Andy Capostagno Golf
The Scots have a saying: “If there’s nae wind there’s nae golf.” Think about that when the cream of the world’s players are struggling through the links of Royal Birkdale this week.
You will hear many seasoned professionals complain that it makes the game a lottery. Nick Price said during practice: “It can be six-and-a- half clubs’ difference off the tee. Today, with the wind, I teed off on a 439m par four with a five iron. Where else would you be able to do that?”
“That” is why the Open is special. The oldest and finest major of them all has been played on many courses over the years, but it has now settled into a six-year roster of the finest links courses in the British Isles.
Links golf means many things, but one thing above all: club selection is not constant. On the United States Professional Golfing Association Tour if it’s 137m, it’s a nine iron. Courses are beautifully manicured, shots are played high into watered, receptive greens.
Players get into a comfort zone to the extent that Scott Hoch, regularly voted most unpopular man on tour, doesn’t even want to play the Open, because he might have to think about his game.
Needless to say, the Open doesn’t need Hoch, Hoch needs the Open, something his sponsors have spelt out very clearly to him.
Fortunately, Hoch is in a minority of approximately one. The winner of the Open is announced as “the champion golfer of the year” by the president of the Royal and Ancient, something that irks Americans who believe the Masters and the US Open are more important.
But the Masters has a restricted field and the US Open is unfairly loaded towards US-based players. By contrast, anyone can play in the Open; they just have to play well in one of the plethora of qualifying tournaments. David Frost did just that at the Hillside course and Andrew McLardy came through into the main draw by taming the wind on the Heskith course.
Other, more vaunted players prepared for the 127th Open in less strenuous fashion. Ernie Els spent a week playing the finest links courses in Ireland. Some might say that with a dodgy back, Els should have prepared by resting, but given the chance to peg it up at Ballybunion, most real golf enthusiasts would have risen from a wheelchair, so take it that Els has temporarily lost his swing, not his love of the game.
Tiger Woods was also in Ireland last week, along with Masters champion Mark O’Meara, and the pair of them have a better chance than Els of lifting the claret jug come Sunday. Woods has been having fun with his yardages in practice at Royal Birkdale.
On Tuesday he hit a downwind drive 402m at the eighth and on Monday he hit a three iron 139m at the seventh. There in its essence is the reason that the Open champion is so difficult to predict.
Last time the Open was played at Birkdale the champion was also not a bookmaker’s fancy. Australian Ian Baker-Finch emerged from the pack to tie the Open record on the weekend with a return of 130 for the last 36 holes.
His eight under par 272 on the par 70 course was the lowest score ever at Birkdale, but Baker-Finch has lost his game so completely since then that he has not even entered this year.
Which is no bad thing because he would not recognise the course. In 1991, Birkdale’s grass was yellow and dry, the rough forgiving.
This year the kind of summer that convinced the British to colonise hot countries in the first place has produced a green, lush, very dangerous layout. Add the wind to the equation and it’s easy to understand why former Open champions Nick Faldo and Price have both predicted par to be the winning score this week.
So who might shoot par? Faldo is so at odds with his game that the bookies have made him 50-1, his worst odds in a major for a decade.
But when Faldo last won the Open in 1992, he shot par on the final day at Muirfield in Scotland, a score that in the extreme weather conditions equated to something like a 65. Bad weather could bring out the best in Faldo, just as it is likely to bring out the worst in Colin Montgomerie.
Everyone is talking about Lee Westwood and he is the bookies’ favourite, having won twice in the past three weeks.
But as much as we live in changing times, with no repeat major winners for the last three years, the Open is a tournament you have to sneak up on. Get in contention a few times to learn the ropes was the rule, even for a genius like Seve Ballesteros, and so will it prove for Westwood.
Having said that, there has not been a British winner of the Open since Faldo. It’s about time.