WHOEVER said staging the Scottish Open immediately before the Open was a good idea obviously never consulted with the increasingly crabbit golf writers.
Yes, it’s all right for those pampered pros who float serenely from one event to the next, with their managers and minions all pandering to each idle whim while nodding their heads in utter subservience and flapping about to every barked order like a marionette being tested by Mr Geppetto.
For the hard-pressed scribblers, meanwhile, we just about have time to swab our necks and oxters with a sock doused in the dish water before wheezing towards the check-in desk of the next media centre looking like someone who has just spent an afternoon tilling a field.
Read more: Poster boy Tommy Fleetwood embracing local support as he prepares for Open tilt
So, here we are at Royal Birkdale, continuing to preview an Open we spent most of last week previewing even though we were trying to preview the Scottish Open which we now don’t have time to review because we’re too busy previewing the ruddy Open.
It’s a fevered, fraught old world. Back in 1954, when Royal Birkdale first staged golf’s most cherished major, it was probably all very different.
The scribes could turn up the day before, have a meandering reconnaissance around the links and gently mull over the wind direction, barometric tendency and levels of chutney in the clubhouse sandwiches.
The year has fairly hurtled by since Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson conjured a shoot-out for the ages at Royal Troon and exhibited a level of golfing prowess and competitive zeal that remains etched in the mind as if it had been seared on with a red-hot branding iron.
Read more: Poster boy Tommy Fleetwood embracing local support as he prepares for Open tilt
That duelling duo finished so far ahead of the rest, there are rumours that third-place JB Holmes is still putting out on Troon’s 18th as we speak.
The sight of two inspired combatants in their 40s going head-to-head was particularly enchanting. In an era of rising stars, heirs to the throne and young pretenders, golf continues its youthful, vibrant transformation; but Troon was a reminder of the timeless qualities of this Royal & Ancient game.
Okay, so Stenson and Mickelson were hardly craggy geriatrics, but the Open still remains a happy hunting ground for those who have been around the block a bit.
You only need to peer back at the recent records to find evidence of that. In the last decade, only two players under the age of 30 have got their hands wrapped around the Claret Jug.
Rory McIlroy was 25 when he won at Hoylake in 2014 while Louis Oosthuizen was 27 when he conquered in 2010. In that time, the likes of Mickelson (43), Ernie Els (42) and Darren Clarke (43) have struck Open blows for the elder statesmen.
Read more: Poster boy Tommy Fleetwood embracing local support as he prepares for Open tilt
The US Open, by comparison, may have become a 20-somethings playground in recent years – Brooks Koepka’s win at Erin Hills last month saw him become the sixth player in his 20s to land the title in the last nine years – but the Open remains a theatre where craft, cunning, patience and wily experience often prospers.
The very nature of the links game, with its vagaries, unpredictability, fluctuating fortunes and occasional bamboozling absurdities tends to test those aforementioned attributes.
In this crash, bang, wallop era, where manipulation and invention can be sacrificed on the altar of distance, the theories of yore still stand firm: “One of the things that you learn is that old saying, ‘Swing with ease into the breeze’,” says Tom Watson, who came within a par-putt of playing the ultimate generation game as a 59-year-old in the 2009 Open at Turnberry.
Watson’s heroics came just a year after another golden oldie, Greg Norman, had led going into the final round of the 2008 Open at Birkdale.
The winner that year, of course, was Padraig Harrington, who was a few weeks short of turning 37. The previous champion at Birkdale was the 41-year-old Mark O’Meara.
Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson (okay, so he is 33) may be hogging all the limelight ahead of the 146th Open but, in the game’s oldest major, don’t bet against those older campaigners getting one over old man par.
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