July 8, 2026
MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining our USA Sports and Golf Channel media conference call today to preview the 154th Open Championship coming up at Royal Birkdale. As you can see, we're once again joined by Jim Furyk. He's going to be our lead analyst for USA Sports' championship coverage, which is going to be on USA Network, as well as our Live From The Open primetime desk, Rich Lerner, Brandel Chamblee, and Paul McGinley.
Just a couple of programming notes, details. USA Sports is going to present about 125 hours of live and encore championship and studio coverage next week across USA Network and Golf Channel. That includes about 30 hours of live championship coverage on USA Network alone, and that's highlighted by a pair of 11-hour blocks of coverage on Thursday and Friday for the first two rounds. Those begin bright and early, 4 a.m. ET.
Live From The Open will kick things off from Royal Birkdale on Golf Channel Monday morning, 9 a.m. ET, live coverage throughout the day and afternoon. You’ll see that in primetime as well in the United States on Golf Channel. We'll, of course, have that after each round of the championship Thursday through Sunday.
We'll start with some opening remarks from each of our speakers, then we'll toss it around to you all for some questions. We'll start with our analyst, who had a pair of excellent finishes at Royal Birkdale in 1998 and 2008, Jim Furyk.
Jim Furyk: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. You know, when I think about Birkdale, one, I look at the list of winners there. Eleven times it's hosted The Open, an amazing list, highlighted by Peter Thompson winning twice in his fifth and final. An amazing Open record that he had.
Anytime I was traveling to The Open, I was already looking at the weather. I mean, weeks in advance, trying to figure out what we could expect. I know we all have been hearing about the heat wave, one of the warmest Junes on record.
The golf course is listed as basically being firm, fast. I've seen the word crispy used, and so, I think about the days of going to Royal Liverpool when Tiger won and trying to get traction, but I see a firm, firm, fast golf course, which I think always makes links a lot of fun and also very interesting. The forecast isn't going to change much. Very warm weather. Winds 10 to 15, 10 to 20, so the elements always play a role. If it doesn't get too breezy, possibly some low scoring.
You have to talk a lot about the renovation as well. Brought in McKenzie and Ebert, wanted to modernize the golf course. Talked about some massive bunker refinements, recontouring some fairways, and some major changes to certain holes, including eliminating one altogether, and adding a new par 3.
I always look forward to The Open. Again, this golf course has produced… I might put it up against any Open venue as creating some of the greatest champions. The list is just phenomenal, and so I look forward to being there.
My memory of Birkdale, as you've mentioned, I had a couple good finishes. I just remember a lot of difficult angles, a lot of crosswinds, a lot of doglegs. The guy that can control the golf ball - work it both ways, cut it into a right-to-left wind, hook it into a left-to-right wind - the guy that can control his golf ball the best usually gets around Birkdale the best.
With the renovation, I've seen that some of the green complexes, they've added some more difficult angles and difficult approach shots and recovery shots around the green, so I'm excited to kind of see the renovations. Always loved the golf course, and I'm expecting big things from this event.
BRANDEL CHAMBLEE: I'm sure we all get this question, what's your favorite golf tournament to cover as you move around the world broadcasting? And I would say The Open is amongst, if not my favorite event, for a number of reasons. It is where professional golf started, it's where major championship golf started, so, in essence, we're celebrating the anniversary of professional golf.
The phrase champion golfer of the year, that originated back in the early days of The Open Championship, before there was a U.S. Open, before there was a Masters, before there was a PGA. It sort of has the impact of a sort of a rhetorical green jacket, if you will.
As it relates to the list of winners there, I would echo exactly what Jim just said. It introduced us to Peter Thomson and then Peter Thomson won his fifth there. He's one of five players. He was one of four at the time to have won five, but one of five players. Another one, of course, Tom Watson, won his fifth there in '83. In '76, it introduced us to Seve Ballesteros. In ‘98, it introduced us to Justin Rose. Padraig Harrington winning back-to-back, culminating there with his victory in 2008. He was the first European to do it in over 100 years, and then Jordan Spieth gave us Seve moments, gave us Arnold Palmer moments, all rolled into one en route to winning. So, there's almost a historically significant memory of every single Open Championship that has been contested at Birkdale.
