Saudi investors? The one that has U.S. senators dragging golf (minus the bag) to work? The one that has left the PGA Tour star Rory McIlroy saying he feels like a sacrificial lamb in the proposed PGA Tour-LIV Golf partnership?Rest easy. This week, links golf, the windswept and unadorned form of the game, takes its annual turn on golf’s main stage. It’s a chance for golf to tell its origin story all over again. The British Open, the fourth and last of the annual Grand Slam events, is upon us.The host course, this time around, is Royal Liverpool, also known as Hoylake to those who know the course and its bumpy fairways, which are rendered a pale khaki green by the summer sun and the brackish air.British Opens are always played, to borrow a phrase from the BBC commentator Peter Alliss, who died in 2020, “in sight and sound of the sea.” They are contested on links courses that are a century old — or much older. Royal Liverpool held its first Open in 1897 and is on Liverpool Bay, though you might think of it as the Irish Sea. The course is a mile from the train station in Hoylake — many fans will get there via Merseyrail — and about 15 miles from Penny Lane in Liverpool.The lifelong Texan Jordan Spieth, winner of the 2017 British Open, prepared for Royal Liverpool by entering last week’s Scottish Open, played on the links course at the Renaissance Club. One afternoon, Spieth slipped away and played North Berwick, an old and beloved links. Its 13th green is guarded by a stone wall because — well, why not? The wall was there first, and the course goes back to 1832.Jordan Spieth during the final round of his win at the British Open in 2017.Richard Heathcote/R&A, via Getty Images“In the British Isles,” the American golf course architect Rees Jones said recently, “they like quirky.”Promoting a course by way of its architect, a powerful marketing tool in American golf, is not much of a thing in Britain. Years ago, Jones was making a first visit to Western Gailes, a rugged course on Scotland’s rugged west coast. The club’s starchy club secretary — that is, the gatekeeper — told Jones he could play the course if he could name its architect.Jones offered a series of names.Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.“Who designed it then?” Jones asked.“God!” the secretary bellowed.Spieth’s plan was to play only a few holes at North Berwick, but he found he couldn’t quit. He played the entire course. While on it, he talked about the joys of links golf.“There’s nothing like links golf,” he said. “The turf plays totally different. The shots go shorter or farther than shots go anywhere else, depending on wind. It’s exciting. It’s fun. You use your imagination. There’s never a driving-range shot when you’re playing links golf.”In the background, somebody in Spieth’s group offered, “Good shot,” to another player. But you have to be careful with that phrase, when playing on links land.Nobody could know that better than Tom Watson, the winner of five British Opens in the 1970s and ’80s.“In 1975, I went to Carnoustie to play in my first Open,” Watson said in a recent phone interview. Carnoustie, on the east coast of Scotland, is famously difficult, bleak and tricky. Watson arrived at the course on the Sunday before the start of the tournament, but the overlords turned him away. He was too early. Good thing there are 240 traditional links courses across Britain.“So Hubert Green and John Mahaffey and I went down the road to Monifieth,” Watson said. “I hit my first shot right down the middle. Everybody says, ‘Good shot.’ We walk down the fairway. Can’t find my ball. It’s gone. I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know about this links golf.’”Watson won that 1975 British Open at Carnoustie. And he might have won in 2009 at Turnberry, but his second shot, with an 8-iron, on the 72nd hole, landed short of the green, took a wicked bounce and finished in fluffy grass. He need one simple closing par to win. Instead, his bogey meant a playoff, and Watson, 59 and spent, was doomed. Stewart Cink won.Watson came into the press tent and said, “This ain’t no funeral.” A links golfer, over time, learns to accept the good bounces and bad ones in any golfing life.Phil Mickelson with his caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay after making his birdie putt on No. 18 to win in 2013.Toby Melville/ReutersAfter Tom Doak graduated from Cornell in 1982 with the dream of becoming a golf course architect, he became a summer caddie at the Old Course at St. Andrews. Doak, now a prominent architect (and the designer of the Renaissance course), has been making a study of links golf ever since. In a recent interview, he noted that older golfers often do well in the British Open. Greg Norman was 53 when he finished in a tie for third in 2008. Darren Clarke was 42 when he won in 2011, and Phil Mickelson was 43 when he won in 2013.Links golf, Doak said, is not about smashing the driver with youthful abandon. When Tiger Woods won at Royal Liverpool in 2006, he hit driver only once over four days. Greens on British Open courses are typically flat and slow, notably so, compared with, say, the greens at Augusta National. There’s less stress over putting and the game within the game that favors young eyes and young nerves. What links golf rewards most is the ability to read the wind, the bounce and how to flight your ball with an iron.