The gusts are practically blowing you over. Your socks are getting soggy. A treacherous pot bunker lingers in the corner of your eye. These are the physical sensations of the Open Championship, but the real challenge of this major test is psychological.

This week at Royal Troon, you’ll hear the broadcast analysts talk about the best links players as the ones who stay patient. They take their medicine. They grind it out. But beyond the cliches, what do the mental hurdles of an Open actually entail? What are the specific goals and necessities that allow one to prevail during a championship like this one at Royal Troon?

Acceptance

At the Open, players face a mental examination that doesn’t just require plotting around well-protected greens and fairways. Much of this test is simply out of the player’s control. You cannot control the wind and the rain. Nor the tee time draw: Only Mother Nature knows if you’ll play in a light breeze or just short of a hurricane. Discovering what lie you end up with in the sand is a relentless shock to the system.

Dr. Morris Pickens, a veteran PGA Tour sports psychologist, said accepting unfavorable outcomes is a learned skill specific to the Open. It all stems from knowing how to evaluate shots.

Pickens defines four categories for how to “label” a golf shot, and he maps it out in a four-quadrant graph, with two axes: “execution” and “result.” The four sections of the chart are as follows: good execution-good result, good execution-bad result, bad execution-good result, and bad execution-bad result.

Pickens, who coached Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink to Open Championship victories and currently works with Keegan Bradley and recent PGA Tour winner Davis Thompson, asserts that in this tournament, you have to both anticipate, accept and appropriately react to the “good-bads” — in other words, a well-executed shot that didn’t turn out how you desired.

“In the Open, you’re going to get a lot of ‘good-bads,’ especially when you turn back into the wind,” Pickens says. “Maybe you played well on the front, maybe it’s been pretty easy and you’re 4-under. But you’re still going to hit some good shots that get bad results. And if you’re not careful, you’re going to lose your mind. Instead of shooting 1-over coming in, you’re going to shoot 4-over.”

At The Open, Pickens advises his players to control their emotions using this visual evaluation. The uncontrollable nature of the tournament conditions means that you’re going to get some “good-bad” outcomes, but you’re also going to get some “bad-goods” — in other words, lucky breaks. You have to appreciate and anticipate both, truly embracing the peaks and valleys of links golf, to keep your mental game in check.

“You hope to grind out a decent score,” said Jon Rahm, who posted a 2-over 73 on Thursday.

Commitment

When dealing with factors out of one’s control, the best practice is to be ultra-specific with your pre-shot vision. Pickens describes commitment as “knowing where you want to hit the ball,” but many players mistake commitment for confidence or comfort. And that conflation can be a dangerous path.

“Confident means, ‘I know where this ball is going to end up.’ But you can’t know that. There are imperfections on the green. There are wind gusts,” Pickens says. “You don’t have to feel ease over the ball to hit great golf shots. You don’t have to feel comfortable, emotionally. There’s not one player, if they’re honest, who feels comfortable over the 18th tee shot at Augusta or at TPC Sawgrass. Those are physically demanding shots. I talk my players away from that — it’s not the goal. The goal is to be committed, and to trust your routine.”

Seeking confidence and comfort over the ball will only lead to disappointment and unrealistic expectations, and at the Open Championship, that can cause a quick downward spiral.

Commitment means utilizing the information at your disposal, devising a plan, and sticking to it. Crosswinds — which many players have described as one of Royal Troon’s most devilish challenges — make that practice particularly difficult. During links golf, the known variables can change in an instant, but it is the player’s job to know when to adjust. There’s a difference between feeling physically uncomfortable before a swing — because of improper aim, swirling winds, etc. — and feeling mental discomfort. Pickens advises his players not to ask questions while walking up to the ball, whether they’re asking themselves or their caddie. The self-talk has to be determined before the execution: Whatever happens in the lead-up to the shot is the only thing a player truly has control over at the Open. You can’t risk derailing it.

