Q&A: Notah Begay, David Feherty & Jim 'Bones' Mackay Preview The 147th Open

The 147th Open takes place July 19-22 at Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland. It's a huge deal for NBC Sports, which is devoting 182 hours of programming that will showcase the third men’s major championship of the year. That will include nearly 50 live hours of the tournament coverage starting with Thursday’s opening tee shot and going through Sunday’s final putt.

On Wednesday, NBC Sports analysts/on-course reporters Notah Begay, David Feherty and Jim "Bones" Mackay previewed the event and not surprisingly, one of the subjects covered was the overall difficulty of the course:

Q: Can each of you could maybe chime in with some initial thoughts on what has your attention going into next week?

NOTAH BEGAY: I guess my attention is just on just how wide open the landscape looks. It looked at the last major like Dustin Johnson sort of had one hand on the trophy after a few rounds and then it just turned out completely different at the end.

I think with the caliber of play that's been demonstrated thus far this year, I just think it's anybody's ballgame. Especially, and Bones can probably speak to this a little bit, having been on Phil's bag recently when he won, but [at The Open] so much depends on where you end up in the draw and the weather. This is one event where if you're on the wrong side of the weather equation, you could be taken out after the first day.

JIM "BONES" MACKAY: I completely agree with that, Notah. It's always to me one of the most distracting things, you head into The Open Championship, we saw it as recently as 2016 when Phil and Stenson butted heads on the weekend that literally half the field was eliminated on Thursday and Friday because our side of the draw got such a great break.

And staying with kind of a weather theme, someone asked me today who my favorites are, so-to-speak, at Carnoustie next week, and in my eyes, there's a guy you would pick in wet weather and a [different] guy you would pick if it's dry.

I just think that Mother Nature goes a long way in determining who is in the hunt there and how things go, and I think it's just going to be fascinating to see what we get, given the fact that Scotland has had very little rain here the last few months.

DAVID FEHERTY: I think Bones is exactly right talking about nature. We're here at Gullane at the moment, and the golf course is at burnt as I've seen a links course for a long time. Maybe since '89, The Open at Royal Troon.

Carnoustie is such a difficult golf course at the best of times. When you get it playing hard and fast like this, it's extremely difficult to hit fairways and if you don't hit fairways, well, then you can't hit greens. It's really going to suit someone, maybe not the longest hitter, someone like a Branden Grace or a Tommy Fleetwood might be in contention next week with their ability to hit the ball low and keep it under control.

So don't be surprised if you see more of a technical player rather than a guy who beats the living daylights out of it and goes and finds it.

Q: Following up on what you were just saying with how quickly the weather could change or luck of the draw, how does that impact the job of the caddies? Bones, did you feel like you could go out for a walk in the morning and get a good idea of how the course would play in the afternoon, or is watching the early groups not so usual over there?

JIM "BONES" MACKAY: Great question. Certainly, if there's a lot of rain early in the week. Even though you come over here, and you just hope like crazy that you don't get the tough end of it. You're going to get good, and you're going to get bad.

More to your point a lot of caddies I think will go out on the golf course prior, certainly before their last tournament round, to see how the balls are playing and reacting on the greens and maybe if there's a pin or two that is a little bit stern or unexpected.

But I think, you know, everybody is on their phone looking to see what the forecast says if there's rain or wind or whatever the case may be. I think there's just a lot of luck involved. You know, there's a couple of guys out here that play and I remember in 2010, if you played late on Thursday at St Andrews, you got absolutely hammered on the draw, and I just remember watching guys warm up and how upset they were before they had even hit shot one, because they knew the guys in the morning had played in two- or three-mile-an-hour winds and we were about to play in 20. In fact, there was actually a wind delay that day.

There's a lot of hoping and praying and you hope you get the good end, and then you go get 'em after that. But I always think that the mixture of weather and Mother Nature is always one of the big stories heading into an Open Championship.

Q: Bones, specifically, you brought it up. Who would be your pick for if it's wet and who would be your pick if it's dry?

JIM "BONES" MACKAY: Well, I haven't finished all of my homework, but at this point, my [dry] pick is going to be Tommy Fleetwood, and my wetter pick is going to be Dustin Johnson. That's subject to change but that's who I'm looking at, at the moment.

Q: This is a different style of golf than the guys usually play. How long does it take to get adjusted to it and how big of an adjustment is it?

