The Open 2011: 'Sometimes bounces blow you away and sometimes they don't'

Published on Saturday 9 July 2011 22:42

IN THE locker room at the Open this week you will find a love of links golf, a near emotional attachment to the greatest courses by the sea. Ask them about St Andrews, Muirfield and Birkdale; Turnberry, Carnoustie and Lytham, and the players will coo like birds. Ask about this week's venue at Royal St George's and if they were honest, the reaction would be different.

Where, though, does Royal St George's rank in this pantheon? The Associated Press put that very question to Ben Curtis, below, the Cinderella story of 2003, the last time the Open was held on the Kent coast. Curtis could have been forgiven if he was compromised by the great thing that happened to him at St George's. But, when asked, he didn't rank Sandwich first, second or even third among the seven courses he has played on the Open rota. He put it fifth. Not exactly the endorsement of the century from one of its own champions.

St George's is not cherished among Open venues. Adam Scott has called it "a bit fiddly". Justin Leonard says it's "a little nutty". Somebody once said it was "the world's largest pinball machine", given all the humps and bumps on the fairway, more pronounced here than anywhere else. "You could literally hit it down the middle of the fairway, and the guy you're playing with could hit it right in the junk," David Duval said recently. "You get down there and there's one ball in the fairway, and it's not yours."

Such is life at St George's. The bounces – you win some, you lose some. "I was talking about the bounces with my caddie, saying you can hit the best looking shot in the world and it ends up in a hole out there," said Graeme McDowell. "It depends which side of the mound you catch, you can bounce left, right, short, long but that's the beauty of links golf. Sometimes those bounces blow you away and sometimes they don't."

The difference between now and 2003 is that when balls are kicking right and left off the mounds they're not going dead in the vicious rough of eight years ago. The long stuff has gone and it'll be a better Open for all that, but still a mystery none the less.

In a Tiger-free zone, Rory McIlroy is favourite, but this is a championship that in the last two years has been won by Louis Oosthuizen, who wasn't mapped beforehand and who missed the cut in the tournament prior to his runaway triumph at St Andrews, and by Stewart Cink, who was playing poorly in 2009 and who also missed the cut in his last event before winning in Turnberry.

Sometimes it pays to ignore the obvious, not that many punters are doing so. McIlroy and Lee Westwood carry the hopes, and the cash, of the gamblers, their manager, Chubby Chandler having already tipped the Englishman over the Northern Irishman in Scotland on Sunday last week. An interesting contribution to the debate, that.

And here's another, Retief Goosen. His form is improving – a third and a second last month and going well at Castle Stuart – and an Open specialist, sixth last year, fifth the year before, eight top-tens in his 14 Opens, a record that makes his odds of 50-1 look generous. For Goosen – for everybody – it's all on a wing and a prayer and a bounce of the ball.