Scottie Scheffler and other top contenders in the Open Championship will have to handle tough lies. (Harry How / Getty Images)

Resilience

You’re going to get kicked in the teeth at the Open. Whether it’s a funky bounce or a sudden gust at the worst time possible, there are going to be moments that force you to pick yourself up off the ground. But not every player has it in them. Acceptance, moving on from a wayward shot or a big number, is one thing. Finding the will to bounce back from the blips is another. It’s difficult to do — especially multiple times throughout a round.

“At some point, people lose their resilience,” Pickens says. “Then they start short-changing the process. They don’t pick good targets, they slap the ball around. They do that because they know they’re not going to be disappointed — because they didn’t put that much into it. It’s a way to protect your ego.”

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Open champions don’t let that happen. They pick themselves back up. Over, and over and over again.

“Resilience is saying no, I’m willing to put myself out there again to be disappointed again,” Pickens says. “A resilient player thinks to themselves, I’m not going to slap it around and let that habit start. Even if I miss the cut by five shots, I’m going to play this out.”

A score will determine this Open. Some sort of concoction of birdies, pars and bogeys or worse. A three-putt. A hole-out. A 350-yard drive. But the eventual winner and his competitors will know that this championship is conquered first and foremost between the ears. The Open Championship is a mind game.

(Top photo of Rory McIlroy: Ross Kinnaird / Getty Images)

The NFL’s new kickoff rules are expected to revive one of the most exciting plays in the game while decreasing the risk of injury with fewer high-speed collisions. The plan is for the XFL-style setup to open up possibilities for return men.

Unless it doesn’t.

One factor that could limit what return teams do is the NFL allowing the coverage unit to begin its pursuit when the ball hits the ground or when the returner touches the ball (like in the XFL). The XFL had too many false starts and misjudgments of when the ball was possessed. The coverage team would try to time its start with when the returner picked up the ball, but it often jumped early, disrupting the game flow.

“The rules basically incentivize you to kick the … weirdest, s—tiest kicks you can kick,” one NFL special teams coach told The Athletic. “Any ball that can hit the ground is now artificial hangtime. And so the rules are incentivizing variations of squibs and wild kicks. And it’s going to be a s— show.”

Part of the reason for the major changes in kickoffs was to make the play a spectacle again, but if teams can consistently get the ball on the ground and muck up the play, the league may consider adjusting this rule. In practice, teams have found that when the ball hits the ground, it’s nearly impossible to block anyone.

This is partially why the Kansas City Chiefs are experimenting with former rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit and safety Justin Reid as kickers. The kicks don’t have to be high quality, and a bad one that lands in the proper zone can create this artificial hangtime.

(Drew Jordan / The Athletic)

The other reason is that kickers are more involved in tackles. Longtime Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub estimated that XFL kickers were involved in 25 to 40 percent of tackles on kickoffs — even if they weren’t making the tackles themselves, they had to do their part in making the returner change direction. Considering how valuable a good kicker is, special teams coaches may want to keep them out of harm’s way.

There was some creativity with return teams in the XFL, but a majority were vanilla and there weren’t a lot of big returns. Adding a second returner and having better-quality players to work with could open up the possibility for more creativity. But there’s a chance that once the new rules are being used, there won’t be much willingness to deviate from regular returns. Special teams coaches are conservative by nature because their units’ blunders are often magnified.

Despite the potential for the new rules to be a dud, there’s still plenty to be optimistic about because coaches used OTAs and will use training camp to find the best strategies. While some teams may want to play it safe, plenty will be trying to find advantages.

Teams know the new rules can open up a world of strategy. Special teams coaches will keep working on it into the season, but one thing is for sure: everyone is still learning. After OTAs, teams know more, but the experimenting and information-gathering process is ongoing.

“The team that figures it out kickoff-wise and kickoff return-wise is going to excel early,” Toub said in May. “We want to be that team.”

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The Chiefs embrace outside-the-box thinking under head coach Andy Reid, which is why it was interesting that they signed Rees-Zammit. Toub said they’ve tried Rees-Zammit out as both a kicker and returner.

