Entering the Open off back-to-back major runner-ups and with a claret jug already to his name, it is a performance that ostensibly makes the South African the runaway favorite.
Oosthuizen has six career second-place major finishes, one at each.
He’s maddingly consistent in scoring across all four rounds—Friday is the low at a 69 scoring mark, Thursday the highest at 70, with Saturday sandwiched between.
Which is a long-winded way of saying we can’t produce a singular number to illustrate Oosthuizen’s tee-ball troubles across this span.
Needing a par-birdie finish to tie Rahm, Oothuizen instead made bogey at the 17th after sending his drive into the canyons, and when he absolutely had to make eagle, another wayward drive at the 18th found a spot in the rough so gnarly Oothuizen was forced to lay-up.
He briefly got that deficit to one but spent most of the front nine two back of Phil Mickelson, then fell to four thanks to a double-bogey at the 13th and never truly threatened in coming in a tie for second with Brooks Koepka, two behind Mickelson.
Oosthuizen proceeded to orchestrate a backdoor special with birdies on six of the final seven holes to tie for the lead, only for Spieth to birdie the last in driving accuracy didn’t help.
He was two back of the leaders, never was in the mix at one over through 14 holes at Quail Hollow, bucked his head briefly thanks to an eagle at the 15th only to be knocked out by a bogey on the following hole.
It was a tournament known for two things: Oosthuizen’s albatross on the par-5 second, and Bubba Watson’s physics-defying approach from the pine straw to 20 feet at the 10th hole in sudden death.
As for the 2015 Open … perhaps the driver wasn’t a weapon, ranking a pedestrian T-23 in fairway accuracy, but he earned his way into a playoff with a final-round 69 and lipped out a birdie putt on the final hole of the playoff aggregate to go into sudden death with Zach Johnson.
The crazy thing is, the driver is normally not Oosthuizen’s problem, as Louis annually ranked inside the top 40 in SG/off-the-tee for most of the previous decade.
Of course, one thing we can’t quantify is what type of collateral damage comes from Torrey Pines, Kiawah and beyond.
“I just need to pull it through and see if I can go one better on this weekend.” But when asked a follow-up of what he’s learned from those seconds, Oosthuizen was more specific.
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