Aviation buffs are real winners at The Open at Royal Troon

TROON, Scotland – Nothing that large could possibly stay up in the air.

That’s the way it feels from certain spots at Royal Troon, where planes as large as the Lockheed Galaxy C5 fly into and out of adjacent Glasgow Prestwick Airport. It also feels like you could almost reach up and touch the landing gear.

“I usually stare up,” said Max Homa, who shot a third-round 70 on Saturday to get to 5-over for the tournament. “They’re pretty awesome; they rarely get that close to the ground (in tournament golf), especially at the ninth hole if you catch one going up or coming down, that one is very concerningly low. It’s not going to just fall out of the sky, but it is quite loud.

“If you want to get a ball in the air,” he added, “I think there’s a real possibility if you time it right you could hit a plane, so I think a lot of people are just going to hold off.”

Such was the case as Homa, Rory McIlroy and Tyrrell Hatton played the 13th hole in Round 1 on Thursday, with players and caddies pausing as a jumbo jet passed overhead, fighting the wind.

“It looks like it’s floating,” a fan said.

No one has ever hit a plane with a ball, according to an airport spokesperson, nor has a plane ever had to ditch on the course. At a mile out, planes are 350 feet in the air, but they’re lower by their final descent, swooping down over the ninth and 10th holes before crossing the A79 and hitting the tarmac.

With the roar of the engines and the enormity of this impossibly giant mosquito, it’s impossible not to feel awed.

“We had a cargo plane leave the airport on Tuesday of the practice rounds that I wasn’t sure was going to clear the stands,” said a hole marshal on the elevated eighth tee. He gave a rueful chuckle. “I wouldn’t want to be in the top row.”

The airport keeps logs of all inbound and outbound traffic, and that plane, the spokesperson said, was Boeing’s largest cargo carrier, the 747-8F, which boasts a wingspan of 224 feet, 5 inches. Glasgow Prestwick has 12 scheduled inbound and outbound cargo planes per week, plus adhoc cargo charters. As for commercial traffic, there are 80 inbound/outbound flights per week, all of them operated by the discount carrier Ryanair.

There are also smaller, single-engine planes (Cessna, Piper, Beechcraft) buzzing about.

Glasgow Prestwick is most famous for being the only place Elvis Presley ever set foot in the U.K. during a military stopover in 1960. He was returning to the U.S. from Germany.

Homa said that when it comes to a certain type of “birdwatcher” – the type who could tell you that Lockheed’s Galaxy C5 is a hulking Air Force workhorse with 12 internal wing tanks and 28 wheels that has long supported America’s global military operations – Royal Troon may stand alone.

“There’s some spots if you’re at TPC Scottsdale on the Champions Course, a lot of planes fly over there,” Homa said. “And Papago (Golf Course, less than two miles from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport), so you get to see it. But this does feel the closest I’ve been.”