Welcome to the ‘baked out’ Open. It’s going to rule.

There’s a moment in Tiger Woods’ episode of Chronicles of a Champion Golfer, a documentary on his Open Championship wins, when he takes an extra long pause before describing the unique challenge of links golf. You can tell he’s thinking really hard about it. He wants to nail it and do it efficiently, rather than just provide narrative fluff to fill up time in a documentary. After the pause, he slowly lets it roll.

“It’s understanding how to control the ball in the air to be able to control it on the ground.”

This seems like a simple statement with not much to it. But it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant in its efficiency. It is brilliant in how it captures, for maybe the best player of all time, the process of playing links golf at the British Open. It may not cover every little detail of what makes golf courses at the Open so different than what we’re used to, but it hits the most important part. It best conveys the style, a style of golf that is the way golf should be.

The beauty of Open golf is how the land provides so many different options for how to play. You can use the ground, you can fly it through the air, or find some middling trajectory and shot shape that’s best for that hole. There are options and it’s the kind of style that makes a course playable and fun for some of the worst weekend golfers while also challenging the very best pros in the world. A fat old man who stinks at golf can still have fun running it all around the ground with some competence. He cannot flight it in the air 215 yards on a string and with any kind of precision, which is often a demand of courses in the States. That can be masochistic, interminable, and not fun at all.

In links golf, there are options and this is the mental exercise that the best in the world — who can both fly it on a string and use the ground — go through at The Open. It varies from hole to hole and day to day based on weather conditions. But the best option and play is not always conspicuously laid out for you as is so often the case every other week on Tour. This is the guts of that Tiger quote and why the Open provides such a fun, different style of golf for the best in the world and those watching at home.

This week we’re going to get a version that’s comparable to a blizzard game at Lambeau Field. We’re on one of the oldest links courses in the world and Mature Nature has given us a gift that will make it that much more fun to watch from home

Scotland is scorched. It is completely “baked out,” a phrase you will no doubt hear within minutes of watching this week. You’ll hear it, and every synonym for it, dozens of times if you choose to watch some of the 50 hours of Golf Channel and NBC coverage. It’s going to be a theme hammered home on nearly every shot. It’s crispy, fiery, firm, fast, burnt. It is definitely baked out and it looks glorious. Here’s how the first hole at Carnoustie looks this week vs. how it looks from a past Dunhill Championship, an annual Euro Tour event.

There has been almost no rain over the last six weeks and there’s minimal precipitation expected this week. Scotland is not a place where course superintendents will overwater to make up for things. Have you ever seen how unnatural an 18-hole lush golf course looks from the blimp view at one of the desert courses in the States? This is not that. They’ll water where they absolutely need to, but otherwise, the conditions dictate how it looks when the best in the world show up to play.

And how it will play is like concrete. The players will have to contemplate the ground game and craft a strategy based on the possibility of balls running out hundreds of yards. It’s not unheard of to get a baked out Open like this, but it’s a gift we don’t get every year. The ground game is always a part of the Open but embrace this one like you would that one or two blizzard football games we might get each football season.

After a couple days of practice, the player feedback is all over the place and that’s exactly how you want it. Here are the strategies so far:

1. The natural presumption is that hundreds of yards of roll means driver is an unnecessary club that won’t be getting much use this week. But big hitters like Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, and Jon Rahm have indicated the burnt out conditions extend to the rough and that means they may let it fly as much as possible. The pot bunkers are the real trouble at Carnoustie. They are a hazard and close to a one-shot penalty. You often have to just hit out sideways.

The thinking from big hitters is that they can hit it over that trouble with driver and if they run out into the rough, it’s not that bad. We’ve heard many of the older players sound genuinely shocked about how thin and burned out the rough is compared to prior editions of The Open at Carnoustie. So maybe DJ and Rory think they can just grip and rip it over everything and hit a low iron or wedge from some wispy rough if they have to. We’ll see how that goes...

2. The shorter hitter who cannot fly it over the trouble is going hit mid-irons and driving irons with some absurd trajectories. Jordan Spieth said his caddie’s first impression walking around was that they were going to hit a bunch of 5-irons off the tee. This is cool. This is a style we don’t get every bomb-and-gouge week. Thinking of that Tiger quote above — your lines and angles of play are going to be critical. You lose control of the ball as soon it is in the air. If you take the wrong line, you may be hopelessly watching as it rolls and rolls and doesn’t stop until it hits a burn (for the uninitiated, those are the little creeks running through the course) or a pot bunker.

Tiger Woods won the 2006 Open hitting just one driver the entire week. That year, Hoylake was even firmer than Carnoustie this week. This course is the longest in the Open rota and it may be unwise or not possible to go as extreme as that Tiger 2006 strategy, but we could get something close to it from many of the top players in the field.

3. The third strategy we’re hearing from the players is a mix of 1 and 2 above. We’ll get more drivers than expected because of the thinned-out rough, but it’s still going to be a precision game with shorter clubs off most tees. Phil Mickelson said he’ll fall somewhere in between. Tiger is working on that erotic stinger he’s used for much of this season and is practicing with a new driving iron prototype.

Justin Thomas said he vacillates between hitting driver and 5-iron on many tees. How often do you hear that and how good is that?! On Tour in the States, you may hear a guy contemplating clubbing down to a 3-wood — not debating jumping from driver to 5-iron.

“There are opportunities to hit a lot of different clubs off tees and play the course a lot of different ways,” Thomas said on Tuesday. “With it being as firm as it is, it definitely adds a whole other variable to what we normally see on tour. There are so many ways to play each hole ... it definitely makes you think.”

This is what we want. Different styles from the very best in the world who can, if they’re truly world-class, play the game multiple ways. We’ll see which strategy works best and on which days based on weather conditions.

As is custom on links courses, they are running slower than what American players are used to. It will be an interesting adjustment to watch as they go from baked out fairways to slower greens than they’re used to.

None, as far as I can tell. The Open is the best style of golf to watch and Mother Nature has given us an especially fascinating treat this year. Learn to love the baked out life.