The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Weather gods’ groundwork will pay off
THEY GOT the course on the very verge of what they wanted on Monday and have been watering it just enough that it doesn’t die since.
This morning what you might regard as just about the perfect links golf test hosts the 142nd Open Championship. Rarely do the weather gods allow this to happen.
Baked and brown, visions of Birkdale 1976, or Hoylake 2006 come to mind when looking at Muirfield this week. There’s even been fire warnings because everything on the course is so dry. But actually, it’s better even than that. There’s a fabulous growth of wheaty rough, grown in the wettish June and not entirely burned off by flaming July in the way it was at Hoylake.
What we would need to make things perfect would be a strong seaside wind, preferably one that capriciously changed direction.
That’s maybe a bit too much to ask, and we’re not forecast to get anything above 10 mph, but Muirfield is a classic links course that doesn’t entirely need strong winds to protect it.
Through the history books, Open champions at Muirfield tend to stick out — Braid, Vardon, Hagen, Cotton, Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Faldo and Els. Even allowing for 1935 and Alf Perry, it’s a quality list of greats of the game.
Does that guarantee that the man lifting the Claret Jug on Sunday will be Hall of Fame calibre? As 18 men have won the last 20 majors — Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington are the only repeaters — that’s definitely not a given.
The conditions stack up well for Tiger Woods, if you consider his three previous wins, all secured in similarly windless blue skies. If this was St Andrews looking this brown with this forecast, you’d bet the house on him.
There’s more trouble to be found here than at the Old Course and Hoylake. He hasn’t putted that well on fescue greens for some time. He’s seriously under-golfed, and possibly injured.
I don’t like his late-early draw, but you still can’t write him off.
Clearly, the competition for Woods is better than it was 10 years ago. He himself accepts that the field is “stacked”, with less of a gap between the first and 156th player than ever.
There’s been a succession of new major champions lately and this year is shaping up as “the year the overdue guys won”.
Adam Scott and Justin Rose left golf’s least popular list, the best-players-never-to-win. That bodes well for perennial major underachievers Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, and the likes of Jason Day who’ve been on a cusp a few times.
Scott has a shot to double up this week, but Rose is going for the Open-US Open double, which has been done just three times in 50 years.
Even in these conditions, you’re looking for an arch-shotmaker at Muirfield, and less concerned with the guys that boss the moss, because there’s nothing to surprise you on the putting surfaces here.
But for the fried chicken debacle, l I’d’ have been inclined to bet on Sergio Garcia — won the Amateur here, did well in 2002, and maybe the best driver in the game.
He may be still lying in the long grass, but who knows what his mental fortitude is?
Out of the pack? I have a fancy for Marc Warren, who is certainly capable of becoming the first Scot to properly contend at an Open on the weekend since Monty in 2005. That would certainly test the ability to close out events he seems to have mislaid recently.
Whatever, we should be in for a classic Open.
This morning at 6.32am, Ivor Robson will clear his throat, switch on his microphone and say “On the tee, from Australia, Peter Senior” raising his voice ever so slightly at the end. And the greatest championship in golf will be under way again.