The new kickoff format requires a different type of returner. Returners typically have been small, shifty and good in open space. Now, with every member of the coverage unit on one line, more running back body types will be returning the ball. New returners will have to be able to get upfield, break arm tackles and get through the first level, like they would when running through an offensive line. Also, since the NFL will allow two returners rather than one as the XFL did, the returner who doesn’t get the ball must be a good blocker.

The Rees-Zammit signing got me thinking about whether some rugby strategy can be applied to the new kickoff return. I reached out to some rugby coaches and an NFL special teams coordinator to see if some of these ideas are feasible. I spoke to Golden State Retrievers head coach Kelly Griffin, former U.S. national rugby team head coach Gary Gold and former English rugby star Mike Tindall.

The new kickoff format gives the returner more space because the kickoff team can’t start until the ball is caught or hits the ground. So there’s a buffer for some creative actions with the returners initially.

One interesting idea that came up was using what is called a switch.

😍 Not much better than when a classic switch play comes off!pic.twitter.com/8EtuOuuE8k

— Planet Rugby (@PlanetRugby) January 11, 2024

Griffin drew up a play in which the return team would leave one of the inside coverage team players unblocked, have the returner draw him in one direction and then execute the switch. It would resemble a hook-and-ladder play in football.

(Drew Jordan / The Athletic)

The first XFL touchdown return was essentially a switch, but if you leave one coverage player unblocked like in Griffin’s design, you can get a double team at the point of attack or a blocker on the kicker. Also, this could be easier to execute with a second returner because he would be closer to the returner catching the ball and might even be able to get in position for an option-style pitch.

An NFL special teams coach I talked to thought throwbacks would be much more prevalent.

“I like throwbacks because they’re very low-risk,” he said. “So I feel like you’ll see more throwbacks this year than the last 20 years combined.”

It’s time for the 𝕎𝕖𝕖𝕜 𝟙𝟚 ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕪 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕎𝕖𝕖𝕜.

We give you @UMichFootball‘s @mikebarrett_MB1-to-@AJHenning3 trick play kick return TD. 💥

📍 @OldTrapper pic.twitter.com/91rqNCfqgm

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 21, 2021

There will be more distance for the returners to recover if there is a botched execution on a throwback, but the blockers up front will have more chaotic jobs because once the coverage team starts, there are only about 5 yards between them. There isn’t much time to pass off twists and switch releases.

“Every time we practice, we learn something new,” Toub said. “I draw up a play and it looks great on paper — and you can’t do it. You can’t get to certain blocks you think you can get to, so you throw it out. And it’s (on to) the next thing.”

One coach compared trying to block the coverage team to trying to cover receivers in the low red zone where teams play a lot of man and have to have techniques or systems to pass off switch releases.

The blocking up front will be key to whether teams can get creative on the back end. Still, the idea of leaving one man free for a potential lateral or option pitch is interesting if the returners can get in position and everyone else can be reasonably blocked.

A positive is that teams have gotten a good number of repetitions in practice because of the low impact and shorter distance players now have to run on kickoffs. The special teams staffs that come up with the most effective ways to kick the ball, cover, block and return will have big advantages over teams that lag behind. The learning process will surely extend throughout the season as well.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Dan Mullan / The RFU Collection and Justin Tafoya / Getty Images)

The telling bit in the video of Enzo Fernandez and other Argentinian players singing a racist song about France following their victory in the Copa America final is the voice you can hear just at the end.

“Corta (el) vivo,” someone says — “stop the live stream.”

They know. They know what they’re saying. They know that what they’re saying is profoundly offensive, and they know what will happen if the outside world hears it.

This isn’t one of those things that can be equivocated. It’s not something that can be denied. The words are clear, and we know the words because it’s a song that has been around for a couple of years.

The words to the chant were: “They play for France, but their parents are from Angola. Their mother is from Cameroon, while their father is from Nigeria. But their passport says French.”

The song in question came from a group of Argentina fans before the 2022 World Cup final, which was flagged at the time by French anti-racist protestors as an “expression of a far-right ideology”.