I've had a chance to play it a number of times. I spent the summer in Scotland and England in ‘82, so I played there a fair bit, and the years that I go over here and there, I've played it a handful of times. Looking forward to getting back there, looking forward to covering the Open Championship and Birkdale, and looking forward to listening to what everybody here has to say.
PAUL MCGINLEY:When I think of Birkdale more so than the other courses where we play The Open Championship, I think of the dunes and I think of the framing and I think the separation from one hole to the next by the dunes. Not all links golf courses have that. St. Andrews, where we are next year, certainly doesn't have it. They're generally flat pieces of land close to the ocean. But this one has got the amazing dunes that separate holes from holes, that also give a great backdrop to a lot of the greens. So, in terms of framing, I think it's certainly the best of The Open venues in that regard.
A little bit of internal out of bounds. There's some gorse bushes there. We always had the drama of Jordan Spieth when he won hitting it on the practice ground. So, there's a lot to enjoy about the golf course.
It's a very fair golf course. It's only a par 70. There's not huge opportunities for birdies in the par fives the way there would be on others. And the weather, I can speak from experience sitting here and even in Dublin, we're enjoying 80 degrees weather at the moment.
Jim is right about the weather forecast and what it's going to be next week. We're going to have temperatures in the 70s and light winds. When I say light winds, they're not expecting them to get higher than 15 mile an hour. That can change, but at the moment there's certainly no high winds forecast.
I think we're in for a good week, we're in for a warm week. I know the golf courses don't get as runny as they might have done 10 years ago because of irrigation systems that they all have now that the RNA insists of. They do keep it relatively green an not too fiery.
It will be a real different test than what we saw at Royal Portrush last year.
RICH LERNER: The possibility that we could all be in Southport, England on July 19th, and what could turn out to be the greatest single day in the history of English sports is exciting to me. I'm projecting ahead just a tad right now, but give me Tommy Fleetwood to win and England to beat France in the World Cup Final on that Sunday, and I'm not sure we're not going to be able to get out of Manchester the following day.
England has some work to do, obviously get past Norway and then possibly Argentina to get to the finals, but I think England's obviously going to be buzzing if the Lions are still roaring in the World Cup.
English golf is something we're going to explore on Live From. They have three of the top 10 players in the world right now. That's Tommy Fleetwood, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Justin Rose. I think we'll look back at what Rosey did at Birkdale in 1998 as a 17-year-old.
They have five of the top 21 in the world, factoring the PGA champ Aaron Rai and Tyrell Hatton, who's been pretty good on links golf and can't be discounted next week.
I think we'll do a deep dive on what Jordan Spieth did in 2017 when he still had that ‘it’ factor, that magic, and we'll explore why he hasn't been able to replicate that to this point.
We're obviously going to look at the changes to Birkdale with Smylie Kaufman and Paul and Brandel.
And then, broadly, Player of the Year is very much up for grabs at this final major. I would say Scottie probably, just based on the overall statistical package is a slight number one, but he could be caught. If Gotterup wins, I think there's a case for Chris Gotterup. There's obviously a case for Rory. If he wins, that would be two majors. There's a case for Fitz, that would be a fourth win with strong performances at the better events. And then there's a case, obviously, for Cameron Young if he were to add The Open to his Players title and the signature tournament that he won down at Doral.
So, plenty for us to discuss on Live From next week. We're excited.
QUESTION: What player worldwide, if they won this championship at Birkdale, would it resonate in worldwide golf the most?
LERNER: Yeah, that's a good question. I'll just take a quick stab. Again, I think given the circumstances of where we are right now on the sporting calendar and where we will be geographically, I think if Tommy Fleetwood won, Tommy's face on billboards, there's a mural in Southport of Tommy Fleetwood. I think that could have a chance to resonate, especially if England marches on in the World Cup.
Similarly, I think if Viktor Hovland were to win on top of Norway, making what at this point I think would be an improbable run. I'm not a soccer expert all of a sudden, but I've been following it. If Erling Haaland carries Norway and then Viktor does what he did at the Travelers, I think that could resonate globally.
CHAMBLEE: Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. You know, I obviously knew that Viktor Hovland was enormously popular globally, but what we saw at the Travelers was on another level. Everybody loved the guy. It's impossible not to love him. He dealt with the chipping yips for the better part of a decade and he is asked about it incessantly and he answers the questions with a smile on his face all the same.
