Seaside splendour of Open week a big miss
YOU wouldn’t have thought it possible to miss a chippy that dubs up at ten o’clock on a Thursday night, leaving hapless visitors wandering the streets of Deal with a fish supper-sized abyss gnawing away at their innards. But, oh, to be in Kent for the Open Championship, listening in disbelief as the local takeaway owner insists that he won’t be changing his opening hours for ‘the bloody golf’. To be fair, as a resident of Edinburgh, the whole ‘You’ll have had your tea, then…’ approach is generally easier to bear. And, really, a bit of healthy hunger is a small price to play for being at the centre of the sporting world during the most magical week on the calendar. Scrambling around for grub and a decent pint in some overrun seaside town, be it discovering a gem like the Wee Cook Kitchen at Broughty Golf Club or queueing for service at the Harbour Bar in Portrush, is actually part of the fun. And, while nobody would describe Royal St George’s as their favourite Open course, the golf is rarely short of spectacular. To all missing the prospect of watching Rory McIlroy and a rejuvenated Tiger Woods take on the course, the weather and the competition from tomorrow to Sunday, sympathies are extended. Console yourself with this thought, however. The R&A could easily have gone down the route of other sporting bodies — and asked Shane Lowry to defend the Claret Jug on virtually deserted links. As chief executive Martin Slumbers put it in conversation with
Sportsmail earlier this week, an Open without fans would have been ‘very odd.’ It’s certainly impossible to imagine the tournament feeling even remotely the same without huge galleries gathered on hillsides, swarms of humanity traipsing through the boondocks in the hope of seeing Phil Mickelson pull of one of those miracle shots — or huddled masses collapsing in a state of delirious exhaustion just outside the beer tent. Mind you, at least one chippy owner wouldn’t be pestered by roving gangs of wild-eyed golf fans, with their aggressive pastel shades and neatly pressed slacks, determined to keep all decent folk out their beds at the ungodly hour of five past ten.