“In links golf, you have to curve the ball both ways, depending on what the wind is doing and where the pin is,” Doak said. “You have to figure out what the ball is going to do after it lands.”That takes guile and skill and earned golfing wisdom — all helpful whether you’re playing in a British Open or a casual match with a friend in the long dusk light of the British summer. Open fans will sometimes finish their golf day with a suppertime nine (or more) on a nearby seaside links. Greater Liverpool has a bunch of them. Every British Open venue does.Playing night golf on those courses, you might also see golf officials, equipment reps, sportswriters and caddies, Jim Mackay among them. Mackay, who is known as Bones and who caddies for Justin Thomas, was Mickelson’s caddie when Mickelson won at Muirfield a decade ago.Mackay, like millions of other golf nuts around the world, can’t get enough of the game. That is, the actual game, not its politics, not its business opportunities. Mackay knows, as a golfer and caddie, that success in links golf requires a certain kind of golfing magic, the ability to make the golf ball do as you wish.Playing links golf, he said recently, “is like standing 50 yards in front of a hotel and having to decide which window on which floor you want your ball to go through.”The caddie as poet. A golfer with options.Links golf, John Updike once wrote, represents “freedom, of a wild and windy sort.” On some level, the winner at Royal Liverpool will understand that. The winners of all those suppertime matches will, too. Yes, the Open champion will get $3 million this year. But he will also get one-year custody of the winner’s trophy, the claret jug, his name etched on it forever.Tiger Woods with his caddie Steve Williams after his win at Royal Liverpool in 2006.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesDo you know how much Woods earned for winning at Hoylake in the summer of 2006? Not likely.But many of us remember Woods sobbing in his caddie’s arms. We remember Woods cradling the jug in victory. We remember the clouds of brown dirt that announced his shots, his ball soaring, his club head twirling.“Hit it, wind,” Woods would say, now and again, to his airborne ball, as if the wind could hear him, and maybe it could. More

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      The Genesis Scottish Open Rises in Stature

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      The course is considered a solid testing ground for the British Open, a major played just down the road a few days later.The Renaissance Club, the site of the Genesis Scottish Open that begins on Thursday, looks like it’s been there for hundreds of years, like so many other great links courses in Britain.Like all true links courses, it winds along the coast with few trees; wind, rain, heat and cold become issues for players. It has firm fairways that can kick a well-hit drive forward an extra 50 yards or punish an equally well-struck shot with an unlucky bounce.The course has high golden fescue grass that waves in the wind. Brown-tinged greens undulate subtly in the center and strikingly on the edges. And of course, deep bunkers swallow balls careening toward their targets.It’s in the best neighborhood in town for golf. Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and regular host of the British Open, abuts the course. And down the road is North Berwick Golf Club, where the sport has been played since 1832.But the Renaissance Club, now in its fifth year of hosting the Scottish Open, opened in 2007 after two American brothers developed the club. The tournament course is the product of an extensive renovation in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Yet its architect, Tom Doak, is not known for building courses that host professional golf championships. This was his first.So how did the Renaissance Club come to host a tournament that has been growing in importance? (It offers entry into the British Open for players who place in the top five spots, and it is sanctioned by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, meaning more money and ranking points.)The change began in 2011 with a broader strategy to play on conditions that would approximate the British Open often held a few days later. The Scottish Open had been around, off and on and under various sponsors, for about 50 years at that point.The organizers partnered with Visit Scotland, the country’s tourist board, to find venues that would also capture a tourist’s imagination. While Scotland has a variety of topography for its golf courses, Scottish golf conjures up images of wind-ripped, bouncy courses.