Sort of the way that Tommy Fleetwood continued to answer the questions about losing painfully over and over and over again, and did so warmly. There was no bitterness in either Hovland or Fleetwood answering difficult questions and then they break through with some very popular wins. They’re enormously popular but I don't know how you could top Rory McIlroy winning from a global standpoint.
He's been one of the best handful of players for 15, going on 20 years now, and globally speaking I don't know that there's anybody that can touch him from a popularity standpoint.
FURYK: Yeah, I guess the only thing I could probably add to that is, I think Rory and Scottie are kind of expected every week to be in contention. Maybe the expectations are often way too high, but Justin Rose, you have to add Justin to the conversation, an Englishman.
His career started there in 1998 when O'Meara won. Popular guy around the world. I think it resonates as far as it would be a great story for us all to talk about, and I can only imagine that last hour of coverage and how it was handled. It would be fun to be involved with that but I might add Justin to that list.
MCGINLEY: My point would be a similar one to the one that Rich made in terms of the World Cup fever is certainly maturing to a serious height at the moment, and the English are particularly getting very giddy about their chances now. They're on the good side of the draw, they've got a good chance of possibly even getting to that final, and the R&A have already come out with an unprecedented move in terms of saying, should England get to that final, they may well move the tee times forward on Sunday as a result.
Now that's a huge landmark in the history of The Open Championship, should they do that, bearing in mind the late tee times for the American audience.
As great as golf is, as great as The Open is, competing with the World Cup Final with England in it is probably not going to happen. I think if you intertwined an English player in contention, even just in contention going into the Sunday, I think that would resonate very strongly. And, I think Tommy being a local boy would be the favorite in that regard.
Q: I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the golf course and Jim's comments about all the great champions there, what do you make of a place that's so dramatically changed despite all the great stuff that's gone on in the past? Do you think there's a danger in getting carried away with that? And I guess I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the many, many changes and new dunes that have popped up on the 13th hole where Jordan Spieth got his drop.
FURYK: It always makes me nervous. I mean, when you take a wonderful golf course, and a possible masterpiece, and you start to play around with it, it makes me nervous.
But, I also think that modern golf has changed. The athlete is bigger, stronger, faster. The equipment is bigger, stronger, faster.
I realize that we talk about wonderful golf courses standing the test of time, but St. Andrews doesn't look anything like it did 30 years ago and it's still a wonderful layout.
I think you take caution, but when I hear the words modernize, I totally understand. I'm very anxious to see the new holes and the changes, and I do enjoy architecture so I'm interested to see what has been done.
CHAMBLEE: I know that people love to be voluble with pride about the list of winners at a certain golf course, but I think everybody here can come up with poor golf courses that have a list of great winners to them. I think the thing about great winners, we get a little carried away personally talking about great players winning on great golf courses as if somebody who's 100th in the world wins there. It impugns the historical architecture of the place. What makes great players great players is that they have a knack for being able to win anywhere.
I think Hogan said that if you put 18 holes in a gravel pit, you figure out a way to beat everybody. What makes a great golf course is the terrain, obviously, the architecture, the history of it, certainly, but I don’t think, whoever wins this next week, if it's not a top 50 player in the world or a top 25 player in the world, that it would impugn the architecture. I'm not sure I'd buy that. I reserve the right to change my opinion on that, but I'm not sure I buy that.
Royal Saint George’s has some bizarre winners, but they also have some great winners. That course is called quirky. I don't know if that's a euphemism, but you look at St. Andrews, it also has some quirky winners. Nobody had heard of Louis Oosthuizen when he won there. Zach Johnson certainly wasn't on the list of favorites to win there in 2015. So, I don't know about this whole winners make a golf course or break a golf course.
FURYK: I agree 100% with what you're saying, Brandel.
MCGINLEY: This is what really frustrates me about golf. You look at the size of the arena and every other sport over the years, it's never changed. A basketball court is the same size. An NFL field is the same size. A baseball field is the same size. A soccer pitch is the same size. And yet, we're the only mainstream sport that wants to consistently increase the size of our arenas in order to control the distance that the athletes are now hitting it.
