What I’ll be watching this week is the 149th British Open Championship, taking place on the Turnberry course, located on the Atlantic coast of Scotland. This will be the fourth time the Open Championship has been held at Turnberry, the last coming in 1994 with Nick Faldo emerging victorious. The course is steeped in rich history, with the signature 9th hole, a 449 yard par 4, overlooking the ruins of Robert the Bruce’s castle.
This time around, Padraig Harrington looks to hold off Tiger Woods and the rest of the field (minus Phil Mickelson) as he attempts to win his third straight Claret Jug.
While the history and potential three-peat are great story lines, I’ll be watching for an entirely different reason. The Open Championship is not just the oldest major tournament, it is also arguably the hardest. Call me sadistic, but my favorite part of this tournament will be watching some of the best golfers in the world look like weekend duffers. Turnberry will use razor thin fairways, ridiculously deep rough and even deeper bunkers to frustrate the field into failure. And in case you thought the golfers didn’t have enough to worry about, the weather forecast this week calls for strong winds and rain, much to my twisted delight.
A little known fact about Turnberry- It was temporarily used as an airfield during World War II. While a fighter plane can take off from that rough, a golf ball certainly can’t. The only thing coming out of the deep stuff this week will be clubs thrown from bewildered golfers who just can’t take it anymore. Be still my heart.
Some lucky golfer will conquer Turnberry this week, winning a major championship and creating a career milestone in the process. And that’s all well and good. But me? I’ll be hoping for Christmas in July, complete with a snowman on every scorecard. Birdies are great, but triple bogeys are better.
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