Golf’s greatest players gathered on Monday for practice rounds at the sport’s birthplace, testing the Old Course in St Andrews before Thursday’s start of the 150th anniversary edition of the Open Championship.
History will be made on the legendary links course where Jack Nicklaus won twice and bid farewell to golf, where Bobby Jones and Seve Ballesteros collected crowns, and where Tiger Woods roared to victory in epic form in 2000 and 2005.
“It all started here,” Scotsman Andrew Coltart said. “It obviously means a lot to anybody who has crossed the Swilcan Bridge to play here.”
Top-ranked Woods bids for an unprecedented third Open crown at St Andrews and his 15th Major title overall, three shy of Nicklaus’s all-time record, in the wake of a sex scandal that has swept away his once-iconic good-guy image.
“It’s just an amazing, amazing test of positioning your golf ball,” Woods said of the Old Course. “In order to get to a lot of the flags, you have to put the ball in the correct spot to have angles.”
Reigning Masters champion Phil Mickelson, who could overtake Woods to become world number one for the first time, seeks a fifth Major title and says he might claim his first Claret Jug if he can master the greens of St Andrews.
“I feel like I should have a good chance,” Mickelson said. “The thing I’ve struggled most with has actually been the greens. It’s a stronger grass and I haven’t adjusted properly. If I can change that, I should be able to contend.”
Mickelson plans to bash the ball with more force than at most Majors because distance eliminates more deadly bunkers while options abound even for errant drivers over the 7 305-yard layout.
“I’ve had dreams of winning the British Open ever since I was a kid and came over in 1991 and played at Royal Birkdale,” Mickelson said.
“It’s a tournament I want to win regardless of what setting, but I’ve read Jack Nicklaus saying that there’s nothing more gratifying than winning the Open Championship at St Andrews.”
‘Well thought out’
Swirling winds off the North Sea could complicate things for players, and combined with fabled bunkers — Hell, Coffins, Principal’s Nose, Beardies — can turn championship dreams into frustrating failure.
“The first time I played it in one particular wind, there were bunkers that were not in play,” Mickelson said. “I wondered, ‘Why is this bunker 80 yards out of play?’
“When I played it a couple of days later and had an opposite wind, it was those bunkers that were in play. It was fascinating to me at how well-placed and strategic a golf course it was, regardless of which wind you received that day. The most intriguing element is that it was so well thought out.”
Like King Edward’s army invading Scotland in a bygone era, players will have to think again when it comes to the famed Road Hole, the 17th hole at St Andrews regarded by many as the hardest par-four in golf.
Officials have pushed back the 17th tee about 40 yards in a bid to keep pace with technology and longer hitters, making the challenge of putting the ball over or around the corner of the Old Course Hotel a new test for every player.
“It will be strange hitting from ‘out of bounds’, but I suppose that’s the way golf is going,” said 1999 British Open winner Paul Lawrie.
Ballesteros, the Spanish legend who underwent surgery for brain tumours in 2008, pulled out of a planned appearance at St Andrews this week on the advice of doctors. The five-time Major champion won the Open in 1984 at St. Andrews. — Sapa-AFP