Granted, they are stronger athletes, but letting technology go as far as it has gone. It’s a sad indictment on our game that we have to consistently increased and reinvented our arenas because technology has not been addressed over the years. I feel very strongly about that.
The second point I'd make is that the R&A has done a number of changes to places over the years, and I can't think of any changes that really stand out as being so much better. I don't think the new Part 3 in High Lake was a success, and there’s talk about having to redo it. I don't think the new 7th and 8th holes in Portrush are amazing or fantastic, certainly people don't talk about them the way they do the other holes. Now we've got a hole in St. Andrews where we've got the tee box out of bounds on the 17th in order to try to maintain the integrity of the hole.
Historically, looking over the changes that the R&A have had to make over the years, there's been quite a lot of changes, but none of them for me have been standout or have really been very well received.
There's talk about Portmarnock maybe joining the R&A, maybe in the short term. Fingers crossed that does happen but I have seen the plans of what they're doing to Portmarnock in order to make it playable for the modern player, and it's a sad indictment that so many changes are going to be forced on one of the great golf courses in Ireland in order just to accommodate the vast distances the golf ball has been hit now. As well as the routing. The routing is going to have to change because of the massive infrastructure that's needed around the 18th hole in an Open.
We've just come off the USGA and the U.S. Open, where they've had to address the issues on golf ball advancement, and now we're on the other side of the world, R&A, who are in control of golf outside of America, and they have the same issues.
I do feel strongly about that, that the horse has bolted, and we're trying to put the cart before the horse now at this stage.
LERNER: This has been going on for probably five years, and I suspect will continue for the next 5 to 10 years. Every Live From, except for the Masters, certainly every PGA Championship, every U.S. Open, and now every Open.
On Monday and Tuesday, we are talking about the old ballparks trying to stand up to the modern game. Every single Live From is a hot topic now.
QUESTION: Jim, you finished fourth at Hoylake in '06, another very hot summer over there. That course was super brown. It was running well for you. Did you make any changes that week to succeed, or was that a function of you having a great ‘06? What went into that week, knowing the weather, knowing it'd be hot, knowing the ball would run? What led to that high finish?
FURYK: If I remember right, I was actually in a really good stretch in my career, probably my highest ranking in the world.
Some guy named Tiger Woods was way out ahead at No. 1, but I think at that time I was ranked No. 2 in the world and was for over a year. So, I was really playing some of my best golf ever.
My Open record was very spotty. At times, very, very good - a bunch of top 5 finishes, a couple opportunities to win. ‘98 was one of those. I think I had the lead on the back nine.
Other years, I missed a bunch of cuts there as well. I think that's kind of part of Open golf, and the weather, and the style of golf you have to play.
I don't know how significant it is, but I can remember I was wearing soft spikes in ‘06, and I couldn't stand up at Hoylake. I couldn't get my footing. I was sliding and slipping in practice rounds, and there isn't often a locker attendant at the Open Championship, but there's usually a big box of spikes and I actually put hard spikes in my right foot for that week, not my left. I had kind of a soft spike, hard spike mix in my right shoe to just kind of keep my footing and stay upright. I was sliding all over the place. I don't know why I distinctly remember that. It's not really a huge deal.
I can remember the best up and down of my entire career was at Hoylake. It was captured on television, where I putted a ball out of a bunker and I was able to get the ball up and down in round two. Kind of a fond memory for me.
QUESTION: This is for Jim. I'm curious, you've got six months or so under your belt now, as an announcer, officially. I'd love for you to compare your amount of preparation on, say, Wednesday of a major week on the TV side to when you were playing. Then, also speak to your level of preparation now compared to early this year when you started? Do you still feel the need to prepare, more or less?
JIM FURYK: I think I was still trying to learn the process a little bit. Leading into the first event at Arnold Palmer at Bay Hill that I worked, Trey Wingo asked me a question during a podcast and said, “How are you preparing?” At that point I knew I was in trouble, because much like being a rookie on TOUR, or walking into your first Q-school or TOUR qualifying tournament; I really didn't know what to expect. There wasn't a practice round.
Tommy Roy, our producer, gave me some hints and ideas of what he was looking for but I never sat in there live and I never had to deal with the flow, how quickly you had to get in, get out. I didn't really understand much of what was going to happen and so my idea is they kind of pick you up, and they throw you in the deep end, and they figure out if you can swim or not, and that was my first day.
