Old fellas roll back years
Experience counts for a lot at the Open Championship, writes Mark Reason.
So much of modern golf is a windup. Taut and toned from months in the gym, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy and Jason Day will turn and turn, shoulders and hips coiled like rattlesnakes, and then smash the ball way out onto the horizon. The crowd will whoop and holler and shout ‘‘that’s what I’m talkin’ about’’ and then a few of us will look away, hopeful that Fatty Arbuckle is about to roll around the side of the clubhouse.
One of the great joys of golf, and in particular Open golf, is that blokes who need a few metres of stout rope to hold up their trousers still have a chance of competing against the athletes. It’s not probable that the likes of Colin Montgomerie and Mark Calcavecchia will be in the final group next Monday, but it is possible.
You can get 200-1 on Monty and 1000-1 on Calcavecchia, but there are always days on the British coast when it feels like old times. There are days when Tom Watson looks like winning at Turnberry and days when the wind blows the gel clean out of the kids’ hair.
How can you not love Calc when he prepares for these big events by going to Wimbledon to watch Roger Federer’s semifinal. How can you not love Calc when his idea of an energy drink is three pints of heavy down the pub the night before.
He won here at Troon back in 1989, one of the listed many to have broken Greg Norman’s heart. But every now and then he rolls back the years. He did it at Watson’s Open at Turnberry and he did it a few years ago at St Andrews. And if Calc could just get in contention one more time, then the stories will come tumbling out.
Like the time he walked onto the tee mad about a double bogey or three-putt or some such thing that always sent the horns off in his truck driver’s head. He grabbed for some paper cups from the dispenser and of course eight came out at once and that made Calc madder and so he takes the big shoe to the cooler and that goes flying off and then it lands on the cart path and then it’s rolling and gathering pace and about to bowl an old lady like one of those pins in the alley back at Calc’s place…
‘‘Fore,’’ shouts Calcavecchia in a desperate moment of recognition. And his mum jumps out of the way and looks back to see what jerk set that whole train in motion.
‘‘Watch it, buster,’’ she says, or words more crudely to that effect.
So when Calcavecchia says, ‘‘You see a guy like Tom Watson almost winning at 60 because he was playing well and had confidence. It doesn’t really matter how old you are if you’re feeling good about what you’re doing. I think old guys can hang with the young guys,’’ you really want to believe him.
Who knows, it seems that sort of British summer, an Indian summer for sport, as Roger, Venus and Serena defy the passage of time. And who knows, because stranger things have happened at Troon. Gordon Brown, aka the Broon of Troon, the great, late Scotland and Lions lock forward, stumbled home one night after a couple of jars and wandered past a bear, a casualty of a travelling fair, sleeping it off in one of the bunkers.
Then there was Todd Hamilton winning the Championship when it was last played at this wonderland back in 2004. Who the hell was Todd Hamilton we wondered as the laconic 38-year-old American journeyman bumped up a chip with his new-fangled hybrid club. Hamilton told us he was out of Oquawka, on the banks of the Mississippi. Uh, anything ever, like in the last thousand years, happen at Oquawka?
‘‘In 1974, there was a travelling circus,’’ said Hamilton. ‘‘They had an elephant chained to a tree. We had a storm come through one night, lightning struck the tree, went through the metal chain and killed the elephant right on the spot. They couldn’t really take it and deliver it to where they needed to go. So they decided to bury the elephant in our town square. And the elephant’s name was Norma Jean. Swear to God.’’
That’s not a travelling circus, this is a travelling circus, you say, as Monty hoves into view. The corpulent Scot has an opinion on just about anything, and being from Troon, he thinks he has a chance of winning this week, despite being 53, an age where some of us seem to have lost just a bit of clubhead speed.
Monty’s clubhead speed has always been between the ears. He says, ‘‘I know my way around the course. I know exactly where not to go because I’ve been in all those places and you have to know where to miss. I’m excited, thrilled, tense and anxious.’’ Monty has been around the tracks, just like like Calcavecchia. Can’t beat experience, eh, Calc? ‘‘I would never think I’m the type of guy anybody could learn anything from. I think experience is way overrated. All that means is I’ve hit more bad shots than all the guys that are 20-years-old, and they’re lingering in my brain.’’
So you won’t be holing out at the Postage Stamp like the 60-year-old Gene Sarazen did back in 1962? Now there’s a thought. Never done that. What a way to go. Now that would be worth talking about.