Matthew Southgate stepped before the microphones at Royal Troon and ran a hand Top World News Today through his hair, Top World News Today looking like a man who'd just survived a dozen nightmares. Asked to size up the conditions at the British Open Friday, a weary Southgate didn't hold back.

"I need to lie down in a dark room," he sighed. "It's brutal out there. That's one of the toughest experiences I've had on a golf course. It was crosswinds everywhere and pins on the same side where the wind was coming from.

It's just so, so difficult. It was like survival golf, really."

Weather conditions at the British Open are dicey even in the best of circumstances, and Friday at Royal Troon was, as the players attested afterward, some of the worst of circumstances. The wind howled at well over 30 miles per hour. As if that windspeed alone wasn't bad enough, the wind's direction was unpredictable, shifting not just from one end of the course to the next, but one hole to the next, or even tee to green.

Viktor Hovland and the rest of the field played through winds at the British Open that had flags blowing wide open.

(AP/Jon Super)

"Mentally, I mean, it can drive you crazy.