The British Open or commonly referred to as The Open is coming up this weekend. This major isn’t as popular as the first two simply because I don’t get into it as much. Since it’s played over in Europe its played very early in the morning here which means we will know the winner of The Open by 11am Sunday morning. Another reason I can’t really get into it and may be the same for some Americans is that American golfers tend not to play well in the British Open, except Tiger most the time.
One of the major factors for this is European courses are links style courses. For those of you who don’t know what that means let me inform you. Links style courses involve little to no trees and very little water. The course is mostly wide open and has very long grass, like the grass you would see in a wet lands area, along each hole. If a player gets stuck in this grass it will be a hard time finding their ball. The British Open is almost always accompanied by unfavorable weather. Do to the wide open course wind speed is high and always cloudy, rainy, and cold. Due to these conditions European players generally will outplay American players.
Last year’s British Open had a memorable story line to it with Greg “Shark” Norman coming in 2nd place. He played well all weekend but fell short to eventual winner Padraig Harrington. Norman was trying to win his first major since 1997 and it would have been awesome if he could pull it off but Harrington proved to be too much. Harrington won back-to-back British Opens Championships beating none other than Sergio Garcia in a playoff (Sergio missed a 5 footer to win that year).
For this year’s tournament the winner can be anyone, it’s pretty up in the air if you ask me. A few names you should look for is Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk, Tiger Woods, and Northwestern grad Donald Lucas. Phil Mickelson is staying at home this year to take care of his wife. Tiger can easily be considered to be the favorite but he hasn’t won many British Opens. Which leads me to my pick to win and that golfer is Harrington. Harrington hasn’t played well recently but playing on European soil should help. If he doesn’t win then I think a European will win it, except for Sergio. Enjoy the weekend.
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For some reason I find the whole links-style course vs. 'american-style' course thing to be very interesting. A 'links' course sounds pretty damned boring! No water hazards? No gators to chomp your hand off? What kind of excitement could there be?
ReplyDeleteUnrelated note- have you heard about the new course at French Lick? 700 yards longer than Bethpage Black played at the US Open this year! $360 greens fee. Supposedly it's ridiculously awesome.
A links course is very boring but makes you be incredibly accurate that day due to that wetlands grass on the course. I haven't heard of this new course sounds awsome to play one time, the greens fee is a little ridiculous though.
ReplyDelete360, that's chump change. I don't mind links style course, but I need variety. So if they play links style 1 year, play another style the next. That's what I think
ReplyDeleteTom Watson was the obvious pick to win this thing. Duh. (heh)
ReplyDelete