Frankly it’s bad enough that Argentina, presumably insulated from a PR perspective by their victory at the World Cup, didn’t seek to distance themselves more from the song, but the fact the players seem to have incorporated it into their celebrations is so much worse. If nothing else, it speaks to an unpleasant collective mentality and pervading culture that a group of players, at a moment of triumph, would choose this song as part of their celebrations.

It’s also worth noting, without wishing to detract from the blatant racism, the transphobia that is at play here too. The full lyrics of the song make reference to French players being “cometravas, like Mbappe.” “Cometravas” is a slang term that essentially translates as “someone who has sex with transgender people”.

Football in general has made positive steps to make the game more welcoming for LGBTQ+ people. Players who actively choose not to participate in anti-homophobia campaigns are thankfully few and far between, and those that do are often punished — like Monaco midfielder Mohamed Camara who, after covering up an anti-homophobia message on his shirt last season, was suspended for four games.

Things like this song, however, do not help and in fact actively harm the effort to make football a more inclusive place.

But if the song itself and the gleeful willingness of the players involved to sing it was not depressing enough, the aftermath has been almost as bad.

Fernandez himself issued an apology of sorts, claiming that he got “caught up in the euphoria of our Copa America celebrations” and the song did not “reflect my character or beliefs”. He also said, rather laughably, that “I stand against discrimination in all forms”. Let’s just say that when he is inevitably forced to participate in some sort of anti-racism campaign in the weeks or months to come, his words will ring hollow.

Chelsea themselves reacted in fairly responsible fashion, putting out a statement that set out their own position and values, saying they will use this as “an opportunity to educate” and that they have started an internal disciplinary procedure.

It will be interesting to see what comes of that process, given that if Fernandez was a fan and was caught singing that song in the stands at Stamford Bridge, he would be looking at the ugly end of a fairly lengthy stadium ban.

Beyond that though, things have been very quiet.

Wesley Fofana, the French Chelsea defender, called it “uninhibited racism”. David Datro Fofana, the club’s Ivory Coast striker, put a statement on Instagram saying that “racism in all its forms should be condemned in the strongest possible terms” and that the fight against racism “needs to be taken seriously by everyone involved in the sport”.

David Datro Fofana has also condemned the incident (Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images)

It’s the last bit that feels the most pertinent. Because aside from those two responses, plus a picture posted by Nicolas Jackson of Fernandez hugging a black child, the meaning of which is open to interpretation, there’s not been much else.

Only black players have acknowledged the incident publicly so far. No white players have condemned the song. Perhaps some of Fofana’s white team-mates have offered private support, but as things stand there has been nothing beyond that.

As will be depressingly familiar, it is the black players that have been left to do the emotional work, to carry the mental baggage of having to deal with a racist incident. It enforces the idea that racism is a problem only for black people, when it’s a blight that shames us all. It isolates the black players, suggesting that it’s not something that anyone else has to worry about.

Imagine the power that would come from a white player standing up, unprompted, and condemning the song. It would provide a valuable symbol, but it would be more than just a surface-level thing. It would have genuine import.

The clubs of the other players in the video have, at the time of writing, decided not to comment. It is, in fairness, a little tricky to definitively identify exactly who is singing in the video, but everyone seems to be trying their best to ignore the issue entirely.

Perhaps we could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that, in time, they will speak to their Argentinian players and remind them of their responsibilities — not as footballers or representatives of a club, but as human beings. But at the moment it would seem that they are just hoping the whole thing goes away.

Even if it is tough to identify the individuals doing the singing, anyone who sat in silence while such a racist song was being sung probably could do with at least a talking-to. Surely the least we can expect from the clubs is for them to acknowledge the incident, that they will investigate and if it is found that any of their players were involved, they would face the appropriate punishment.

Chelsea are the only club to have said anything so far, not that we should necessarily be handing out extra credit for that: after all, they couldn’t possibly have avoided it.

Elsewhere though, crickets. For all the glossy campaigns and well-intentioned initiatives and solemnly shot ‘No to racism’ UEFA videos, when so much of the game is silent at moments like this, the idea that football is serious about combating racism is very hard to take seriously.

(Header photo: Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)