“We kicked off a links strategy in 2011 and decided to move from Loch Lomond to Castle Stuart,” said Rory Colville, the Genesis Scottish Open championship director. “We decided that it was in the players’ best interest to play links golf the week before the Open Championship. The economic benefit of the first Scottish Open at Castle Stuart was said to be in excess of 5 million pounds [about $6.3 million]. That’s a really positive thing.”Loch Lomond, which had hosted the tournament for more than a decade, was a parkland course on an estate with streams and trees that dated back centuries. It’s ranked as one of the best courses in the world. But its trees and streams don’t conjure up the same images of Scottish golf.Castle Stuart, like the Renaissance Club, is a modern course built to look like it has been on the land forever. The difference was in the design team.Opened in 2009, it was designed by Gil Hanse, an American architect who restored courses for the United States Open and the P.G.A. Championship, including Los Angeles Country Club and Southern Hills in Oklahoma. On Castle Stuart, Hanse worked with Mark Parsinen, who found the land, to build a course in the Highlands with wide vistas, firm fairways and deep bunkers.“Although at the time Castle Stuart was a relatively young golf course, it highlighted all you would want from a new links course as a venue,” Colville said. “It was a fair test of golf, but it was also the right type of test in the warm-up to the Open,” in that it was not set up to be overly penalizing.“Players don’t want to get beaten up going into a major championship,” he said. “Castle Stuart was the right type of golf course. Also, it had this fantastic scenic setting to showcase golf to the world. It was a really rewarding experience to take the Scottish Open up to the Highlands.” And it produced solid champions: Luke Donald, Phil Mickelson and Alex Noren.The strategy in those years was to use a rota, or schedule, of courses akin to what the British Open does in moving the championship to a set number of venues. For the Scottish Open, these included Royal Aberdeen, Gullane and Dundonald.“We had an exceptional experience at Royal Aberdeen,” Colville said about the tournament in 2014. “Justin Rose won there in great style. Rory McIlroy played there and went on to win the Open the week after that.”Gullane had the advantage of being close to the capital, Edinburgh, which increased the number of spectators.But top players balked at a rota before the official Open Championship rota. It meant they would potentially have to learn a new course each year. There were also economic reasons to host an event at the same stop with the same infrastructure planned out.The Renaissance Club is a true links course that winds along the coast with few trees to protect players from the elements. The course was extensively renovated in 2014, which opened up some of the holes with views of the water.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images“At Loch Lomond, we built an event year after year,” Colville said. “We needed to find a home to make it the scale it needs to be. That’s tricky when you’re looking at a member club, with a larger number of members who don’t want the annual interference of golf course closure and interruption of their day to day golfing.”The Renaissance Club had been founded by the brothers Jerry and Paul Sarvadi. Paul is the chief executive of Insperity, a human resources company, and Jerry spent his career in aviation fuel.On the club’s 10th anniversary in 2018, Paul Sarvadi talked about his commitment to continuing to host the Scottish Open. “While proud of our first 10 years, we are even more excited about our next 10 years,” he said.Colville said the brothers had a passion to create a home for the Open.“They’ve built a long-term TV compound and parking facilities,” he said. “They’ve built the infrastructure that makes it feasible to hold the event year after year. They’ve made it a viable event.”They’ve also allowed tinkering to the course. “Our agronomy team has worked very closely with the club to improve the conditions and refine the golf course.”Doak, who declined to comment, is better known for designing destination venues on remarkable plots of land, like Barnbougle in Tasmania, Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand and Pacific Dunes in Oregon. He has largely eschewed commissions or restorations of courses that will host tournaments.“I never really thought I’d do tournament golf courses,” he told the Golf Channel in 2019. When asked what he did to create a course tough enough for the professionals, he added, “It’s a little bit getting inside their heads. You want to do things that make them think and make them play a little safe.”Since the Renaissance Club course was renovated in 2014, Doak has been less involved in year-to-year changes. The ownership group brought in Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion and past Ryder Cup captain, to consult on the course from a tournament player’s perspective.