DAVID FEHERTY: In terms of getting adjusted to links course play, it's still target golf, but quite often the target is 60 yards short of the green, and then you have to read what the ball is going to do in between where it hits and when it gets on the putting surface.

I think that's why golf in Scotland and Ireland and around the coast here in the United Kingdom is so fascinating. It's the same type of golf as it is anywhere in the world but it's played in miniature, if you like, because you either have to fly the ball all the way there in the breeze or land it way, way short of the green. And when it's downward and crosswind, just good luck.

NOTAH BEGAY: That's so true, David. And on that point, there are two other elements that I think factor into certain players having success adjusting and certain players that just go over there and really kind of are defeated before they even put the first peg in the round.

No. 1 is that the PGA TOUR has become -- and it even starts on the Web.com Tour, has become very target-rich: I have to go out there and make as many birdies as possible; I have to shoot at the flags. I think that's the type of player that's been rewarded with power, high productivity on the birdie side and making the bogey here and there is not going to matter as long as I'm making birdies.

That's one of the things that can really come up and bite you at an Open because there are just flags that you just should not shoot at. We see the last couple years, these bunkers are extremely penal. They are literally like hitting into a water hazard on some, because depending on the bounce you get -- and Bones mentioned luck with the weather, there's going to be luck as these balls roll into some of these bunkers. Because if you end up on the wrong side of the bunker, your only option is either to try and play it out sideways or backwards, which is basically a one-shot penalty.

The second part of that, in terms of players having to adjust to a slightly more conservative type of play is the creativity. Players that are able to see the bounces that David talked about and work their way and are able to shape shots and can trust the shape on their shot. So No. 1, you have to be able to see the shot and No. 2, you have to be able to control the shot.

So you have to be on top of your game as far as your ball-striking is concerned, so I think that those two elements of the game factor into a little bit on how a given player is able to adapt and transition from a more American style of play and going over and playing true links golf.

Q: I’m wondering if the greens at The Open, being slower than the conditions that we're used to seeing week-in, week-out, is there a potential for that to play into Jordan Spieth’s hands, when considering his struggles with putts of a certain distance?

JIM "BONES: MACKAY: I'll take a shot at that one. Last year, when they were asking guys who they -- who was their pick to win the tournament, I picked Jordan, which I think probably a number of people did.

But I think that Jordan's particularly effective over here because it's not as easy to me to get the ball stiff, if you will, on your approach shots on the par 4s as it is more so back in the States, just because of the way the greens are and the firmness of the greens and the way the ball -- the peaks and valleys, if you will. I think that because the pace of the greens isn't particularly quick, oftentimes, it comes down to who has a very good week from 20 to 30 feet, and I think that Jordan is particularly good in that range.

And as far as any kind of putting concerns that he's had, you know, this year, I think that he's got the good MoJo, being the defending champion, I think he's going to come in here and have a real bounce in his step. You know, I think that he's very good at reading the greens, which is part of the challenge and I expect him to potentially really kind of get in the mix next week and be a real factor, just because he's got a good feeling and he doesn't want to take his hands off that Claret Jug any time soon.

Q: Given its standing as one of the toughest venues hosting The Open, do you think that Carnoustie lends itself to allowing more in the field to get into contention, or do you think it shrinks the field so-to-speak? Obviously in ’99, Van de Velde was pretty off the radar, but how do you think the course sets up in general with respect to the field?

DAVID FEHERTY: I think it probably shrinks it if anything. I was there five weeks ago to shoot some promos for The Open and the rough wasn't that bad and the bad weather they have had so far -- I suspect the players who don't hit the fairway, and there's going to be plenty of them, believe me, those fairways at Carnoustie are really hard to hit even on a hard day, it gets hard and fast and you're going to see a lot of play from the rough.

It goes back to almost like the old days when you had to read a lie in the rough, and you know you can get it there and you're not sure if it's going to come out fast or it's going to come out slow. And it takes a real artist to look at that lie and understand how the ball is going to come out of it. The golf course is going to be playable and it's going to be possible to shoot good scores on it.

A lot of the younger players might not have the experience of reading those lies, because these days, especially in the United States, if you hit it in the rough, doesn't matter who you are, you hit the same shot. You need to have the experience of playing from fast lies and long rough, and that's the sort of thing that you don't get just anywhere.