Open Championship Saturday Reads

For all of Tiger's brilliance, it is fascinating that his competition no longer seems to be scared of him (well, we'll see how they play this weekend).

Scott Michaux, writing in the Augusta Chronicle:

Just because Woods is the game's consummate closer doesn't mean the rest of the field thinks he's invincible - especially with five more of the world's top-10 ranked players among the top 10 on the leaderboard.

"It's doable," Chris DiMarco said.

"He's not fool-proof," Adam Scott said.

"I don't think anyone is scared of him," Geoff Ogilvy said.

Golf Digest's Mark Soltau on Tiger's opening 36 holes.

Here's how he's done it: After hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 12 of 18 greens Thursday, Woods hit 12 of 14 fairways and 16 of 18 greens Friday. Combined, that's 82.1 percent and 77.8 percent, respectively.

He's also been hot with his putter, especially inside 10 feet. He took 27 putts Thursday and 28 Friday, canning a 60-footer at the par-4 eighth hole to ignite his second round. At the par-4 14th, Woods holed out a 4-iron from the fairway from 205 yards for eagle, helping him to a back nine of 5-under 32.

Will the wind tempt him to hit a few more drivers over the weekend, maybe even flog a bit like he did on 16 Thursday? Should be fun to watch.

John Huggan focuses on Tiger's pursuers while the Telegraph's Martin Johnson devotes Saturday's column to Tiger and Nick Faldo:

He could also, it's fairly safe to assume, have done without Nick suddenly becoming talkative on a golf course, and as the pair of them set off down the opening hole, Faldo was yakking away to him like a man just released from a 10-year stretch in solitary confinement. This continued down the second, but when Woods started par-par to Faldo's birdie-birdie, he made sure - with the old untied shoelace ploy - that Nick could spend the rest of the hole, and indeed the round, talking to himself.

It's ironic that Faldo, who won six majors with less conversation than a Trappist monk, should suddenly become garrulous on a golf course, even if he was trying to mend a few bridges.

And finally, Mike Clayton looks at the success of Australian players this year over at GolfObserver.com.

Friday Clampett

I'd love to meet the TNT exec that said, "let's have Terry Gannon and Bobby Clampett on for extended on camera conversation and knock Alliss down to a 30 minute cameo."

Stellar stuff. Remember the old days when they'd turn it over to the BBC for an hour?

Anyway, more wisdom from TNT's color man, courtesy of their PR department...yes, they actually send this stuff out:

Clampett on Tiger Woods’ 205 yard eagle shot on the 14th hole:  “I think the Claret Jug just fell off of the table.”

Clampett on Tiger’s low round:  “It almost deflates you emotionally when you see a score posted like that.  For most of the players, it is so far out of reach that they don’t conceivably think that they can even get near that at that point.  They may even get a hot round going but it doesn’t feel like a hot round because you are so far behind.  He’s the best front runner in the history of the game.”

Clampett on Phil Mickelson’s method to improve his swing:  “What Phil’s doing there, I think we can all take a lesson from.  When you lose your swing a little bit the best way to get back into it is to go back and start doing some drills.  Start feeling what you’re working on and get it so engrained in your mind and in your feel that it becomes second nature when you get over the ball.  (Phil) is taking a lot of practice swings on the tee.”

Clampett on Phil Mickelson having to overcome an eight-stroke deficit to take the lead:  “It’s demoralizing for guys like Mickelson because he knows he’s got to play such a great round of golf to get back into contention.  If he’s not right on top of his game like he is today then it’s just demoralizing.”

Clampett on the preparation done by Phil Mickelson for major tournaments:  “When (Mickelson) has a bad major, people start saying that he over-prepared and he tried too hard.   I don’t believe there is such a thing as over-preparation.  He’s changed his preparation and started preparing harder for (majors), which has given him an edge the last two years.”

Clampett on the scores of 65 posted by Tiger Woods and Ernie Els:  “For Tiger (Woods) to go out early in the morning and post (a 65) and then Ernie to have to come out in the afternoon to face (Tiger’s score) head-on and say ‘that’s what I have to go after’ and do it, that’s a great confidence booster for Ernie.”