“You get the perspective of someone with his links credentials to help refine the golf course and improve it,” Colville said. “He’s added some subtle design features to make the rough more penal and changed a lot of the fairway cut lines.”In the five years since the course began hosting the event, the Scottish Open has achieved elevated status with its sanctioning by the PGA and DP World tours. It has secured Genesis, the luxury-car company, as a title sponsor.And the field has grown stronger. Last year’s champion, Xander Schauffele, was the fifth-ranked player in the world after his victory.“We expect to be the best attended Scottish Open this year, with more than 70,000 spectators,” Colville said.“This year we have eight of the top 10 players in the world. That’s a vote of confidence that they like the golf course and like the facilities.” More

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      Xander Schauffele Returns to Scottish Open Looking to Repeat

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      He won four tournaments, including the Scottish Open, in a strong 2022, but has not won in a year.This time last year, Xander Schauffele was on a tear.He won the Travelers Championship on the PGA Tour. The next week, he won the JP McManus Pro-Am. He beat Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler by five shots and the newly minted United States Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick by 17.When Schauffele showed up at the Renaissance Club for the Genesis Scottish Open, his solid play continued. He won the tournament by a shot, for his fourth victory in 12 months.“It was probably one of the better months I’ve had in my career,” said Schauffele, who went to San Diego State University and exudes a Southern California calm.He returns to Scotland this year a bit cooler, but still ranked sixth in the world. He hasn’t won in a year, but he has continued to play strongly.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You were on a roll last year. What was that like?I played the Travelers, then JP McManus Pro-Am in between, where I played really well, and then I won the Scottish. I was in a really good mind-set. I was hitting a lot of shots I wanted to hit, hitting a lot of putts the way I wanted to. I felt like I was doing my best, and that was good enough to win. It was that calm feeling attached with really good golf.How do you translate winning at River Highlands, one of the PGA Tour’s stadium courses, at which a lot of earth was moved to create the course, to the Renaissance Club, where the architect Tom Doak took a more minimalist approach to the land and the terrain?At River Highlands, you go from greens that are slower and have a lot more break to greens that are faster and more nuanced. With Renaissance, it’s a little bit more relaxed coming in. It’s not as penalizing as River Highlands [home to the Travelers] with all its contours. The only thing that would translate is confidence.Let’s talk scoring conditions. How do you adjust from going from plus 2 at the U.S. Open, (when minus 6 won it), to minus 19 at the Travelers and minus 7 at the Scottish Open?It’s definitely something you take into account before the week starts when you’re coming into different greens. It’s the mentality. At River Highlands, when you make six or seven pars in a row, you have to stay patient because you know other players are reeling off birdies. You have to beat the course each week. That’s something that comes into play. You have to stay patient. It doesn’t always go your way. Overseas you sometimes feel bad making par. But then you realize par is going to win.You shot a record-tying 62 in the opening round of this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club and a 70 the next day. Every golfer has done the equivalent of that. What was it like for you?A 62 at that club definitely wasn’t something you anticipated. It was a setup thing. Through two rounds there were a lot of low scores. Rickie [Fowler] and I doing it early made people feel it was out there. The most impressive round was Tommy Fleetwood shooting 63 on Sunday. I was off to a heck of a start, but no round was the same. I didn’t adjust accordingly. I got off to a fast start, but then I started leaking oil.What’s your plan to defend at the Scottish Open this year?I’m close to some good form. I’ve been scratching at the surface. When I come to a site where I play well, I really don’t try to think too much about whether I won last year or not. I’m excited to be back here. I typically like to play on hard golf courses. But I’ve worked to make myself a believer that I could play well on any property. More

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      The Players to Watch at the Scottish Open

