Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
No Woods, no problem … but for how long?
Tiger Woods hacked and shanked his way to a two-round score of five over par at this year’s British Open, missing just the fifth cut of his professional career and only his second in a major championship.
Facing a Tige
r-less weekend must have had television executives and sponsors sweating. The 2008 British Open, which Woods missed recovering from reconstructive knee surgery, saw TV ratings of the final round on ABC plummet 13.3 percent from the previous year.
But the ’09 British Open had a secret weapon, Tom Watson.
The 59 year-old self proclaimed ‘geezer’ was battling not only course, but he was fighting father time. A victory would have made him the oldest major champion on the PGA tour by 11 years.
After 54 holes, Watson looked poised to shatter the record as he led the field heading into Sunday’s final round at Turnberry.
British Open proves elementary for Watson, tough on Tiger
It is fair to say we all expected an American with a surname beginning with W to be soaring up the British Open leaderboard but everyone has been shocked that it is 59-year-old senior Tom Watson topping the strong field and not a certain Tiger Woods.
Whilst the world number one toiled in calm conditions at Turnberry’s Ailsa course on Thursday, five-times Open champion Watson was recording a bogey-free five-under-par 65 to take the early clubhouse lead.
The Open golf gets underway, but where’s the wind and rain?
Embarking on my first British Open, I was of the understanding the weather would be wet and windy and the scoring tough but my week thus far has been spent in shorts and t-shirts at a surprisingly benign Turnberry.
As nice as it is for a roving reporter to be out in the warm sunshine, fielding questions to the world’s best golfers on one of Britain’s finest courses, it would be interesting to see the usual wind and rain to see how good these guys really are.
Rory McIlroy: Genuine Open Contender
Rory McIlroy can win The Open Championship at Turnberry this weekend.
The bushy-haired 20-year old from Northern Ireland is playing only his second Open, and first as a professional. But he is such a talent that he is capable of pulling off the biggest win in a major championship since the 21-year old Tiger Woods ran off with The U.S. Masters in 1997.
Rory’s youth should not hamper his chances. In fact it could encourage him. Only Tiger himself — who only a lunatic would argue is not the greatest golfer who ever lived — has a comparable early career record. Tiger had just turned pro when he won the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational as a 20 year-old, but McIlroy was still a teenager when he secured his first victory as a professional: the high profile Dubai Desert Classic earlier this year.
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Resident Left Field Expert
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