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Scotland on my Mind by Dan King
Thursday, July 17th
The Open Championship |
I've spent the first few days of The Open here much as I would in the States. Napping on the couch in front of the TV. Occasionally I wake up and walk over to the course to pick up scorecards. John is working here, putting the scorecards in on GolfWeb for Xerox. They didn't have a place for him on site at the tournament, so he is set up to do it at the house, a couple blocks away. Least I'm serving a function here.
The weather has been brilliant. If it stays like this, scores are going to go very low. This course is a monster in bad weather, but without it the pros have a much easier time avoiding the hazardous sand bunkers. Mostly they are hitting irons off the tee to stay down the middle of the fairways. I doubt even the shorter hitters are hitting drivers more than 6 or 7 times. Most of the fans here are loving the warm weather, but I'd like to see a touch of last week's Carnoustie here before the end of the week.
Most of the pros' problems seem to be the speed of the greens. Over the last 2 days I don't think I've ever seen quite that many putts left short in a major championship. The pros are grumbling, but the greens will speed up over the weekend.
The great Peter Thomson, who won his 4th of 5 Open titles here in 1958 was quoted in the Times responding to the pros' complaints: "For one thing, if they tried to shave the greens any further, they would loose the grass. For another, reading the pace of a green as well as its slope is part of a golfer's craft. Those who want predictable target golf may buy a suitable programme for their Gameboy." Way to go Peter.
Peter Thomson is also doing commentary for BBC. The American networks should all be required to listen to a BBC telecast of the Open. They could learn a lot. Besides the fact that there are no commercials on BBC (and there is also no Brent Musberger telling us how lucky we are that commercials have been kept to a minimum), they also do a much better job talking about the action. The commentators I recognize are Peter Allis, Peter Thomson, Peter Oosterhuis and Dave Marr. Peter Thomson and Dave Marr are excellent. It would be tough to come up with two more brilliant ex-professionals. CBS should listen and learn how to best use Dave Marr. The cameramen here don't follow the ball quite as well as their American counterparts, but I would imagine it is also much more difficult on a links style course.
On watching the 18th, it is amazing how much trouble the Americans are having with this hole. It seems it results from their lack of enthusiasm for hitting a long iron into the green. The 18th has a row of bunkers down the right, with another row down the left. The row down the right can generally be hit over, but that often brings the row down the left more into play. The smart play seems to be to hit just enough iron to take the row down the right out of play, then coming up short on the ones to the left. Too often, the Americans seem to be taking to much club, hoping to get it down the fairway, right of the bunkers on the left. Either they catch one of these bunkers or they push the shot to far right into the rough on the right. Jack Nicklaus played it both days with what appeared to be about a 5-iron short and then a 4-iron to the green. It is much easier to save par from a greenside bunker than it is to make par hitting sideways from a fairway bunker.
Speaking of Jack, he put on a masterpiece of play on Friday. A smooth 66 to be tied for 3rd place. He wasn't driving well, but he was making some great up and downs and putting like Jack of Old. Hard to tell how long this combination will survive, but it it great to see. I found it very nice to see both Old Jack and Young Tiger shooting identical 66s. Old Jack to put himself in contention and Tiger to make the cut after his 77 from the day before. Tiger is the only amateur to make the cut and will win the silver medal as low amateur. I watched him sink his birdie putt on 18, and he actually showed some emotion after making it. Way to go Tiger.
My pool picks didn't do especially well. Norman and Couples played well, if not brilliantly, but Zinger and Love didn't make the cut. Zinger broke his putter in half over his knee on the 9th hole, after missing a par-putt to go +3. He played in the in-ward holes in even, not an easy feat, putting with his sandwedge. On Friday, he never looked comfortable and shot a 76 seemingly in a hurry to get state-side. The Dan King practice round jinx continues (Though D.A. Weibring did make the cut).
Love looked like he was at least going to make the cut, which ended up 1-over. He was mostly around even par for both days. He'd do well on the par-5s, and then give those few shots away later. I don't believe he was ever more than 2-under, or less than 1-over. I at least felt reasonably confident he would make the cut. Then a double-bogey on 15 and bogey on 16 put him 3-over for the first time. A rare birdie on 17, and he had a chance to make the cut with a birdie on 18. His drive on 18 was terrible, into a bush down the right, with no option but to go out sideways. Needing to hole his approach from 150 to make the cut, he put it in a greenside bunker. 3 shots later and he ended up missing the cut by two. I guess he was in a hurry to find somewhere which had good Havana's.
Looks like Ed wins the pool on the strength of all 4 of his players making the cut. We're going to start a new pool, picking players that have made the cut. My choices, Lehman, Roberts, Harrington and Nicklaus.
Friday night, John and I headed over to Lytham to go to the Golfline-UK reception. It was suppose to be in a pub called the Royal across the street from the Lytham train station. We couldn't find the pub anywhere in the area. We asked a local and they said a pub used to be called the Royal 5 years ago but was now called the Ship and Royal. When we went over there, it didn't seem to have anything going on besides a regular pub crowd. John and I stuck around for a pint or two, but gave up hope around 9:30.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Dan King
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