Learn more<\/a><\/p>\nThis year has been a curious one for Conners, who just notched his first top-10 finish of the season at the Travelers Championship last month. He started strong at last week\u2019s Scottish Open before tumbling down to a tie for 52nd. Conners remains Canada\u2019s top-ranked male golfer at 53rd and is one of just 22 players on the PGA Tour to make the cut at all three majors this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conners was in the mix at the U.S. Open before struggling on Sunday to a 3-over 73, dropping him out of the top 10. But he said he felt as confident as he had been all season with his ball-striking and took that into the Travelers the next week, where he closed with a 7-under 63 \u2014 the final round\u2019s second-lowest score.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was third in strokes gained: putting that day and Conners said not only did he find something, feel-wise, with his stroke, but it came after he was forced to switch putters earlier in the week. After just a few holes on Thursday, he realized the head of his putter was loose. He ended up doing a mid-round swap to a different model \u2014 the putter he had used through most of last year. The new putter, a Ping Ally Blue Onset (which, Conners said, is a lot like U.S. Open winner Wyndham Clark\u2019s putter with a centred shaft), has remained in the bag across the pond.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I had some momentum from Sunday and the U.S. Open and gained some confidence and I made a bunch (of putts) the next week,\u201d Conners said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This week, however, will present a whole new set of challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Royal Birkdale hasn\u2019t hosted an Open Championship since 2017, and even those who did tee it up that year will see a completely different golf course. Basically every hole has been renovated or reworked since the last time the best in the world came to the iconic links layout.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conners said the key for him \u2014 at a golf course he doesn\u2019t know well and playing a style of golf he doesn\u2019t often play \u2014 is to spend more time on the golf course earlier in the week than on the driving range. There have been a few times in his Open Championship career, he said, where weather has \u201ccome out of nowhere\u201d and he\u2019s been caught not being able to adapt as well as he would have liked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to try to learn the golf course quickly,\u201d Conners said. \u201cJust having a plan for everything is good and I\u2019ll spend more time being aware of how different conditions could impact different opportunities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nick Taylor rounds out the smaller-than-normal Canadian contingent alongside Conners at The Open. Taylor also has just one top-10 finish on the season, but it too came at a signature event on the PGA Tour schedule. Taylor was in prime position to record his best-ever major finish at the PGA Championship \u2014 in fact, he was so firmly in the mix making the turn Sunday he had a real chance to win the whole thing \u2014 before stumbling into the house. The Open hasn\u2019t, however, been Taylor\u2019s best event as he\u2019s never made the cut.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, for Taylor and Conners, this week at Royal Birkdale marks another \u2014 and final, this year \u2014 chance to get them into the conversation at one of the biggest events in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying links golf brings a creative to your game. It brings good feel to your game,\u201d Conners said. \u201cYou have to feel it and try to have some fun with it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taylor tees off at 5:20 a.m. ET on Thursday alongside past Open Championship winner Brian Harman and Si Woo Kim while Conners goes at 7:58 a.m. with Keegan Bradley and Casey Jarvis.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Corey Conners is one of the game\u2019s best ball strikers. And even though he was late in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-801284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Just play, we\u2019ll handle the rest<\/p>\n