Arriving in Scotland on Monday morning, Tom Vaillant will discover for the first time theAlfred Dunhill Links Championship. A high-end event with a very strong field (McIlroy, Rahm, Fleetwood, Lowry, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Horschel, Hatton, Koepka, Oosthuizen, Reed…) played in alliance on three of the most beautiful links in the country: the Old course of St Andrews, Kingsbarns et Carnoustie.
« To be honest, I don’t know much about this tournamenthe breathes softly. I haven’t played these courses at all. I just saw them on TV. This will be a bit of a discovery. I know it’s a long tournament, three days before the cut. I was told that the playing time was much longer than usual, since we were playing with an amateur. In short, you have to adapt to all that. I love playing on the links. I have rarely played well on this type of course but I don’t take it into account because a lot of parameters come into play: the weather, the course, the time at which we play… I try to tell myself that when we are on a links, we have the choice. On any given shot, you can play everything differently. We have more opportunities to see things and design moves. You have to be more creative. I am a player who likes to create, to be focused on feeling. »
It remains to be seen how the entire field will be eaten between Thursday and Sunday. We are of course referring here to the weather, which is so capricious in these latitudes at the start of autumn. Maybe a little more in Scotland… “ Apparently everyone tells me it should be fineunderlines, visibly serene, the Frenchman. That’s actually a good thing. We’ll see, but normally the weather should be good. Playing in the wind and rain doesn’t bother me. I like it when it’s very hard. It’s really the fact of hanging on that will take precedence. This suits me because it’s more in my temperament. The harder it is, the better I will feel. But it’s obvious that we have more fun when the weather is nice and there’s no wind… »
