‘Like playing golf in
WELCOME to the Looking Glass Open.
Carnoustie, the toughest course on the rota, is about to throw up a mind-bending championship which will border on the surreal.
It will not be a bloodbath like 1999 – even allowing for some wind, the weather is largely due to behave itself and the rough is wispy rather than strangulating – but it will be, well, odd.
Nothing is quite what it seems in this parallel golf universe.
With fairways running faster than greens the 400-yard drive will be in play as will the nine iron off the tee on a course which resembles the African savannah more than the Angus coastline.
The unique canvas for the 147th Open is one which promises to deliver a puzzle which many in the field will find insoluble.
“I think there’s not going to be one player in this field that has a game plan on Wednesday night and is going to stick to that game plan the whole way around for 72 holes. It’s not going to happen,” said Rory McIlroy.
“It’s going to be interesting because the golf course is playing so firm and fast, some guys will see it completely differently than the way I see it and vice versa.”
There will be many ways to conquer the mountain, not all of them conventional. Half the field will be thumping it miles and taking their chances with the hay; half will be wibbling their way down the runway and hoping their ball will stop at some point before the end of the event.
“Four irons are going 280 yards, I’m not sure how I feel about it really,” AT CARNOUSTIE said England’s Matt Fitzpatrick. “It scrambles your head a bit because you can end up hitting a shorter club off the tee then a longer club to the green. It’s weird.” Four of the seven championships here have been won with scores over par so even in ordinary circumstances Carnoustie Opens have always demanded a certain resilience. Scroll back through the list of champions and that character trait leaps out, from Padraig Harrington to Tom Watson and Ben Hogan – the toughest hombre of the lot. Hogan’s golf in 1953, when he won five of the six events he entered, is commemorated on the sixth tee with a plaque at the hole renamed in his honour. No one this week will be able to land the tee shot in the same divot on successive days as the American reputedly did down Hogan’s Alley, although as his great rival Sam Snead caustically said: “If he’s that damn good, why didn’t he hit it to the right or the left of it?” If mental hard men tend to prevail at Carnoustie, then what chance a Tiger Woods fairy tale? Gary Player, the 1968 champion here, does not count out the resurgent American, left. “Tiger will win another tournament and I hope he will win another Major because we need him desperately to do that for the sake of the game,” Player said yesterday. “He’s swinging the club so well. He’s back on the right plane. He’s making the right movements.
“I don’t know how his career has affected him mentally, how it’s hurt him – nobody knows that – but he certainly has a chance and I think a pretty good chance.
“He’ll be using irons off the tees, which are to his advantage, and he has the experience so, yes, he could win.”
The putter is the club which has stopped Woods’s successful comeback being topped off by a win so far and the heavilywatered greens are unlikely to assist in that regard.
It is further out that this championship is likely to be decided, which could bring in prime ball strikers like Justin Rose and in-form Italian Francesco Molinari.
The trouble is that all their best-laid plans may count for nothing on this giant roulette wheel. Spare a thought for the poor caddies advising on club selection when the rules of physics have been suspended.
“They’ve got a hard job this week. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are one or two separations after this week. It’s that sort of week,” said Chris Wood.
Lee Westwood’s long-serving bagman Billy Foster has rarely seen anything like it.
“You are No1 in the firing line if anything goes wrong as caddie and sometimes it’s going to be bordering on the impossible,” said Foster.
“You just pick your landing areas to take certain bunkers out of play and have a ‘guesstimate’ at how far you think it’s going to roll.
“The ball can pitch in an uphill bit and stop quite quickly but if it pitches on a downhill bit it can run 80 yards.
“When it is this burnt there is nothing to stop the ball. It’s like playing golf in a bowling alley.”
Four irons are going 280 yards