We’re in the heart of the summer in Lake County. I guess they can say the same thing about mid-July in Scotland, and yet for those fans of the game who have watched the first two rounds of the 144th version of the Open Golf Championship at the Old Course at St. Andrews, it seems more like a blustery set of April days at Bodega Harbour or Sea Ranch.
The first two rounds of the British Open are in the record books and we certainly got to see the variances of links golf. Scotland is located in the northern portion of Great Britain. It’s exposed to the wildness of the Atlantic Ocean on its western, northern and eastern coasts. As the Scots have been known to state, there are days when you can experience all four seasons during the course of an 18-hole round of golf.
There have been times when the weather at the Old Course has been benign and the results during British Open week have approximated life on the PGA Tour at Palm Springs or Phoenix. Nick Faldo won the 1990 Open Championship at St. Andrews with an aggregate score of 18-under-par. Ten years later Tiger Woods did one better with a 19-under-par total. On both occasions it was unseasonably warm, the wind was nothing more than a light breeze, and as the Scots might say, there was nary a drop of rain to be felt. It was almost one of those kinds of days during Thursday’s opening round play as red numbers adorned the leader board at St. Andrews. And then there was Friday.
Yet because of its proximity to the ocean, four days of beautiful weather on the eastern coast of Scotland is indeed a rarity, as demonstrated by Friday’s intense winds and rain. The same scenario played out in 2010 when golfers had a pleasant Thursday followed by a Friday of heavy winds. How heavy were the winds? Well, they had to cancel play for a few hours during afternoon play because the golf ball was getting blown off the greens or from the heart of the fairway to the heart of the rough. Case in point were four golfers from the British Isles who fell off the leader board during those 2010 gusts. Rory McIlroy shot an 80 after leading the tournament with a first-round 63. Robert Rock shot 78 after a Thursday 68, Bradley Dredge opened with a 66 and came back with a 76, and Ross Fisher shot a 77 in the winds after having carded a 68 the day before. Yet because he played late on Thursday and early on Friday, eventual champion Louie Oosthuizen followed up his first-round 65 with a 67 on Friday before the winds arrived and blew Rory and the others off the leader board. The same sort of thing happened to Tiger Woods at the 2002 Open at Muirfield. He got caught in the Saturday afternoon squall and suffered through intense rain. His four-day scorecard for that Open Championship read 70-68-81-65.
I played the Old Course almost 30 years ago and enjoyed one of those beautiful Chamber of Commerce days. Granted we played from the member’s tees and not the championship tees (they were closed to the general public) and I was able to shoot a most memorable 77. A couple of evenings later I went off around 6 p.m. on my own and the weather turned after about three holes. I ended up playing the first four holes and then cut across to the back nine and played the final four inward holes. I’m not sure that I broke 50 for those eight holes and I think I lost half a dozen golf balls. Lucky for the contestants at the 2015 Open Championship, it appears as if Friday’s weather will be the worst of it. That’s what links golf is all about.
Meanwhile, not everyone can get into the Open Championship because of the international flavor of the field. Success on the Australian, Asian, and Sunshine tours will get you an invite to the Open. Those PGA Tour regulars who are not playing at the Old Course this week are instead teeing it up in Alabama at the Barbasol Championship. The Barbasol is being contested at the Grand National Lakes Course on the Robert Trent Jones Trail. I played Grand National in 1999 and again this past February on a golfing vacation with my son Nick. It is as far removed from St. Andrews as one can get, and yet there’s money to be made, Fed Ex Cup points to be earned, and the winner gets into the 2016 Masters as well as finds himself exempt on the PGA Tour through 2017.
The field at the Barbasol has four components. There are golfers in the field such as Trevor Immelman, Shaun Micheel and David Toms, all past champions of major events who are no longer residing in the upper echelons of professional golf. There are also linksters who have had past moments of glory but are now struggling to maintain their status on the PGA Tour. Some of the members of this group include Ricky Barnes, Charles Howell III, Scott McCarron and Aaron Baddeley, among others. Senior golfers such as Duffy Waldorf and Tommy Armour III are in the field as the Champions Tour is off this week. The Senior British Open tees it up next week at Sunningdale in Berkshire, England. The field also includes all those up-and-comers such as Sam Saunders and Maverick McNealy who are trying to make that initial impact in the world of pro golf. Saunders is the grandson of Arnold Palmer and McNealy is a top college golfer.
There is very little to compare the 144th running of the British Open at the home of golf with the inaugural version of the Barbasol Classic on a Robert Trent Jones course in Alabama. Yet for the winners of these events on Sunday, it will be a career-defining moment.
Even farther removed from St. Andrews and Alabama is the junior golf scene in Lake County. We are less than three weeks removed from the county’s two junior golf tournaments for boys and girls from the ages of 10-17. The Buckingham Summer Junior will be contested on Aug. 3 while the Lake County Junior will be held the following morning at Adams Springs on Cobb Mountain. Matt Wotherspoon is the defending champion of both events and the 15-year-old All-Conference golfer from Kelseyville High School will be attempting to add a second Buckingham Junior and a third Lake County Junior to his golfing resume. Sophie Sells won the girls’ title in both events last summer but has since turned 18 and is heading off to the golf team at Mendocino College. She is no longer eligible for the junior events.
Entry forms for both junior tournaments are available at local golf courses. You can contact the Buckingham pro shop at 279-4863 and the Adams Springs pro shop at 928-9992 for more information.