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      Here are five golfers who could win the tournament at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick.Another major championship in professional golf, the last of 2022, is just around the corner: next week’s British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews. With Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson expected in the field, along with other marquee names, the quest to win the claret jug should be quite a spectacle.First, however, comes this week’s Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland. The tournament, with a stellar field of its own — 14 of the top 15 golfers in the world — is also likely to provide some enduring memories.Here are five players to watch.Matt FitzpatrickIt will be fascinating to see what happens from here on with Fitzpatrick, who captured last month’s United States Open for his first PGA Tour victory.Will Fitzpatrick, 27, follow the path of Danny Willett, another major champion from England — the 2016 Masters — who hasn’t won in the United States since? Willett has registered three victories on the European Tour.Or will he perform more like one of the game’s greats, Nick Faldo, also from England, who has six majors on his résumé?Fitzpatrick has the talent to be a factor for many years. His approach from the bunker on No. 18 at the Open, which ended up 18 feet from the hole, was as clutch as it gets. He is ranked No. 10 in the world.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesCollin MorikawaAt the halfway mark at the Open, Morikawa, still only 25, appeared headed to a possible third major crown in three years. He won the 2020 P.G.A. Championship and the 2021 British Open.Then came the seven-over 77 in Saturday’s third round, which included two double bogeys and four bogeys.After a collapse like that on such a grand stage, some players might not have been able to summon their best effort a day later.That wasn’t the case with Morikawa. He rebounded with a four-under 66, his second of the week, to finish in a tie for fifth. Morikawa, ranked No. 4, tied for 71st in last year’s Scottish Open.Charles Krupa/Associated PressSam BurnsWith all of the attention Scottie Scheffler has received this season, it’s easy to overlook what Burns has accomplished: three victories and eight top 10s in 19 starts. One of the wins came over Scheffler in May at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas.Burns, 25, who tied for 18th at the Renaissance Club in 2021, makes his share of birdies, 4.40 per round, seventh among tour players. And while his accuracy off the tee isn’t very impressive — he ranks 134th in that category — it does not appear to set him back as he is 14th in greens in regulation. He is ranked ninth.Julio Cortez/Associated PressXander SchauffeleSchauffele, 28, was long overdue when he broke through two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut. It had been more than three years since he captured an individual PGA Tour event, the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii. Perhaps he will now get on a roll.Schauffele, ranked No. 11, doesn’t appear to have any major weaknesses. He averages around 305 yards off the tee, tied for 12th in greens in regulation and second in sand save percentage. If there is any aspect of his game that he could improve, it would be converting more putts from 15 feet or longer.Charles Krupa/Associated PressJon RahmRahm, a former No. 1, hasn’t been in contention that often in recent months. With his enormous talent, that could change at any moment.Although he won the Mexico Open two months ago, he failed to be a factor in the Masters, tying for 27th, and in the P.G.A., tying for 48th. At the U.S. Open, where he was the defending champion, Rahm was still in the hunt heading into Sunday, but fired a four-over 74 to finish in a tie for 12th.Ranked No. 3, Rahm, 27, competed in his first Scottish Open in 2021. He came in seventh, only two shots back. More

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      For the Scottish Open, the Renaissance Club Toughens Up

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      After it first hosted the Open in 2019, some players said the course was too easy. Changes were made.There has been a certain amount of grumbling — justified or not — about how some European Tour courses play too easy, most notably in 2019 when Rory McIlroy criticized the playability at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland, which has hosted the Scottish Open since 2019.“I don’t think the courses are set up hard enough,” McIlroy told reporters at the time after the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, also played in Scotland. “There are no penalties for bad shots.