By Bill Fields
Photos By Darren Carroll/Dom Furore
July 25, 2008
If you have come to the British Open on and off for 20 years, you know certain things don't change. The inflections in the voice of first-tee announcer Ivor Robson, chirpy as a finch, are as familiar as a nursery rhyme you heard when you were 4. The BBC's on-course microphones -- built, like a good links golfer, to perform in the wind -- still resemble the bushy tail of a wild animal. A guy with a rake, a bunker butler, accompanies each game. Police officers wear impossible-to-miss iridescent lime jackets, but the terrain for golf is a subdued palette of greens and tans, inconspicuous colors.
The press parking lot last week for the Open at Royal Birkdale GC was the practice ground at neighboring Hillside GC. There were no giant numbers or target greens complete with flagsticks, just two rows of simple white markers, three feet tall. The days I arrived early, I parked near the 50-yard post; when I slept in once, I ended up out around the 100-yard mark. One day, while I walked toward the Hillside pro shop -- past the "No Buggies Beyond This Point," "No Trolleys On Tee Please" and "No Divots To Be Taken Inside the White Ropes" signs -- I heard the clickety-clack of a golfer's metal spikes on pavement, a sound all but extinct in the United States.
But when it comes to the weather -- although wet, windy and cool often do a good job posting up on warm and sunny -- things can change quickly. A couple of days last week on England's west coast, the sky, in short order, went from looking as if it had been punched by Ali to painted by Van Gogh, bruised to beautiful. Pitching wedges became 5-irons or vice versa, and golf balls oscillated on the greens. (By the way, does anything but a golf ball on a windy day ever oscillate?) Greg Norman glowed because he is three weeks into his marriage with Chris Evert and because he came out of semi-retirement to darn near win the British Open at 53 until Padraig Harrington denied him. But for everybody else, save those folks who overdid the beer or the bubbly on offer at the Bollinger tent, it was windburn.
A British Open is great fun with or (this year, because of his knee surgery) without Tiger Woods, with or without weather that tests umbrella engineering, demands innovative shotmaking and brings a dose of luck into the equation. Nae wind, nae golf is not quite right; it is more like nae wind, nae fully creative golf. Players have to hit all the notes to thrive, or even survive, in a four-club wind. They wouldn't want to play in that all the time, and I wouldn't want to watch them try, any more than someone wants four courses at every meal. As a special occasion, however, it is delicious.
From five-time champion Tom Watson, who was playing in his 31st Open, to Heath Slocum, competing in his first, the challenging conditions were something to be embraced. With early/late tee times Thursday and Friday, Watson was among those hurt by the timing of the worst weather, which hit Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, but he always has rolled with the meteorological punches. "I always used to laugh at [Seve] Ballesteros," Watson, who shot 74-76 and missed the cut by a shot, told me. "He would say, 'The draw is so unfair here. Sometimes in the morning you get the best wind, and in the afternoon, you don't.' Well, sure, that's the way it is. You can't change Mother Nature. You can't tee everybody off in a shotgun start."
A Southerner, Slocum wished he had brought some more substantial clothes -- he donned a ski cap over his visor in the worst of it -- but he, too, was invigorated by it all. "It's just a cold, ball-goes-nowhere wind," he said Saturday after his round. "It's amazing that from 127 yards you're between 6- and 7-iron. It's hard to make that choice. But it's a lot of fun. The good thing about links golf is that you can run it up and use some imagination." From start to finish, creativity was essential. "Never once," surmised Colin Montgomerie, "did you hit a shot that you do normally. Not one in a normal way." Peter Dawson, the R&A's chief executive, was queried about the rigors Thursday. "This is links golf," he said plainly, "golf by the seaside."
Not only did Norman thrive in the conditions, knocking down approaches to keep them below the dunes that frame most of the holes -- none better than a 5-iron from 120 yards on the fifth hole Saturday -- but for two days so did David Duval, who came out of nowhere to contend for 36 holes. If a player has the right attitude, these conditions can be a cleanser for the golf soul, freeing him from swing-thought overload. He feels more than he thinks, the way talented kids used to be when they played for Cokes instead of getting checked on launch monitors, and the game becomes a more reactive process than it usually is. For Norman, this made it more like his new favorite sport, tennis, once dominated by his new bride.
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