Faldo's Post Opening 36 Q&A...

Yields all sorts of fun stuff.

Q. Nick, you haven't been playing much, you've done a lot of TV work, why would you put yourself under this pressure to come here and try and play on a golf course so difficult?

NICK FALDO: I wasn't intending to put myself under that much pressure. I was hoping to get a nice quiet draw, maybe with Mr. Watson or maybe Mr. Ballesteros. Maybe that's what the crowd would have liked. Instead I get Tiger and get thrown into the deep end.

And I only had a week's practice and that was a tough experience. I didn't enjoy that, because you're playing under pressure and you're just not prepared for it. I used to beat balls and hit millions of balls to boost my confidence. I've only hit hundreds in the last week. Obviously my game is very rusty and that was hard work so I don't think I'll do that again to myself. If I'm going to play again I need a good couple of weeks practice and I've got to get some confidence in my putting before I get back on the golf course again.

Q. Are you going to put your TV hat on now and see if anybody can beat Tiger this weekend?

NICK FALDO: Not really. He's got a great game plan, playing so many irons. If he keeps it totally in play and doesn't scare himself missing a fairway or getting a bad lie then anything can happen. But his touch is so good, his competitive ability is the best, I would predict that if the weather stays decent, he will get to 20 under and good luck. How are they going to beat him with that score?

I've only had a week's practice and then I was thrown in with Tiger and that's not what I was looking for this week. Watson and Ballesteros would have been a good draw, that's maybe what the crowd were looking for, 11 Open Championships between us. But I didn't get that, I was thrown in the deep end and I've only done a little work on my game and I need to practice more and I need to get a putting stroke if I'm going to play again. So I'm not too keen on venturing onto the golf course for a while.

But it's great to be at close quarters with Tiger. I can see what's going on. I should be able to tell ABC viewers up close and personal this weekend.

Q. You didn't like what was written about you and Tiger before the tournament?

NICK FALDO: No, it was the usual, complete mountain out of a molehill. Fortunately I don't read it, which is even better tactics.

Q. Did somebody tell you about it then?

NICK FALDO: A pigeon flew past and crapped on me, and I guess that was the message. I knew something was coming.

This is very interesting...

Q. Has your opinion changed on his golf swing and some of the technical aspects of his game?

NICK FALDO: There are some shots actually that he is uncomfortable on. I can see some technical things in his swing, yeah. But he gets by because he is so physically strong and so mentally determined and such a great competitor that, yeah, there are some technical things in his swing that if he were honest he'd say he'd love to iron out.

He's got a good plan. If he can keep hitting those irons, coming from the fairway he'll be just short of impossible to beat.

Q. Another player thought he said the swing changes he was working on with Hank were designed to help him control the trajectory, especially on his irons, and if you watch him he's clearly doing that and is able to hit more and varied shots?

NICK FALDO: The thing now is that the ball doesn't curve as much and you have to work on the swing factor. The guys will develop different follow throughs to develop different spins and that's what you need. Some shots it will stop and some that will run. You have to do that in your swing to make that happen. That obviously affects ball flight as well.

Q. Does the fact that Tiger has only hit one driver in two rounds sort of take something away from the first two days?

NICK FALDO: It doesn't sound great in the stats, does it? Obviously he's long, that does help. And even yesterday's drive on 16 was the wrong club. He should have hit 3 wood. It should have been 0 0 for two days. It just shows you it's all down to the burnt golf course. It is short.

Watson On Links Golf

Someone is obviously working on a story about links golf. Tom Watson after finishing 2-under for the first 36:

Q. Chris DiMarco was talking about the state of the course, and compared to the courses in the U.S., the courses in the U.S. are so soft; you can hit a driver and no way it's going to stop. And hit a wedge over here, you can't hit a driver?

TOM WATSON: You have to think on this golf course. You have to think where you want to put the ball. And there are certain holes where length really is important, length that I don't have. But there is a game plan that everybody has to have, that everybody uses on this golf course. The number one game plan, stay out of the bunkers.

