This year’s Open is a putting test for teacher Brad Faxon, student Rory McIlroy

Thirty years later, Brad Faxon can recount in painstaking detail how he missed perhaps his best chance to win one of golf’s major championships.

Ironically, it began with a missed putt.

Ironically, because from his two-time All-American career at Furman University (1982-83) through eight victories on the PGA Tour, the last in 2005, Faxon built a reputation as one of the all-time great putters. So great, he’s been sought out by some of the game’s best since retiring to the TV booth to impart his touch on the greens. (Faxon joined NBC in 2023 after stints with Fox and Golf Channel, and will be an analyst for next week’s Open Championship at Royal Troon (July 18-21).

Doubly ironic, his most-heralded current pupil is Rory McIlroy, winner of four majors but winless in those top golf events since 2014. Twice in the past three years, at the 2022 Open and the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, McIlroy’s otherwise superlative game was torpedoed by wayward putting.

So many storylines there, but let’s start at the 1994 Open.

Through three rounds at Turnberry Golf Resort, Faxon (with scores of 69-65-67) shared the 9-under par lead with two-time major winner Fuzzy Zoeller. They were a shot in front of five-time Open winner Tom Watson, Zimbabwe’s Nick Price and Sweden’s Jesper Parnevik.

“I’d played well and figured Fuzzy was a great last-day pairing,” said Faxon, now 62. “The first hole, I took an aggressive line with a pitching wedge,” missing the green. His recovery shot left him with a five-foot par putt ... which he missed.

“That set the tone for the day,” he said. “I was never out of control, but I could get nothing to happen that day.” At the 17th green, Price rolled in a 70-foot birdie — “He made that massive putt and jumped in the air,” Faxon said — to beat Parnevik and win The Open by a shot. Faxon’s closing-round 73 left him six shots back in seventh place.

Though disappointed, that didn’t diminish Faxon’s fondness for Open courses and links golf: “That was a great experience for me. To sleep on the lead of a major ...”

Faxon’s putting philosophy: Make it fun

Some of Faxon’s favorite memories didn’t directly involve the Open.

The Saturday before, he played at fabled Machrihanish Golf Club with the club champion and shot a 64 to break the champ’s course record. Later, he played a practice round with Ben Crenshaw, Davis Love III and Cory Pavin, where the bet was, if only one player finished his round without a bogey, he collected $1,000 from each of the others.

Faxon was the lone bogey-free survivor, highlighted by a par-saving putt at the 16th hole. “That was a lot of money in 1994,” he said.

Flash forward: In 1999, Faxon and fellow Rhode Islander Billy Andrade had created the CVS Charity Classic, and in 2018 they approached McIlroy about playing.

“Rory talked about watching Adam Scott trying a different swing thought,” Faxon said. “He said, ‘When I’m driving the ball, I don’t think about a (expletive) thing.’

“He had been contemplating a change in his putting coach, and later I got a text asking if I’d watch him hit putts. I said, ‘Would you be OK putting without thinking?’ And he said, ‘I’d kill for that.’ I wanted to get his genius out again.”

That approach has been central to Faxon’s putting philosophy. Writer Michael Bamberger once quizzed him about that, and wrote that “Faxon urges his putting students to get in touch with their inner athleticism and their instinctiveness that, in theory, should make putting … fun. One of Faxon’s regular points when he talks about putting is to avoid the word ‘work.’ ...

“A reporter once asked Faxon what he was working on while on a practice putting green. ‘Not caring,’ ” he said.

Open is McIlroy’s next putting challenge

The Faxon-McIlroy partnership, to date, has yet to click in a major.

Faxon attributes McIlroy’s loss at the 2022 Open to Cam Smith’s “extraordinary round” more than McIlroy’s inability to make putts despite hitting all 18 greens that Sunday. The final-round showdown with Bryson DeChambeau at June’s U.S. Open, though, McIlroy losing the lead and the tournament via three back-nine bogeys was wrenching for Faxon.

“When Rory hit the green on the 16th hole, then missed that three-foot putt, I (reacted and) hit my head on the back wall of the booth,” he said. “(NBC) showed it again in slo-mo, and (executive producer) Tommy Roy told me, ‘You need to comment.’ ”

Faxon struggled to do so: “Was it hit too hard? Did the grain take it? Did he read it wrong? I don’t know,” he said. “When you miss one that length, there has to have been some doubt (in the player’s mind), but rarely do the great players admit that.

“Rory said, ‘I hit a good putt, it didn’t go in,’ ” Faxon sighed. “He’d made 496 of those (three-footers) in a row” in 2024 until that miss.

Next week, the putting challenge will be typical of Opens: slower, flatter, less-manicured greens than in the United States.

“Every great putter says it’s harder to go to slow greens from fast greens” than vice versa, Faxon said. “Open greens aren’t as sloped or severe, because they can’t handle the wind conditions. It’s like nothing (players) see in America.”

But McIlroy won on such greens at Royal Liverpool in 2014, one of his two major victories that year. He’s among this week’s favorites with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who has his own mixed record in Opens. Faxon mentioned others — Xander Schauffele, Sepp Straka, Tony Finau, Max Homa — and said, “I’d be less surprised to see a relative unknown win at the Open” because of the element of luck.

Bottom line: The “Champion Golfer of the Year” will figure out Troon’s greens — better than his competition, anyway. There’s no magic involved; “(putting) comes with time and effort,” Faxon said.

Of his own history on greens, he at first offered that “I played a lot of other sports growing up to develop my hand-eye coordination.” Then he laughed at the futility of trying to answer the unanswerable.

“There’s a difference between teaching and learning putting,” he said. “All of those (other sports) are good for your short game — but no one taught me to putt.”

That might be the ultimate irony.