16/07/2008 11:51 AM
Before the opening tee shot of The Open Championship – this year driven by Australian Open champion Craig Parry – is fired down the first fairway at Royal Birkdale, much has been said about a couple of Americans who are not playing and the new 17th green that the normally diplomatic champion Ian Baker-Finch described as 'horrible'
Tiger Woods is the most obvious absentee from a major since Ben Hogan missed the 1949 US Masters and some have questioned whether the engraver knows how to mark an asterisk beside the name of the winner because Tiger Woods isn't in the field.
His amazing feat at Torrey Pines leads many to believe that if he can beat the best of the rest with a crippled knee he can win any time he likes.
Torrey Pines was a home game on a course he has played since he was a junior and Southern California was where he learned the game but golf on the crumpled links of Britain is a different and more unpredictable proposition and there is no mark against Sam Snead's name on the 1949 Masters trophy because a collision with a bus took Hogan from the game for a whole season.
With no excuse to miss the roll call is the hottest player on the American tour, Kenny Perry who has won three of his last five events on the American tour. Who really cares though?
He clearly doesn't and why should anyone be concerned about a man who has obviously conceded he has no chance to win?
The new and clearly controversial 17th green is a seemingly wildly contoured affair that looks nothing like the other 17 greens at Royal Birkdale and Baker-Finch simply said that 'they butchered (it)'.
The original 17th was a quite easy par five but it was followed by one of the most difficult par fours in the game and this pair of holes demanded four terrific long shots - or a couple of brilliant short ones - if they were to be played in eight shots.
The irony is that the people charged with running the game and more specifically the rules regarding equipment, also organise The Open and they are the ones driving the alterations to the best championship courses in Britain.
If they had some their job of regulating the equipment it would all be unnecessary.
Birkdale itself is the most predictable of all the Open courses. The fairways are as close to flat as one gets on a links but they are bordered by huge dunes that make for perfect viewing for spectators and the wet summer has presented course starkly in contrast to the burned brown fairways of Hoylake a couple of years ago.
The great thing about golf by the sea is that the weather dictates the look the conditions and the feel of the course. It also dictates the real par of the course (as opposed to the number on the scorecard) and the winning score. Unlike the US Open there is no distortion of the width of the course in order to achieve a pre-determined winning score.
Eighteen Australians are in the field this week which is an extraordinary number if you compare it to the paltry entry list we had in the men's singles at Wimbledon a couple of weeks ago.
Geoff Ogilvy is now the third ranked