It”s the weekend of the British Open Championship, golf”s oldest major. I always enjoy watching the Open Championship on television for a variety of reasons — some golf-oriented while others are entertainment-oriented.
The Open is contested on nine linksland courses throughout England and Scotland. I”ve been to Scotland and Ireland on two different occasions and have fond memories of playing on Open rota courses such as Turnberry, Troon and the Old Course at St. Andrews.
I”ve teed it up at Prestwick, a former British Open site, which remains the most perplexing golf course I”ve ever played. I”ve also played famed links courses such as Waterville, Ballybunion, Tralee, Galway and Lahinch.
The unique nature of links golf makes for very entertaining viewing.
There”s also a certain oddness to British Open golf — from the clipped, high-pitched accent of first-tee announcer Ivor Robson to the wandering BBC cameras that focus on pets, little kids with ice cream all over their faces and strangely dressed spectators who accidentally showed up at a golf tournament.
There can be intense winds, cold rains and smaller-than-usual flagsticks, all to be seen starting around 2 a.m. Pacific time.
Because it is contested during the heart of summer, I find I also watch more British Open preview shows on ESPN and the Golf Channel than I do during the other three major championships. For anyone who watched even a few of these prelude presentations, the talk was all about winning major championships and accumulating major titles.
If I were to believe the vast majority of the talking heads, Tiger Woods remains a prohibitive favorite to not only win this weekend at Royal Lytham & St. Annes but also a sure thing to make a charge at Jack Nicklaus” career record of 18 major championship wins.
If I”m to believe the experts, Tiger will win five more major titles over the next five years.
There”s also a contingent of talented linksters out there who have already captured at least one major title and seem to be in line to add at least one more major title to their golfing resumes.
A not-so-short list of these major winners includes Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Webb Simpson, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson, Charl Schwartzel, Keegan Bradley, Geoff Ogilvy and Lucas Glover.
Except for Mickelson, the remainder of these players are young men with many years of their golfing prime still ahead. Then again, I always thought Freddie Couples, Paul Azinger and Davis Love III would own more than one major title. The same is true for Tom Weiskopf and Lanny Wadkins.
There are a whole lot of talented golfers out there who have not won a major, and yet it seems somewhat inevitable that they will someday capture one.
This extra-long list includes Luke Donald (the world”s No. 1-ranked golfer), ball striker supreme Lee Westwood and American stalwarts Hunter Mahan, Nick Watney, Dustin Johnson, Jason Dufner, Rickie Fowler and Bill Haas.
Add to that list Australian Adam Scott, Spaniard Sergio Garcia, Englishman Justin Rose, and European Tour stars Paul Casey, Nicolas Colsaerts, Francesco Molinari, Branden Grace and Ian Poulter. I”m sure I”ve forgotten a few others.
There”s also a handful of 40-somethings who might just have enough in their tanks to capture their first major by channeling their inner Tom Kite. Last year it was Darren Clarke who came from the “over the hill” category to win the Open Championship.
This time around it could be Steve Stricker or K.J. Choi — the former a rock-solid putter while the latter is a classic ball striker. Other members of their peer group who could add another major to the mantelpiece include Jim Furyk, Ernie Els, Paul Lawrie, Retief Goosen, David Toms and Padraig Harrington.
Finally, you have to realize that sometimes a golfer who is way under the radar will have the week of his life and play well enough to take home a green jacket or Claret Jug. While it might surprise fans of the game to learn that Scott and Garcia are majorless, it is close to unfathomable when you consider that a slew of golfers like Y.E. Yang, Rich Beem, Ben Curtis, Trevor Immelman, Todd Hamilton and Shaun Micheel do own a major.
This is a good omen for a whole world of golfers such as Richie Ramsay, Ted Potter Jr., Jeev Milkha Singh and Robert Rock who”ve shown an ability to win regular tour titles on tough venues.
So, without even mentioning folks like Ryo Ishikawa, Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby and Mark Wilson, the talking heads have identified throughout the course of this week 37 golfers who are viable candidates to win a major championship.
Yet with only four majors contested each year, this means that there are a lot of golfers on these lists who will never win a major title.
The aforementioned 37 golfers equals more than nine years of major competition, and we know for a fact a lot of them won”t even be playing competitively on golf”s world stage by the time 2022 rolls around.
Yet, if Garcia or Scott or Donald never wins a major title, he will not be alone. Colin Montgomerie, the dominant player in Europe for more than a decade as well as a Ryder Cup star, is majorless.
During the Nicklaus-Arnold Palmer era of the 1960s and 1970s, Frank Beard was a top-five golfer who was the leading money winner in 1969, yet he never won a major while Charles Coody and Orville Moody did win grand slam titles during that time.
Has there ever been a more dynamic swinger of the golf club than Bert Yancey? He too is majorless.
The same can be said of George Knudson, Kenny Perry, John Cook, Bruce Litzke, Bob Murphy, Thomas Bjorn, Mark McNulty, Loren Roberts, Bruce Crampton, Bruce Devlin and perhaps the best of the non-major winning bunch, Doug Sanders.
This Sunday afternoon, one of the 156 golfers in the field at Royal Lytham & St. Annes will raise the Claret Jug as the champion golfer of the year. It could be Woods, winning his 15th major title, or it could be Scott, winning his first after many years of showing potential.
Yet for all we know, it could be Toshinori Muto, the successor to Beem, Moody and Claude Harmon, coming in under the radar.
