With Muirfield hosting this week’s AIG Women’s Open for the first time, I thought it worthwhile to ask stars of the men’s game who’ve played Muirfield a few times about the advice they have for the best women in golf, many of whom have never set foot on the links in East Lothian before.
Many chimed in with insight and helpful perspective including the 2019 Open champ Shane Lowry.
“It’s the fairest links golf courses in the world. Just don’t hit it in those bunkers. Stay out of those bunkers,” Lowry told LPGA.com. “If you play good golf, the course is right in front of you so you’ll shoot a good score. And if you don’t play well, then you won’t score well. That’s kind of the way it is.”
1996 Open champ Tom Lehman emphasizes the importance of good driving at a place like Muirfield.
“It is a strategic, position golf course. It’s a great driving course, it has so many doglegs where you really need to position your ball. You’ll have a dogleg in one direction and the fairway slopes in the other. So it becomes a great test of being able to put the ball in play,” Lehman told LPGA.com by phone. “The ladies seem to be able to drive it straight so I think they’ll have no problem with that.”
The greens at Muirfield bring their own set of challenges. Lehman warns this field that they must find the proper speeds on those surfaces.
“The greens can be very fast for links greens. The course can be very hard and fast and dry as they all can be, but it seems like Muirfield especially can get to a speed that’s tough to control.”
Webb Simpson played his second Open Championship at Muirfield in 2013 and had this takeaway.
“I do think length is a good thing (at Muirfield) where a lot of the links courses, length is not that big of a deal. But I think at Muirfield it could pay off,” Simpson said.
Simpson thinks that specifically longer hitters such as Nelly Korda, Jessica Korda, and Alison Lee would do well at Muirfield. Lee is coming off a tie for fifth in the Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open at another stern links test in Dundonald Links last week.
Tommy Fleetwood, when asked who his favorites were for the AIG Women’s Open, picked a friend of his.
“Well, I mean, if I went with my heart, it would be Georgia Hall because she's always up there in an Open and she's doing great. I know her quite well,” Fleetwood said of the 2018 AIG Women’s Open champion. “I think the strength in the women's game at the moment is - it’s similar to ours, really-like once you turn up - there's a long of list of players that can do well and can go and win. It's what makes the game great at the moment.”
One of the hottest players presently is Minjee Lee, and her younger brother-pro golfer Min Woo Lee-likes her chances this week.
“The way she's hitting it now is very good and she's going to be pretty tough to beat,” Lee said.
But when asked who between himself and his sister is the better links golfer, Min Woo didn’t give Minjee that win.
“I feel like I have a little bit more creativity when it comes to links golf. I want to say, me, but she's obviously really good,” Lee laughed.
The male golfers in their Open Championships have had an all-in-one players facility since 2019 at Royal Portrush. This year at Muirfield will mark the first time the ladies have their own facility called the AIG Women’s Open Clubhouse.
“It will have dining, a gym, physio rooms, locker rooms, showers, and everything that they need to prepare for a major championship,” R&A Assistant Director of Championships Zoe Ridgway said.
Back to the course and the advice the men have for this week’s competitors.
2015 Open champ Zach Johnson said Muirfield was the only venue he’s played in links golf where the greens were faster than the fairways.
“It's narrow. I think the beauty of it is you have to have every piece of your game on. Man, it's hard,” Johnson said.
1995 Open champ John Daly has played Muirfield twice in Open Championships.
“They'll enjoy it. Muirfield is a hard golf course, but it's fair. And the winds can really just blow your mind there. It can switch in a heartbeat,” Daly said.
And as the 2002 Open champ at Muirfield Ernie Els points out, no two holes run the same direction at Muirfield, so it’s quite a different test versus let’s say St. Andrews where a number of holes consecutively head the same direction.
“The piece of property is just amazing,” Els said. “What you see is what you get.”
2009 Open champ Stewart Cink has a certain type of player in mind that he expects to excel this week.
“It's going to take someone with a lot of imagination and a lot of patience. And I would look for probably like a pretty experienced player to win,” Cink said.
1999 Open champ Paul Lawrie counts Muirfield among his top three favorites. His advice for the ladies is simple:
“Like any other links course, stay out of the fairway bunkers and you need to hole some nice putts because you're always a long way away on links greens, so you've got to hole out well,” Lawrie said.
And just the mere presence of the ladies playing their first major at Muirfield is viewed by many in Scotland as an important point of progress.
“It sends the signal that the women’s game is being taken seriously,” Visit Scotland CEO Malcolm Roughead said.
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