“I don’t feel like good golf is regarded as well as it could be. It happened in the Scottish Open at Renaissance. I shot 13-under and finished 30th [actually tied for 34th] again. It’s not a good test. I think if the European Tour wants to put forth a really good product, the golf courses and setups need to be tougher.”Other players soon voiced similar concerns. Ernie Els of South Africa said he agreed “100 percent” with McIlroy. “European Tour flagship tournaments and other top events need to be ‘major’ tough. Test the best!” Els said on Twitter.Edoardo Molinari of Italy, a three-time winner on the DP World Tour, said on Twitter: “Good shots must be rewarded and bad shots must be punished … it is that simple!”.Now, either from player input or owners simply making improvements, several courses have made changes in Europe and the United States, including the Renaissance Club, which is hosting the Scottish Open for the fourth time starting on Thursday.Padraig Harrington of Ireland, a three-time major winner who recently consulted with the course architect Tom Doak, admits it may have played easy at first.“The first year had low scoring, but that was because the European Tour didn’t know the golf course,” Harrington said about the initial year the club hosted the tournament. “They went very easy on the setup. That’s when the Renaissance Club’s owner, Jerry Savardi, said, ‘Let’s toughen up this course.’”Players like McIlroy were reacting to how officials set up the course for the tournament, Doak said. Consider the weather.“They’ve played the tournament there three years, and they’ve not had a normal weather year once,” he said. “It’s only been windy one or two days out of 12. It’s normally a windy place, it’s just like Muirfield next door. The conditions make a big difference.“But we don’t control the weather. You can’t build a links course and tighten it up so that it’s hard in benign conditions, because then when it’s windy the course is impossible to play. You have to have some leeway. So we’re going slow with the changes. We don’t want to overact.”Jon Rahm plays from the rough during the opening round of last year’s Scottish Open.Jane Barlow/Press Association, via Associated PressMost of the changes have been incremental.“The last two or three years we’ve mostly done little tweaks — fairway bunkers and contouring,” Doak said. “We’re just working around the margins. When I first designed the course [in 2008], we were just going to host an event once. You don’t really design for a one-time event, I design for member play.“But when you’re going to host a tournament on a repeated basis, then you need to think about the core function of the golf course and what we want to do differently because of that.”They’ve also let the rough grow. “We’re trying to get the rough rougher,” he said.The addition of fairway pot bunkers [deep with high side walls] far from the tee should present an increased challenge for players by forcing them to think more carefully about their shots and strategy, Doak said.“We never really thought about it when the course was first built,” he said. “I just never worried about players carrying 300 yards. But now a bunch of them can.”Other more significant changes were considered, like changing greens, or making them smaller.“It would be really difficult to change a green and get it back to the right condition before the next tournament.” Doak said. He is waiting to see how the course plays in more normal weather conditions. “Then we’ll see if we keep going with changes, or if we’re good where we are.”Harrington, who won the United States Senior Open last month, approached the changes from a player’s point of view.“As a player, you want those changes right now,” he said. “In a perfect world, all golf courses evolve. Golf courses are always changing. But you have to go slowly with these changes, and you can’t go into it making it tougher for the sake of making it tougher.A view of the 14th green at the Renaissance Club, which is hosting the Scottish Open for the fourth time.Andrew Redington/Getty Images“We’ve made subtle changes to separate the field a little bit,” Harrington said. “You have to make your golf course a stern test.“I love to punish the guy who doesn’t take it on, or chickens out and bails. But nobody wants to stop a player from playing well. We want to encourage them to play well, tease them, and ask them to hit more great shots. But we’re going to punish you if you take a shot and miss it.”Harrington also underscored how the changes will force players to more carefully select their shots.“We more clearly defined the penalties, and if a player wants to take them on, great,” he said. “But they separate the winner from the guy who finishes 10th. If you’re not playing well, there’s a lot of danger. But if you’re playing well, you’ll get rewarded.The goal of Savardi, the club’s owner. was simple. “I want a course that rewards the good shots, and punishes the bad ones,” he said. “No matter what the weather is.”Yet Savardi still has an eye on the weather.“The greens are bone dry, and our fairways are rock hard,” he said. “If the weather stays like this, this place is going to be on fire.” More