My preparation for Arnold Palmer that day one was basically worthless. I learned very quickly and from that point on I started trying to prepare. I look at how the guys that are on here prepare. I looked at what Paul's notes looked like.
Brandel has the craziest notes I've ever seen in my entire life, but they work for him. I mean, stuff spread all over a sheet of paper.
I sat next to Rich at the U.S. Open. I look and see how the folks that are experienced and professionals that have done this and try to learn myself.
I think I've gotten a little bit better at it, more prepared.
Comparing it to playing, I think live golf is very similar to playing. You prepare but at the end of the day, you get so many seconds to either pull off a shot or make a call on live air. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's not so good. You accept it, you move on, and you learn from the experience.
I enjoyed working with Paul and Brandel at the Masters. I worked with Rich at the U.S. Open. I think there's a lot more to it. There is a talent to it as well. Some folks are going to be better than others, but the preparation, the amount of work that's put in surely is reflective on the work. I probably over-prepared in golf, but I'm learning and I'm getting better at preparing for this job and I've enjoyed the process.
QUESTION: This is for anybody who wants to answer, but there was some news of the day: The R&A passed a new fan code of conduct. I don't know how many or if any of you had a chance to review that yet, but was it needed? Is there a concern there's going to be more fan behavior? What are all your thoughts about that side of things?
MCGINLEY: I think it is a concern. I think boundaries have been stretched. We saw it at the Ryder Cup. We saw it at the U.S. Open. I don't want to be kind of holier-than-thou, we all did it ourselves when we played, but certainly with microphones that are out there now it's almost cool to be cursing and to be kind of overreacting to shots in an aggressive manner. It becomes a figure of fun on social media and players seem to do it a little bit more often than would have happened before. Social media kind of champions them as being characters.
Like everything in this game, we need to have boundaries and the USGA and the R&A are the custodians of the game in that regard, as well as the PGA TOUR, and those boundaries have to be set in stone.
I think we've got a very unique demographic in golf and that demographic demands and looks for a code of behavior complicit with the standing that golf has as a sport. If we lose that, and if the game becomes a little bit more of a free-for-all in terms of behaviors and codes, we risk alienating that demographic and it's got to be nurtured. It's not got to be stayed; stayed in terms of the ways of jacket and tie and all of those things, the way some golf clubs used to be.
I'm not saying that, but as new people come into the game and society changes, people's dress codes become a little bit more different, like the hoodie, for example. People would have frowned on a hoodie seven or eight years ago playing golf. Now it's very much accepted, and it's a good part of the evolution of golf. I think hoodies look great, the way they can be tailored now, and like all things it's something that needs to be monitored. Player behavior needs to be monitored and it's important that we stay in our lane as a sport.
The people who watch other sports might not want to entertain the standards that golf has, but I think that's a strength that we have rather than a weakness.
CHAMBLEE: I’ll just say that golf is a unique sport. It is not a reactionary sport, right? Putting the ball in play; it requires a high level of precision and a very high level of concentration. The concentration aspect; it's not unlike chess. And imagine if people were standing around you at the highest level of a chess game and people were screaming and yelling. It wouldn't be conducive to the greatest atmosphere, to put on the greatest display of chess, and I think that's a long dissolve. The people can get very close to you in the game of golf.
This sort of confluence of this TikTok culture and the decay of comportment that we all have to deal with in the world now has reared its ugly head in the game of golf. It is not at all appealing. Things that have made golf so beautiful, over.
Not that the game hasn't suffered from time to time, from the odd event here and there, but by and large you look back on the game, and there's a reason they call it a gentleman or a gentlewoman's game. It is about how you conduct yourself. Augusta National gets it right. They get it right. It's one of the reasons why it's the greatest spectator, patron experience in the game of golf.
I've always said that The Open Championship has the greatest fans in terms of their knowledge, but something needed to be done. It was not that hard to look at the way people were behaving in the arena of golf and think “What are we gonna do? How can we get our arms around this?” And so, I applaud the R&A, I applaud the major championships, USGA and the PGA of America, to issuing this code of conduct to get back in line with what Augusta National has been doing for many, many years.
