TROON, Scotland—The defining personality trait of Royal Troon Golf Club is its routing. The first six holes play in a straight route away from the clubhouse. The next six holes dance around at the far end of the property, and the final six head directly back home.

That presents a problem for players: It means players spend eight of their first nine holes—close to three hours—hitting shots with the same wind.

Over that initial stretch, bad swing habits tend to form without players realizing. It’s only once they spin around, and have those bad habits amplified by exactly the opposite wind, that they realize the extent of the problem.

1 problem

During the first round of the 2024 Open Championship, the wind was blowing off the ocean, towards the golf course. It was an unexpected shift from Royal Troon’s predominant wind, but one most players didn’t mind initially.

When the wind is blowing from right-to-left, it means they can get increasingly aggressive hitting their left-to-right fade—the go-to shot for most players on tour—knowing the opposing wind will straighten it out.

As Nicolai Hojgaard, whose two-under 69 leaves him T-2 after the first round, explains:

“I think the majority of right-handed players love a little bit of wind off the right. I feel like it’s easier to manage a right wind. You can push it a little bit. It does something good for my swing. I like practising in left-to-right wind.”

Then players make the turn to come home. Now that helping wind is hurting them.

“On the way out, you just try to hold the face off a little bit, push it out in the wind. I definitely missed a few shots right today after playing the front nine, early on the back nine,” Hojgaard says.

Stuart Franklin/R&A

Fellow European Ryder Cupper Sepp Straka agrees. Straka tends to draw the ball, which means the right-to-left wind exaggerates his right-to-left ball flight, but that doesn’t make the task of switching any easier.

“I think that’s part of why the Postage Stamp is such a great hole. Today you got seven holes in a row of where the wind was straight off the right. You just grooved into that, your swing kind of adapts to that, and all of a sudden you’re standing on the 8th tee, you’re elevated, and this wind is all of a sudden into and off the left.”

He continues:

“It’s very challenging. It makes switching really hard, because all day you’ve been starting it so far right, and then to see that ball starting left is really tough to do.”

Both players succeeded in making the switch on Thursday, and each shared a piece of advice on how they did it.

Zac Goodwin – PA Images

2 Solutions 1. Learn to love it

“You have to have this mindset where stuff like this is part of the tournament, it makes it more fun,” says Straka.

2. Stay present

“You’ve got to stay focused and committed to every single shot you hit, especially when it’s windy, because you’ve got all those damn bunkers there to swallow balls.”

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com