Watch as Troon brings golf's mightiest to their knees

Here’s the trick about the British Open: if the weather doesn’t get you, the course will. On a day when the sun shone bright and the wind remained calm, the ground game at Royal Troon stepped up to take up the slack. Waist-deep rough … fences and railways hemming in the fairways … bunkers deep enough to hide a school bus. They’re all at Troon, and they’re all testing the world’s greatest golfers from every angle. As you can see in the NBC Sports video above, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, and Jordan Spieth fought Troon to, at best, a draw.

And this doesn’t even include the granddaddy of all Troon demons, the Postage Stamp. A 123-yard par 3, the 8th hole has claimed its share of victims already, including Bubba Watson, who was leading when he walked to the tee, and then:

Brutal. Simply brutal. Bad news for the field: the weather is only going to get worse, and the course is going to stay every bit as wicked.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.