Open season (Part One)

CONSIDERING that nobody has yet managed to match or better par in a Major this year, the best players in the world will head to Carnoustie later this month with their egos, and in one case wrist, badly bruised. They will also do so with some trepidation.

At Augusta, the combination of a strong breeze and unreceptive greens made the kind of precision required to score well round there almost unattainable. The winning score? One over par.

At Oakmont, they cut and rolled the sloping greens to within an inch of their lives. The rough was lovingly cultivated and par fives were set up like par sixes and some of the par threes like par fours. The winning score? Five over par.

Eight years ago, at Carnoustie, the usually dry and cold east coast of Scotland was treated to a wet and warm spring. Rough shot up, the like of which the USGA would simply love to import direct to their US Open venue each year, and the fairways, in hindsight, were unnecessarily narrow in places.

But essentially, this was the same Carnoustie as usual, just with some added input from Mother Nature. The winning score? Six over par. Hence the trepidation.

So, can we expect another championship of endurance, where the punch-drunk contenders stagger down the stretch and the last man standing is declared the winner? Well, no, probably not, actually.

With all the negative connotations concerning Carnoustie following the 1999 Open, it seems to have been overlooked that this is the most complete, fair and rigorous test on The Open rota bar perhaps Muirfield.

It is a quite wonderful links and while it lacks the visual drama of a Turnberry or the romance of St Andrews, as a championship course it has few equals. Jack Nicklaus once said that the further north he went, the more he liked the Open venues. This was actually an attempt to say while causing the minimum offence that he was no fan of Royal St Georges, on the Kent coast, but it can be taken as read that Carnoustie, across the Firth of Tay from St Andrews, meets with his exacting approval.

It can be confidently predicted that the class of 2007 will be similarly complimentary, even if a few of them will need to play a practice round before they believe it. Happy to report, the conditions will bear little relation to those last time
around when Sergio Garcia was reduced to tears after clocking up an astonishing two-round total of 30 over par.

The dry spring means the rough will be penal but not out of control and mistakes in terms of course set-up from last time round will not be repeated. Carnoustie will present a supremely fair test. Easy it will not be but unless the weather is extreme then an under-par winning score is to be expected. There promises to be more birdies made than at the first two
Majors of the year added together.

The course itself is flat, the fairways are largely un-rippled and the greens are generous and welcoming. With several changes of direction, the longest run of holes playing in the same direction comes between the 13th and 16th, and since each one has a different par (three, five, four and three-and-a-half respectively) and they play at such varying lengths (175, 525, 465 and 260 yards) it could hardly be claimed they have a repetitive feel.

Click here for part two