Generational showdown: a British Open for the
ages
By RON SIRAK / AP Golf Writer
TROON, Scotland (AP) - Moving cautiously beneath iron-gray
clouds and playing careful shots through the relentless wind,
two generations of golfers made their final tuneups at Royal Troon
on Wednesday for the British Open.
The fortysomething crew of Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Nick
Price searched memory banks accumulated from a total of 57 British
Opens and six victories and relied on experience culled from every
kind of links golf condition.
The twentysomething gang of Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk
and Lee Westwood - with only 11 British Opens and no victories
among them - trusted youthful enthusiasm and staggering new skills.
The 126th British Open begins Thursday and there is no more
appropriate place than the world's oldest golf competition to
stage what has the potential to be a tournament for the ages.
And if the baton is to pass this week from those who have dominated
the game for more than two decades to a younger set, it may have
to make a stop at the group in between - the thirtysomething crowd
of defending champion Tom Lehman, hometown hopeful Colin Montgomerie
and Steve Elkington.
Added to the mix is the fact that all of those mentioned are
playing very well right now.
"Anytime you play the British Open or win the British
Open you know you have beaten everybody," said Faldo, who
turns 40 on Friday and played in his first British Open in 1976,
before Woods had his first birthday. "That's why it is the
Open."
But winning the British Open requires more than pure skill.
It requires the special knowledge and patience to survive an ordeal
that is as much against nature as it is against other players.
"I think we're going to get weather," Faldo, a three-time
Open winner, said Wednesday about the wind and rain that has been
moving off the Firth of Clyde and across Troon all week.
"You have to be a strong ball-striker to survive four
days," Faldo said. "The wind moves the ball a lot more
than you realize on a links," he said. "You only have
to hit it a little off ... then it will be in the rough and you've
got to start playing now."
Handling the wind, dealing with the deceptive rough, negotiating
the treacherous pot bunkers and developing the feel to run the
ball on the green instead of shooting for the flag all come with
experience.
Faldo, who is playing in his 22nd British Open and won in 1987,
'90 and '92, has that experience. So does Norman, 42, playing
in his 20th Open and a winner in 1986 and '93. Price, 40, the
winner in 1994, is playing his 18th British Open.
Among them they have won six of the last 11 British Opens.
"It's all about game management this week," Price
said. "You have to go out there and manage your game well
and put the ball in position off the tee. The British Open is
the ultimate test in one's strategies."
A strong group of young golfers in their 20s may lack experience
in the British Open, but all possess the ability to eventually
win this tournament - if not this week.
Woods, playing in his third British Open, is the obvious standout
among the youngster. At 21 and in less than a year on the PGA
Tour he already has six victories, including the Masters by a
record 12 strokes.
Asked Wednesday if Woods was too young to win the British Open,
five-time winner Tom Watson replied without hesitation: "Is
he too young to have won the Masters by 12 shots?"
Els, 27, already has won two U.S. Opens, including at Congressional
in June, a victory he followed by winning at Westchester the next
week.
And if there are two good longshots in their field they are
Furyk, 27, who has finished in the top 10 in his last six PGA
Tour events - including fifth in the U.S. Open - and Lee Westwood,
the 24-year-old European tour player who was 24th at the Masters
and 19th in the U.S. Open.
"I think he will be up there," Faldo said about Westwood.
Of the quartet of young contenders, Els has the most experience
- and the most success - in the British Open. He has played in
six and finished second last year, fifth in '92 and sixth in '93.
On the eve of the tournament he sounded very much like a young
man who knew what it takes to win a British Open.
"We'll find a guy winning this week with a lot of imagination,"
said Els, who is trying to become the first person since Watson
in 1981 to win both Opens in the same year.
"A guy that can keep his game under control, his shot-making
under control," he said. "That's what you have to do
this week. Especially coming in (on the back nine), the fairways
are really very narrow and you've got to take the bad bounces
as they come."
Usually, that kind of patience comes only with experience.
Occasionally, it comes in a tide of confidence welling from a
young man playing hot golf.
This British Open could very well be a showdown between experience
and youth. And it could be one for the ages.
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