#13 Luck or FCK?

Welcome to Open season and golf lesson #13 which is about luck – mostly the bad kind. The idea for this article was totally inspired by my dear friend, m@ds.

Luck, as it turns out, is a tale of two Sanders. Each holds a lesson on handling adversity in the face of what could be called “hard cheese.” One missed a 3–foot putt in 1970 and thinks about it every five minutes. The other ran out of chicken in 2018 and won awards for it.

This week the Open (the original golf major) returns to Royal Portrush. This bracing and beautiful location is where the golf’s eternal debate will again play out:

How much is luck and how much is you?

Back in the day, luck was called “rub of the green”. The literal bumps on 16th century bowling greens now sum up golf's inescapable randomness.

But here’s the thing about bad luck on golf's biggest stage. Yes, luck plays its part in adversity. There will always be wank* bounces (Tyrrell Hatton’s favourite kind), sudden gusts (aplenty on the County Antrim coast) and the inevitable missed putts (see below).

But the moments that will define the 153rd Open? They'll be when there's no randomness left, when it's just you and your ability to handle the moment.

In my book, that's FCK outweighing luck by a major margin.

Ancient accidents

Rub of the green has deep roots, centuries old. “Rub” means an obstacle or accident, and "rub of the green" originated in lawn bowling to describe imperfections that affected the ball's roll.

Shakespeare got there early with "there's the rub" where Hamlet contemplates the obstacles that make life's choices so impossible. What started as a grassy undulation became a metaphor for life’s ups and downs. Well done, William, you nailed it again.

By 1812, golf had adopted the phrase into its official rules at St. Andrews:

“Whatever happens to a Ball by accident, must be reckoned a Rub of the green.”

And this gay (yes, gay) little rhyme from 1793 also captures the indomitable spirit:

While round the links our balls we play,

What tho' with rubs we sometimes meet,

We still push on, all brisk and gay,

Such chances make the game more sweet.

Our ancestors understood something we forget while we brandish a £500 driver; obstacles that make the game harder also make it worth playing.

Chaos meets physics

Remember that scene in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum trickles water down Laura Dern's hand? That’s the chaos of the cosmos.

Likewise, golf tests your ability to manage unpredictable events that “don't repeat and infinitely affect the outcome.“

Portrush amplifies this potential for chaos big time. The course sits dramatically on clifftops where crosswinds dominate most holes. I mean, good luck with that. And if that doesn’t get in your hair and head, the bunkers will. These pot-shaped doom-mongers have the gravitational pull of a black hole – an uncanny ability to collect balls faster than you can say “FCK’s sake”.

Links golf is in a class of its own when it comes to reminding you that no amount of launch monitor data can prepare you for nature's whims and mysterious ways. And in the space between what you can control and what controls you – where physics meets chaos – random unpredictability is the only certainty.

Famous Open oofs

When one of my golfing buddies hits a howler and I find myself saying, “unlucky, mate” there’s empathy but, frankly, there’s usually nothing lucky or unlucky about things that just happen in the moment.

The truth is that these FCK–ups aren't about the rub of the green at all. They're really about what happens when you've successfully navigated all the randomness, when the only thing left is concentration and executing the right shot... only for your mind to wander.

Poor Doug Sanders at the 1970 Open knew this far too well. He'd survived everything St. Andrews could throw at him – the wind, the bounces, the pressure. Standing over a simple putt to win golf's oldest championship, there was no rub of the green left to blame. Just a bug near his ball, a moment of lost focus, and a miss that haunted him forever after.

His body language just after he hits the putt is still unwatchably painful today. And years on when asked about that fateful day, he replied:

"Sometimes it doesn't cross my mind for a full five minutes."

Tom Watson’s experience on the last green at Turnberry in 2009 is just as last ditch. At 59 years old, he'd managed all the chaos to reach the very last hole (72nd – that's four rounds) needing a regulation par to become the oldest major winner by some 11 years. This was also 22 years on from when he'd last won The Open in his "Duel in the Sun" with Nicklaus in 1977. The stars were aligning until an 8-footer slipped past the hole. No bad bounces, no cruel wind, no fairytale finish. Just nerves and jelly-like knees.

Then there's Hale Irwin’s unbelievable miss at Royal Birkdale in 1983. After navigating all of the course's twists, he simply had a lapse of thought... a casual moment where he “whiffed” and completely missed a tiny tap-in par. He made contact but the ball didn't move. And Hale ended up losing by one shot.

The brain switches off and... oof.

Banishing the brain fuzz

This is golf's real test – not about course, equipment or physical ability, but about staying present when everything else is taken care of.

Rory McIlroy knows this feeling. Now he's back down on Earth since winning his Grand Slam at the Masters (and so am I since my hole–in–one ICYMI), he put in a solid showing at last weekend's Scottish Open. But Rory's homecoming has Portrush demons to deal with. When the Open was last played here in 2019, he started with a quadruple bogey on the first hole. I'm pretty sure that might pop into his mind when he tees up tomorrow.

Those tiny lapses in concentration catch you up and catch you out. All things being equal, they’re the difference between immortality and years of anguish. Because even when you’ve been successfully managing the rub of the green for hours on end, managing what happens in your head is always harder.

A bucketload of FCK

Which brings us to our other Sanders – the chicken chief. In February 2018, KFC faced their own version of missing a gimme. The company famous for chicken ran out of chicken.

Almost overnight 900 UK restaurants had to close due to the supply chain meltdown. Apparently, people actually called the police in distress... c’mon Britain, get a clucking grip! The hashtag #KFCCrisis went viral. It was corporate catastrophe.

But instead of hiding or making excuses, KFC showed up with a full–page newspaper ad in the Sun and the Metro (created and placed by Mother London – an agency of geniuses who are obviously too cool to be on LinkedIn.)

Funnily enough, an empty chicken bucket, a FCK and a message: "A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It's not ideal" isn't in the crisis messaging playbook. But carried off with humility, humour and honesty, KFC owned their failure by embracing what happened rather than letting it define them.

The difference between Doug Sanders and Colonel Sanders? One missed his moment, and it consumed him. While the (M)other turned it into a marketing-gold opportunity. Both faced their ultimate test when there was nowhere to hide – no rub of the green to blame, just human fallibility in all its glory.

Luck or FCK? You choose.

As The Open returns to Portrush, the luck debate will play out hole by hole.

Yes, luck matters 100%. A gust will happen mid-swing, balls will ping off dunes and putts will lip out – the same rubs that have tormented golfers since the 1500s. But the moments that separate champions from near–misses aren't about luck at all, I’d wager.

They happen when there's no breeze to blame or bounce to curse, when it's just you standing over a shot you've played a thousand times before with history holding court. That's when golf strips away all excuses and asks the only question that matters:

Is this your moment?

There’s one thing for certain. Someone will reach a Portrush cliff edge and we’ll see what they're made of. And the choice will be made by a human holding a club. Nature permitting.

Luck or FCK? Now there’s the rub.

* please can Sky Sports commentators stop apologising for golfers swearing on mic? Most golfers I know – like 99.99% – swear like FCK. Let’s get over it, people, it’s 2025 and we are all grown-ups.

Bonus: Search “tyrrell hatton wank bounce” for a taster of how he tends to deal with FCKy breaks 🤣