Q. Do you think courses like this are the way to tackle the greater length that players are getting at?

TOM WATSON: Well, I think so, I do. I think to a degree. But if you're a little bit off on a golf course like this, it can eat you for lunch. You don't recover from the fairway bunkers. That's the leveler in this golf course, the bunkers.

Q. Chris was saying it's the first time in a long time he can remember hitting 3 wood off the tee. Normally on the PGA Tour he hits driver 14 times out.

TOM WATSON: This is different golf. This is a hard, firm golf course. That's the way The R&A would like it to be. When they had the greens like they had on Monday, we were really seeing some funny scores out there. They were tough on Monday. They decided to soften those greens up a little bit.

Q. Did the rain hurt you at all?

TOM WATSON: No.

DiMarco On Links Golf

After his impressive opening 36:

Q. In an ideal hypothetical annual schedule for you golfers, what would the ratio of these kind of courses to typical American courses be to your schedule?

CHRIS DiMARCO: I'd like to see more of these in the States, I really would. It's so much fun to play. I know TPC was meant to be played like this course, hard and fast, the ball running into the pine straw and into the trees and into some of those moguls they have out there, instead of the rough being seven inches and you just chop it out. Tampa plays a lot like that. Tampa is a great course, one of the favorites of all the players because of that. It's such an equalizer, because it doesn't favor the bombers if the fairways are hard and fast, because it makes the ball run into the trouble.

And when we're playing courses where the ball is hitting and literally your ball mark is a foot from your ball, it makes the fairways that much wider. And Vijay said it last year or year and a half ago, whatever, he said he has to hit it as far as he can on every hole because then he can hit a wedge on the green from the rough.

Until we do something about it, it's not going to make any difference. Until you have the balls go 20 yards off line, they might not hit drivers. For me, I was just telling Geoff today, Ogilvy, I said, it seems like it's been a long time since I ever hit a 3 wood off a par 4 tee. I feel like I hit 14 drivers, every round of golf we play, every course we play, because it seems every course we play it's 300 yards longer and the fairways are soft. And when you've got six par 4s over 470 with no roll, you have to hit driver.

Hoylake Vindicated After 36...

...or, have the those who labeled it outdated been vindicated by the low scoring?

It appears that Hoylake is a great test of golf judging by the number of top players on the leaderboard. More importantly, based on the comments of players, it is a great test of the mind. (The firm conditions certainly help in that regard.)

It will be interesting to see if the course and this Open Championship are written off because of the low scoring, or embraced because it has produced such an impressive leaderboard and interesting, thought-provoking play. 

Your thoughts? 

Guardian Live Blog

If you aren't able to follow televised coverage, The Guardian offers a live blog of the Open Championship. Today it's hosted by Scott Murray.

Open Championship Friday Reads

Lawrence Donegan with his Guardian game story, reminds us of Greg Owen's 2005 mix-up:

Alongside Woods on five under was Greg Owen, who 12 months ago characterised the R&A's leadership as a bunch of port-drinking fuddy-duddies after they denied him a spot in the 2005 Open on an entry-form technicality. He was more circumspect yesterday, presumably with one eye on dinner invitations to St Andrews should he play well enough to win. "The R&A run this tournament, it's their tournament and what they say goes," he said.

Richard Williams on the Marty Hackle fashion shows breaking out amongst the players.

The trouser thing is now out of control. In the members' car park at Royal Liverpool yesterday morning, one competitor was showing off his new flares to a colleague: two shades of lichen in a Prince of Wales check, an inverted pleat running up the outside seam of each leg and opening to show a contrasting taupe panel. On the practice green in front of the red-brick clubhouse, another player was modelling a pair of slacks quartered in light and dark blue, like a Boat Race spectator trying to support both sides at once. And all that was before there had been so much as a glimpse of Ian Poulter.

Martin Johnson writes about Monty's rabbit ears.

It was as tense a moment as there has ever been in an Open Championship. One of those occasions where you simply can't bear to look. Colin Montgomerie was poised to launch his tee shot down the par-four third, and away in the distance came the sound of music. It was a nice tune, the Blue Danube to be precise, but when it's coming from a mobile phone while Monty is playing, you tend to wonder whether the owner's next aquaintance with Johann Strauss will be on hospital radio.

