MacIntyre weathers the storm

Writing from Owings Mills, Md.

Thursday, August 14, 2025 

Many of the 16,000 or so fans who populated Caves Valley Golf Club on Thursday didn’t return after a mid-afternoon thunderstorm stopped play.

Oh, what they missed.

The remodeled Tom Fazio course had been playing tough before that. Fast fairways saw off-line tee shots skittering into the rough. Greens held only a little better than BMW car hoods. 

Then came .7 inches of rain in a half-hour drenching, and after a 133-minute delay, the fairways were easier to hit and the greens were like dartboards.

Pre-tournament favorite Scottie Scheffler said he preferred the former conditions, but nobody took better advantage of the latter than Robert MacIntyre. The 29-year-old Scot who finished second to J.J. Spaun at the U.S. Open, then tied for seventh at the British Open, ran down 162 feet of putts in a six-birdie binge to close out his round and score 8-under-par 62 to take the lead in the BMW Championship and race past Scheffler, who was already in with a handsome 4-under total. Tommy Fleetwood, still seeking a first victory on the American tour, also passed Scheffler with a bogey-free 5-under 65.

“The last six holes is probably as good as I’ve ever putted in a stretch of holes,” MacIntyre said. “Just so consistent.”

Just so amazing, really. He holed a cross-country 66-footer for a deuce on the par-3 13th, a 40-footer for a three on the par-4 14th, a 17-footer for a three on the par-4 15th, a 12-footer for a four on the par-5 16th, a 22-footer for a deuce on the par-3 17th and finally, after a great kick off a slope with a 190-yard approach, a ho-hum 5-footer for a three at the last.

One’s mind would tend to reel as the birdies – 10 in toto – mounted up, but MacIntyre kept his wits about him.

“It’s so tough out there,” MacIntyre said. “There's so many shots that you can't not think about. You can't just stand up there and swing at it because there's so much trouble.

“For me, it was literally just tick off each shot, and it's something that – the tougher the test for me, the better I can accept things like the tee shot on 12 (which led to bogey). Terrible tee shot, but I know a bogey is not horrendous, and I can accept a bogey when it's such a tough hole. So a bogey is not going to kill you.

“The tougher the test for me, I stay switched on, and I feel like the way I play golf is better suited for the tougher tests, where you're rewarded for hitting a fairway, you're rewarded for hitting a green, and then take your chances with the putter.”

Thus, he liked how he was playing before the storm, even though rewards were few. He was 2-under at the turn with three birdies and a bogey.

“I was playing great. I hadn’t holed any putts, to be honest,” MacIntyre said. “I had a few chances, but the greens were really slick early on when they were dry.”

Then he was slick.

As for Scheffler, standing 1-under at the break, the world No. 1 birdied three of the last four holes in this 122nd edition of the Western Open.

It was vintage Scheffler. A 16-foot birdie putt on the par-4 15th. An 84-yard wedge to five feet to set up a birdie on the par-5 16th. Finally, a 26-foot birdie putt to finish off the round at 4-under-par 66.

“If you look at a pin, like the pin on 16, the par-5, with how firm it was earlier, it can be a tough pin to get to, as well as the pin on 15,” Scheffler said. “There's a lot of slope there, and I hit a cut and it landed right of the pin and it stays on the green, whereas if I played that hole before the rain delay, it may have landed there and kicked off into the first cut, maybe even the rough. Golf course definitely got a bit easier.”

As fine a finish as that was, MacIntyre’s was better, and rather unexpected. The 29-year-old Scot jumped into the spotlight with his finishes in the two opens, but otherwise has no finishes better than 17th since May.

Maybe the change of coaches to Mike Kanski and a change of putter he made halfway through the PGA is finally taking effect.

“I do the same stuff, it’s just in a different way potentially,” MacIntyre said. “The priority is getting that putter face as square as I can at impact, which it's not rocket science but it's difficult to do. For me, that's the priority now, just to go and do that. Then when you get in a certain range, it's all pace putting and touch, and my touch is normally pretty good.”

MacIntyre and Scheffler were not alone in taking advantage of the kinder, gentler Caves Valley. Viktor Hovland, who won this par demolition derby at Olympia Fields two years ago, fired a 67 featuring an inward 3-under 32. Rickie Fowler bounced back from a slow start to score the same. Ben Griffin also carded a 67.

By twilight’s last gleaming, as 2-handicapper Francis Scott Key wrote a few miles away a couple of centuries ago, 14 players were under the testing par of 70, and 30 were under the old standard of 72. Play was suspended at 8:26 p.m. because of darkness with only Bud Cauley left to finish, 68 feet away from a possible birdie on the 18th green. … The course average of 70.719 wasn’t far from the 69.217 – created under lift-clean-place rules – when 70 players cavorted about in the first round here four years ago.

The head games of golf

Bob Jones once said the most important six inches in golf is between the ears. That remains true today, and for an example, take Michael Kim. He won the John Deere Classic in 2018, then retreated to golf’s wilderness. He might still be there but for a dinner encounter with instructor Sean Foley, one of Tiger Woods’ former coaches, about four years ago.

“As much as he's helped me on the swing, he's helped me mentally, life, everything,” Kim explained. “He's been a full-on life coach for me. It's been awesome. One of Sean's tag lines I think was ‘grateful but not satisfied.’ That's kind of the approach I'm taking this week.”

Kim had a good start to the season, including a tie for second in Phoenix and a solo fourth at Bay Hill – that’s a shade over $1.8 million right there – but a tweak in his back in May set Kim back. His best finish since is a tie for 16th, but he had enough mid-pack finishes, and only two missed cuts since then, to roll into Caves Valley 42nd in the standings. A high finish this week will get him to the top 30 and to the Tour Championship at East Lake for the first time.

“Tour Championship I feel like is the No. 1 goal on everyone's mind at the start of the year, along with top 50 here, Kim said. “To be completely honest, I was probably – if you had told me I'd be top 50, I would have just signed right there and just watched everyone else play. But once I had a really good stretch in that beginning to the middle part of the season, I really wanted to make the push for the Tour Championship.”

Which brings us back to Foley. Kim’s his only client here this week, so they’ve been on the phone for what Kim calls “the full Sean Foley experience.”

The dinner was with Ben An, and Kim, a pal of An, was invited along.

“We're golf nerds, so we started talking about golf and golf swing,” Kim said. “Because of some of the guys he had worked with in the past, I thought the philosophy that he had wouldn't match with how I thought I should swing the golf club, and I realized I had a misunderstanding of what he thought about the golf swing.

“After that dinner I decided to go see him about four years ago to this day, pretty close, and it's been great ever since.”

Around Caves Valley

Defending champion Keegan Bradley turned in a 2-over 72 and is tied for 30th. … Fleetwood and Hideki Matsuyama (1-under 69) had the only bogey-free rounds. … The storm broke the heat and humidity, which was 91 degrees and 100 percent respectively, perfect for growing orchids, just before it whipped through. During the delay, one caddie said he saw a couple of people take ill because of the heat on the hilly layout. … There’s a 35-percent chance of more rain tomorrow, but the weekend is promised to be dry.

– Tim Cronin