The Loop

Forward Press: U.S. Women’s Open, Scottish Open in the spotlight

With devastating floods in West Virginia causing the cancellation of the PGA Tour’s 2016 Greenbrier Classic, the golf world will shift its focus to the U.S. Women’s Open and Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open.

Faced with six hours of lost time, CBS will show two recent Greenbrier’s while Golf Channel will also dig into the archives for “classic” Greenbrier coverage.

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The U.S. Women’s Open is once again played the week before The Open, with Fox Sports 1 carrying 10 hours of early round coverage, before moving to Fox for the weekend’s eight hours. Thursday and Friday coverage will be helmed by Shane O’Donoghue with analysts Juli Inkster and Brad Faxon, who turn the anchor chair over to Joe Buck, Inkster and Paul Azinger on the weekend.

Rounding out the team are Faxon, Scott McCarron, Steve Flesch, Holly Sonders, and if someone’s ball moves on a green, David Fay will provide rules analysis.

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The Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed CordeValle, now a Rosewood property, is set at the base of oak-dotted hills and offers no shortage of risk-reward holes. Also count on hearing about the endurance test of walking the hilly back nine layout in San Martin’s summer heat.

Until the Lydia Ko-Brooke Henderson-Lexi Thompson threesome tees off Thursday at 2:06 pm PT and creates new memories this week, CordeValle will be remembered for Rocco Mediate’s 2010 endeavor that included four fairway hole-outs. To refresh your memory:

Here is a mildly cheesy CordeValle golf course tour that should give you an idea what a beautiful mid-summer setting it should provide for the U.S. Women’s Open:

U.S. Women’s Open Coverage Times (ET), with FOX Sports GO and USGA.org live streaming everything as well.

13. Castle Stuart G. Links

Stephen Szurlej

The Highlands In HD!

The Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open picked up Patrick Reed, J.B. Holmes and Steve Stricker after the Greenbrier cancellation, who join Henrik Stenson, Phil Mickelson, Branden Grace, Rafa Cabrera-Bello and Matt Fitzpatrick to headline the final preparation prior to The Open at Troon.

Once again, Golf Channel and NBC split the telecast, with expanded network coverage this year that will see NBC showing more weekend hours of golf from Castle Stuart Golf Links on top of eight-hour windows Thursday and Friday.

The 2009 co-design by Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen hosted Mickelson’s 2013 victory in the Scottish, setting up his memorable 2013 Open Championship triumph at Muirfield.

The win included this rather epic, totally un-links golf flop shot:

The beauty of Castle Stuart is summed up quite nicely in this flyover:

Scottish Open TV Times starting Thursday, July 7th (ET):