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Roberts: A frightening place By Jimmy Roberts Special to ESPN Golf Online July 11 10:09am ET | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Let me just say from the start that I have never been there, but if even half of what I hear about Carnoustie is anywhere near the truth, than we are in for a major golf tournament unlike any we have seen in quite some time.
"On any continent, at any time, good weather or bad, it is without question the most difficult golf course on the planet by a mile" So says my friend Tom Patri, director of instruction at Westchester Country Club, annual site of the PGA Tour's Buick Classic. He was a pretty good college player in his day, winning an NCAA Championship at Florida Southern in the early '80s. But why believe him? In the golf universe, he's near mortal. The reason is because it seems to be the prevailing opinion. Gary Player said so after he won the second of his three Opens there in 1968. Tiger Woods said so after playing there in the 1996 Scottish Open, a tournament in which Ian Woosnam's winning score was 1-over-par, the highest winning score on the European Tour in the '90s. By the numbers alone, it is a frightening place. At 7,361 yards, it is the longest course in British Open history. There are seven par-4s which measure 459 yards or greater, and the closing four holes may well be the most savage stretch of golf on the planet: 472-yard par 4; 250-yard par-3; 459-yard par-4; and 487-yard par-4. And on Nos. 17 and 18, a meandering stream called the Barry Burn comes into play Do you think a fellow standing on the 15th tee Sunday afternoon with a one stroke lead is going to be feeling pretty secure? Maybe that's the reason that in the five previous Opens Carnoustie has hosted, each time a giant of a player has emerged the winner: Tommy Armour (1931), Henry Cotton (1937), Ben Hogan (1953), Gary Player (1968) and Tom Watson (1975). This has never been the type of place where a mediocre pro has a career week and just happens to end up with the claret jug. Say what you like about Carnoustie, but understand that it seems to distill the best from a field of golfers. It's somehow appropriate that this is where Hogan chose to make his one and only British Open appearance. The course itself is so much like the man: all business. Carnoustie, they say, is not quaint or charming. It is not pretty. It is long and hard and grim. It is all business. The Financial Times of London described it as, "The most dark and foreboding championship course in the world." Yikes! No wonder Fred Couples withdrew. Because Carnoustie is such a test, because this coming week will be so much about survival, it will mean that much more to whomever it is that is crowned "the champion golfer for 1999," as they like to say around here. There are championships and there are championships. It's been 24 years since Carnoustie last hosted the Open. After Watson's win in 1975, it was thought this venue was unsuitable for the needs of a major, world-class sporting event. There was some political infighting that didn't help things, but the crux of the issue was that the virtues of the course were outweighed by the inadequacies of the area's infrastructure: It was remote, there was but a single road in and once you got there, there was no there there. All of the issues have been addressed. It has not been easy. This, after all, is not the type of place from which you send a scenic postcard shop for souvenirs, or take your choice of quaint B&B's. This week is likely to be a little different from the well-heeled, picnics we're use to seeing at major golf championships lately. When you wash away everything else, there is but one reason to be here: the golf course, a course that organizers hope was worth the trouble and players hope they can simply survive.
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