Is Sam Burns the Next Tom Watson?

Tom Watson, a five-time Open champion, joined Todd Lewis on Friday to revisit his victory at the 1983 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, the fifth and final Open win of his career. Watson is widely regarded as one of the greatest links golfers of all time, but his affinity for links golf did not come immediately.

“I hated links golf when I first started,” Watson said. “I hated the luck of the bounce. I hated how hard the greens were – I didn’t like that golf. I was a spoiled American golfer hitting into soft greens, and when you hit the ball into the fairway, it stayed in the fairway.”

The first part of Watson’s answer sounded strikingly similar to comments Sam Burns made after tying the men’s major championship scoring record with a second-round 62.

“I'm not a huge fan of links golf,” Burns said after the round. “I just haven't played well on links golf. It's not something I'm very familiar with. I get to do it maybe once a year.”

Can someone tell Sam Burns that he could play links golf more than once a year if he wanted to? Anyway, he went on.

“Like yesterday, I hit a really – not a bad shot on 17,” Burns continued. “I hit a 3-iron in and was trying to hit it just left of the green. And I get up there and it's in the left side of the lip and I have to hit it backwards. That kind of stuff is frustrating to me. You feel like you've hit a decent shot, and you get up there, and the next thing you know you're hitting it backwards. That's kind of been something I've tried to work on, playing links golf is trying to be more accepting and (I’m) still getting there. But yeah, I think the main thing is you just try to come out and execute to the best of your ability and learn to accept whatever the outcome is.”

I’ll cut Burns some slack. His perspective on the virtues or the injustices of links golf may very well evolve over time, just as Watson’s did.

“I finally got off my pity pot in 1979 at Lytham & St. Annes,” Watson relayed. “A particular situation arose: one day, I hit driver, 3-wood, five-iron into a par 5 and the next day I hit driver, 9-iron. A light bulb went off and I said, ‘Hmm, you have to play with feel, you have to play the conditions, you have to use your faculties to play links golf and not get upset with a bad bounce or the hard greens.’ And after that I started to love it.”

Burns’ perspective sounds much like the outlook Watson held early in his own career and reflects a sentiment often associated with American players. Then again, crying foul to the fair police isn’t uniquely American. Players of all nationalities have been prone to whining about the inconvenience of blind shots or the indignity of a par 5 that cannot be reached in two.

What often gets lost in those complaints is the reality that links golf is the game’s original form. Some players speak about links golf as though the sport was created and perfected in America before being taken overseas and bastardized into a tricked-up, unconventional version of the game that might as well have windmills in front of every green. Never mind that these comments are being made at Royal Birkdale, generally considered one of the fairest and least quirky venues on the Open rota!

Where Burns’ relationship with links golf goes from here remains to be seen. In five previous Open Championship starts, he has never finished inside the top 30. Yet heading into the weekend, the most complete version of Burns we’ve seen is just three shots off the lead and firmly in contention for his first major championship, only a month after the heartbreak of a near win at Shinnecock Hills.

As Watson himself said, it is possible to win an Open Championship without admiring links golf. He himself did it twice before learning to appreciate this style. But if Burns is going to walk off the 72nd green with a Claret Jug on Sunday, he’d be wise to make peace with the occasional odd bounce or plugged lie — the same variables that every other player in the field must also navigate.

And if Watson’s career arc is any indication, one day Burns may wistfully speak not about the frustrations of links golf, but about its beauty: the purest version of the game.