Not this time though. Monty swished one down the middle as though he hadn't heard a thing, but then again that's always been the way. He was one under par at the time, having birdied his first hole of the championship, and with Monty the key is in the scoreboard. Approach him after a double bogey and the coroner will lean less towards a verdict of misadventure as suicide.

And...

By the 13th hole, when he had slipped to two over par, the number of people he had required to either keep quiet or make themselves invisible included eight marshals (one of them twice), four spectators, and two BBC buggy drivers. There was one moment when he backed off, and waved his hand at a source of agitation so far away that it could only have been aimed at a lollipop lady in Hoylake High Street.

They talk about golfers being "in the zone", but Monty is quite the opposite after a bogey has just been posted. It was Joyce Wethered, at Sherringham, who holed a crucial putt when a steam engine hurtled by, and when asked afterwards whether she'd considered waiting until peace and quiet had been resumed, replied, "what train?"

Paul Kelso compiles Guardian notes on a lousy change at Birkdale (can the Brits ever find an architect who knows what he's doing!!?!?) and on Barker Davis's Liverpool rant.

Meanwhile, Alan Shipnuck finds Hoylake boring and compares its lack of memorability to Firestone.

Darren Clarke is going to be taking a break for the foreseeable future to be with his ailing wife.

If you didn't see the Golf Channel feature, Doug Ferguson offers a nice print version of Jarrod Lyle's story and the help he got from Robert Allenby.

And finally, The Scotsman's Glenn Gibbons on the Faldo-Woods pairing: 

Like an estranged couple still sharing a one-room flat, Tiger Woods and Nick Faldo yesterday found a way of achieving a semblance of peaceful co-existence.

Even so, the vast acreage of the Royal Liverpool links was not expansive enough to prevent the awkwardness and general discomfort of being in each other's company. This was tolerance enforced by circumstances, as opposed to reconciliation.

Tiger After Round 1

On the 18th hole eagle...

TIGER WOODS: The eagle? I hit 2 iron off the tee. I hit a 4 iron into the green and I had a putt, and as I said earlier, I don't know who it was, but someone made that same putt earlier this morning. I was watching it on the telecast. It doesn't break at the end, it holds its line. I played it on the right edge. I hit it and it held its line all the way here. Normally I would have given that hole away if I hadn't seen that putt earlier in the morning.

And on the one hole he used driver on (which he hit into the adjoining fairway):

Q. Did you drive on any hole besides 16?

TIGER WOODS: No. And I really wasn't supposed to do that, either. I was trying to the entire week has been 2 iron, 3 wood off that tee. But with the wind being down today, I could fly the bunkers. It felt like it took the bunkers completely out of play, and it did.

Ernie After Round 1

Q. Given the benign conditions, the fact that there's 20,000 people at 4 under and no one has shot a huge number, what about this course has allowed that and can we expect that to continue on through the week?

ERNIE ELS: First of all, it's a major championship and it's the first round of the major championship and you definitely don't want to shoot yourself out of it the first day. So you're not taking as many chances on the first day. You basically are trying to play a solid round of golf. That's what I try to do, anyways. And you really try to keep big numbers off the card.

I think as the week goes on we'll see how the golf course progresses. If it stays soft there will be a couple of 64's out there. There's enough par 5s where you can score. We're not even halfway through the day and there's already good scoring.

But it's not the hardest course we've ever played because of the weather, but there's enough trouble out there where it makes you really think on every hole.

And God knows, that's not nearly as important as keeping the scoring from getting too low! 

Ringo Schmingo

TNT actually send the following quotes out as part of a press release highlighting the first round Open Championship commentary, but neglected to include Bobby Clampett's declaration that John Lennon hated golf (which he corrected later). Clampett confused Ringo and Lennon. These things happen when you are making it up as you go!

