Capostagno golf
Whether or not you enjoyed the 1999 Open Championship at Car-noustie rather depends on your view of professional golfers. If you share their view that the public wants to see birdies and eagles then you probably thought it was all a shocking waste of time.
If on the other hand, you believe we watch
professional sport because of its affinity to theatre you probably thought that it was just about as good as it gets.
For those who have forgotten, after four
days in which players spent their energy hacking out of waist-high rough, Jean van de Velde came to the final hole needing six to win. Through a mixture of bad luck and bad course management he made seven and, after a playoff, handed the title to Paul Lawrie.
This year the Open returns to another,
rather more famous Scottish links, the Old Course at St Andrews. It will be the 17th Open at the home of golf and a chance for one of today’s great players to join the immortals. Bobby Jones, Bobby Locke, Peter Thompson, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo all won Opens at St Andrews and this year it should be Tiger Woods.
How can it not be? Ernie Els finished
second to Woods in the US Open at Pebble Beach, but admitted that it was rather embarrassing because second was 15 shots behind first.
Woods is not necessarily 15 shots better than the rest of the world, but at the moment if he plays half decently he wins, while if he plays well he demoralises the rest of the field.
And St Andrews is as suited to Woods’s
game as a Big Mac is to his appetite. It is short and defenceless, with no rough and greens the size of football pitches. If the wind does not blow he can kill the course. But fortunately from the spectator’s point of view, there is scarcely ever a day when the wind does not blow.
Then it becomes a test of course
management. Unfortunately for the rest of the field, that is one of Woods’s greatest strengths. For while it is possible to simply overpower the course, as John Daly did the last time the Open came to Fife in 1995, it is not possible to do so four days in a row. Daly, let it be remembered, had a hot putter the week he beat Costantino Rocca in a playoff.
The playoff itself has been largely
forgotten, because what preceded it was so much more dramatic. Rocca hit his drive at the 18th to within 40m of the green and then duffed his chip into the valley of sin. From there he holed an outrageous putt to make the playoff and fell backwards in exultation.
Rocca’s emotions got the better of him and
therein lies a lesson. St Andrews is so filled with the ghosts of golfers past that it takes a strong mind to block them out for the duration of the greatest championship at the greatest venue. Do that and you still have to beat the course.
You guessed it, we’re still talking about Woods.
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