The Dao of Bob MacIntyre: light switch moment tees up run at Open glory

Bob MacIntyre bowled a day late for the Open. He was due to attend an early Monday press conference but had to change his plans at the last minute after winning the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to get to Troon,” he said that night. “I don’t think I’ll be able to drive legally.”

He is not a big drinker, but decided to make an exception on Sunday. He was last seen in the clubhouse bar in the early hours with one arm around his father, Dougie, and the other on a silver punch bowl filled to the brim with good scotch.

MacIntyre seemed in pretty good shape when he finally arrived. If a night on the Lash seems like an odd way to prepare for a major, well, as he says, life’s too short to let moments like that go by without marking them. “When you’ve achieved a childhood dream and you’ve got family and friends who have supported you since you were a little kid, I think it was absolutely right to go all out.”

MacIntyre worked too hard, worried too much, waited too long and the win meant too much to him and his family. “I would do it again. It was just one of the best nights.”

It was his second victory in his last six starts, following his victory in the Canadian Open early last month. Tommy Fleetwood (12th) is four places above him in the world rankings, but given his form MacIntyre is the leading British contender this week. It was 25 years since a Scot (Paul Lawrie) won the Open, it was 25 years since a Scot (Colin Montgomerie) won the Scottish Open, until he did it.

MacIntyre grew up 70 miles up the coast in Oban, where his father is the greenkeeper at Glencruitten. He recently moved back to the UK after a six-month stint in the US, which he ultimately decided wasn’t right for him.

MacIntyre, 28 in August, learned a lot about himself while abroad. He can tell you down to the minute when everything finally clicked for him. It was in May, when he was playing at the Myrtle Beach Classic. He had just birdied the first hole on Sunday and moved two shots behind the leader as he sought his first PGA Tour victory.

“Everything is great,” he said to himself as he hit his tee shot straight down the middle of the second fairway, and then, suddenly, it wasn’t. He hit his second shot all the way left, chipping out of the rough and needing three putts to get in.

“Then I started thinking ‘the tournament is over’ and the moment you do that, your emotions go all over the place. You lose all control of yourself, your thought process, your touch, everything, it’s all gone.” He finished in a tie for 13th place.

The left-hander spent the next few days thinking it all over and finally deciding what had gone wrong. “What happened in Myrtle Beach taught me not to try to win golf tournaments.”

That sounds odd when you make your living trying to do just that. But those who know MacIntyre say he’s the type of guy who always thinks too much. At the PGA Championship the following week, his only ambition was not to get ahead of himself – “just stay in the fight and stay calm.” He played pretty poorly despite it all, until an eagle on the 72nd hole lifted him to eighth place.

“That was really a light switch that made me think, ‘You know what, the golf game is not the problem, I am the problem.'” Call it Bob’s Dao. “There’s no magic recipe,” he says. “I just stay out of my own neighborhood.”

Since he stopped worrying, he has started winning. He had dreamed of winning the Scottish Open for as long as he can remember, and that dream was taken away when Rory McIlroy beat him with back-to-back birdies on the last two holes in 2023. This time around, he found himself feeling “as relaxed as I’ve ever been before a golf tournament, no nerves, nothing, I was just trying to enjoy myself”.

This week nothing has changed. “It’s exactly the same, I’m very relaxed. I enjoy the time with friends and family at home when I’m not on the track and I enjoy the time with my team when I’m on the track.

“On the first tee we start from level par. I have as much of a chance as anyone in the field. Just like last week. It’s about getting in that position and seeing where the cards fall. Hopefully I have a chance on Sunday and that’s all I want.”