Before we relive his most captivating quotes, here are my favorite Clampett redundancies from round 1:

dry hardpan fairway
big oversized driver
past history

Nice! And from TNT:

Clampett on Mike Weir: “Mike’s been licking his chops this week, because he saw the course set-up playing hard and fast, and that plays right into his game.”

Clampett on Hoylake: “I would not be surprised to see the scores this bunched throughout the whole championship. It’s a course that lends itself to bunching.”

Clampett on the wide open field this year at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England: “I believe there is a better than 50-50 chance of a player out of the top 50 winning here. The reason for that is it’s a golf course that doesn’t necessarily favor the longer hitter. The guys who are the short, accurate strikers have equally as much a chance to win here as one of the bombers.”

Clampett on Faldo/Woods: “There is no bad blood here, there just isn’t, and regardless of what the media is trying to build up these guys have no problem with one another. Tiger gets that (criticism) from everybody. All of us that are in the TV business have an opinion on what he is doing. We express our opinion and he respects that we have an opinion.
 

Ogilvy Hole By Hole

Geoff Ogilvy offers a hole by hole take on Hoylake in The Guardian.

Waiting For Tiger

SI.com's British Open blog (hosted by Alan Shipnuck) has this AP photo of Tiger making Faldo wait.

Clampett Blues

We're not even 50 minutes into the telecast here on the west coast and already Bobby Clampett is in rare form.

In the opening he declared that there was a 50-50 chance that someone outside the top 50 in the world ranking would win. On a Mike Weir approach to 18 that was 15 yards right of the ideal line he declared that the ball finding the bunker was "unlucky."

On an Ernie Els putt he asked us to note the brown patch where the putt would roll faster (and declared that the less green the greens are, the faster they are).

And of course, the usual redundancies (a variety of different shots, etc...).

Thankfully, Mike Tirico and Ian Baker-Finch are talking a lot.  

Open Championship Thursday Reads

I'll spare you the stories about asking people to be careful with their cigarettes.

Lawrence Donegan previews play with this:

Ten days of baking heat have reduced Royal Liverpool's fairways to parched wastelands and its rough to a wispy irrelevance. But they have also transported the game back to its roots. Gone is the mind-numbing repetitiveness of modern golf, where a premium is placed on bombing the ball as far as possible off the tee and spinning it hard on the green with a wedge from 100 yards. In its place is the necessity for subtlety: the strategically placed long iron off the tee and ingenious bump-and-run from 30 yards short of the green.

And he reports that our lovebirds have made up. Well, not really by the sounds of this:

Faldo made the first move, approaching the world No1 on Royal Liverpool's practice range, but he was forced to wait a couple of minutes while Woods continued to hit shots.

Eventually, he deigned to acknowledge the Englishman's presence, shook his hand and engaged in some brief small talk before returning to the business at hand.

Perhaps Tiger didn't want to be interrupted because he was deep in thought, pondering a commentary...yes, that's right, he pens a guest piece in the Telegraph and doesn't say much. But hey, it's something.

Peter Kessler reviews Bobby Jones' 1930 win at Hoylake, which hasn't been talked about much this week.

Golf Gazette polled writers and Tiger was the overwhelming choice.

The Scotsman's Mark Garrod says the bookies are sweating a Tiger Woods win, with two £50,000 bets placed yesterday. There are plenty of other fun anecdotes in this piece.

Alan Pattullo provides an entertaining look at John Daly's performance at the Cavern Club. How far the mighty have fallen. I'm referring to the legendary Cavern Club, of course.

And this wire service story reports that the PGA Tour loaned Trevor Immelman its jet for a return trip to the U.S. to be with his wife and child.

Immelman was trying to catch a flight home, while first alternate Andrew Buckle of Australia was trying to get to Liverpool as soon as possible with the tournament beginning Thursday.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said Tuesday night that Immelman would be flying on the tour's corporate jet back to Florida, which would arrive early Wednesday morning. Finchem said he understood Immelman's wife had already given birth, although he didn't know any other details.

Immelman has played in four British Opens, tying for 15th a year ago at St. Andrews.

Asked if Immelman would have to help pay for fuel, Finchem quipped, "He's already paying for it; he's missing the British Open."