11:01AM
OpenGolf: Art Spander on The Open
11:01 AM
By Art Spander
Special to OpenGolf.com/R & A Championships Limited
Forty years ago I was caught under the spell, hooked by the magic of an event so old but yet so current. It was 1968, at Carnoustie, the grayness and gloom, my first Open, and gloriously not my last.
Americans can be chauvinistic, can look across the Atlantic and wonder why the Brits take their beer cool rather than cold or why a broken machine can’t be fixed in hours instead of days, but we remain enthralled with both The Open and Wimbledon, the best of Britain.
Tennis on grass courts, so special; golf on linksland, so different. The Open — and now, led by the perception of Tiger Woods who began calling it that, like the locals — is as much circus as sport, a mid-summer party.
“Aye, laddie,’’ asked the man at pub. “You here for the golf?’’ The Golf. What a beautiful way to describe a competition which started in the middle of the 19th Century. The Golf. The Open.
We all know the stories of American pros coming to the Open, Sam Snead the first time at St. Andrews describing the course as turnip patch. Where were the sculptured fairways lined by trees? But eventually they understood the charm and frustration of links golf.
Walter Hagen would come back. Arnold Palmer would come back. Jack Nicklaus would come back. Tiger has come back.
Open galleries are knowledgeable and proud. They want players to be challenged, whether by a bunker or by the wind, but no less they want players to succeed. A great shot brings both excitement and an ovation generated from history.
Always there is a reference. The plaque to Arnie on what now is the 16th at Royal Birkdale. The photo of Gary Player against the wall at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Remember when Nicklaus hurled his putter in triumph at St. Andrews in 1970? As we go forward, time goes into reverse.
The game is international now, a world tour if you will, full of Brits and Aussies, Yankees and Swedes, South Africans and Japanese. They flit from continent to continent. But in July the best invariably are in the UK, at Hoylake or Birkdale or this year Turnberry.
Back home, back in the US of A, people will be up early — there’s a five-hour time change to New York, eight to California — and watching on television. Watching and wishing they could be here, walking through the tented village, hoisting a glass of lager and tramping along the dunes.
The Open has to be experienced as well as viewed, has to be put in context. “You going to the British Open, again?’’ a friend asked at the start of June. The question didn’t deserve an answer.
A few years back, another journalist, more envious than respectful, told me, “You’d swim to get to the British Open.’’ An exaggeration. But not much of one.
The Open is rain off the sea and a breeze in your face. The Open is a ball flying into the whin and grasses and fans pointing to where they thought it ought to be, but as was the case with Tiger the first shot in 2003 at Royal St. George’s, is not there at all.
The Open is a week of surprises, not all of them delightful. Back in 1970, at St. Andrews, the sun was shining and the sky blue. The warning was not to walk without an umbrella, but I ignored the advice. Drenched, I wandered back to the press tent. At the Open, there are lessons for us all.
Art Spander is a longtime sports and golf columnist from the San Francisco Bay Area, now with the San Francisco Examiner. He recently received the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in journalism, and previously was a winner of the McCann Award, gaining a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has won six first-place awards in Golf Writers Association of America writing competition. He has written for the Daily Telegraph and (Glasgow) Sunday Herald, and is attending his 137th major championship.
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http://www.opengolf.com/ChampionshipGolf/TheOpenChampionship/News.aspx?story=Art+Spander+on+The+Open
© Copyright R&A Championships Limited. All rights reserved.
Special to OpenGolf.com/R & A Championships Limited
Forty years ago I was caught under the spell, hooked by the magic of an event so old but yet so current. It was 1968, at Carnoustie, the grayness and gloom, my first Open, and gloriously not my last.
Americans can be chauvinistic, can look across the Atlantic and wonder why the Brits take their beer cool rather than cold or why a broken machine can’t be fixed in hours instead of days, but we remain enthralled with both The Open and Wimbledon, the best of Britain.
Tennis on grass courts, so special; golf on linksland, so different. The Open — and now, led by the perception of Tiger Woods who began calling it that, like the locals — is as much circus as sport, a mid-summer party.
“Aye, laddie,’’ asked the man at pub. “You here for the golf?’’ The Golf. What a beautiful way to describe a competition which started in the middle of the 19th Century. The Golf. The Open.
We all know the stories of American pros coming to the Open, Sam Snead the first time at St. Andrews describing the course as turnip patch. Where were the sculptured fairways lined by trees? But eventually they understood the charm and frustration of links golf.
Walter Hagen would come back. Arnold Palmer would come back. Jack Nicklaus would come back. Tiger has come back.
Open galleries are knowledgeable and proud. They want players to be challenged, whether by a bunker or by the wind, but no less they want players to succeed. A great shot brings both excitement and an ovation generated from history.
Always there is a reference. The plaque to Arnie on what now is the 16th at Royal Birkdale. The photo of Gary Player against the wall at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Remember when Nicklaus hurled his putter in triumph at St. Andrews in 1970? As we go forward, time goes into reverse.
The game is international now, a world tour if you will, full of Brits and Aussies, Yankees and Swedes, South Africans and Japanese. They flit from continent to continent. But in July the best invariably are in the UK, at Hoylake or Birkdale or this year Turnberry.
Back home, back in the US of A, people will be up early — there’s a five-hour time change to New York, eight to California — and watching on television. Watching and wishing they could be here, walking through the tented village, hoisting a glass of lager and tramping along the dunes.
The Open has to be experienced as well as viewed, has to be put in context. “You going to the British Open, again?’’ a friend asked at the start of June. The question didn’t deserve an answer.
A few years back, another journalist, more envious than respectful, told me, “You’d swim to get to the British Open.’’ An exaggeration. But not much of one.
The Open is rain off the sea and a breeze in your face. The Open is a ball flying into the whin and grasses and fans pointing to where they thought it ought to be, but as was the case with Tiger the first shot in 2003 at Royal St. George’s, is not there at all.
The Open is a week of surprises, not all of them delightful. Back in 1970, at St. Andrews, the sun was shining and the sky blue. The warning was not to walk without an umbrella, but I ignored the advice. Drenched, I wandered back to the press tent. At the Open, there are lessons for us all.
Art Spander is a longtime sports and golf columnist from the San Francisco Bay Area, now with the San Francisco Examiner. He recently received the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in journalism, and previously was a winner of the McCann Award, gaining a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has won six first-place awards in Golf Writers Association of America writing competition. He has written for the Daily Telegraph and (Glasgow) Sunday Herald, and is attending his 137th major championship.
- - - - - -
http://www.opengolf.com/ChampionshipGolf/TheOpenChampionship/News.aspx?story=Art+Spander+on+The+Open
© Copyright R&A Championships Limited. All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks for your wonderful depiction of links golf, Art. I had the privilege of playing at several of the Open venues over twenty years ago. Sam Snead's quote made me chuckle, as I rememebered my first impression of the Old Course at St. Andrews--a stark, cow pasture, left to the natural elements to groom and shape. Yet, it is golf at it's most basic--you are challenged to conquer meterological foes, along with our notions of what a golf course should be.