"The essential problem with the British Open is that it's always played on links courses"

Sounds to me like Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press has spent a few too many days under the hot sun studying the misunderstood genius of Warwick Hills. Or, he just needed to fill some column space.

I've made up my mind. I hate the British Open.

And don't give me this "cradle of golf" and "oldest championship" argument. I don't care. If you want antiquity, go visit pyramids.

This is golf. Or at least it's supposed to be golf. Instead, we have to watch the best golfers in the world strike balls that land and roll another 50 yards on courses so rock-hard and dried-out they make I-94 look soft and supple. And I'm getting tired of it.

I'm tired of seeing so many pot bunkers in play it makes the course look like the face of an acne-riddled teenager.

This is special:

The essential problem with the British Open is that it's always played on links courses. The U.S. Golf Association's definition of a links course is "tracts of low-lying, seaside land (that) are characteristically sandy, treeless and undulating, often with lines of dune ridges and covered by bent grass or gorse."

Basically, these courses were built on fallow ground that linked the sea to farmland. My bet is that golf was invented when two Scotsmen looked at the useless land and one said to the other, "Fancy a game of hitting a rock with a stick for four hours?" If only the other guy had said, "Nah, let's visit the pyramids," we all would have been a lot better off.