Irish Eyes are Smiling in Birkdale

Irish Eyes Are Smiling at Birkdale

On the first day of play at the British Open the media focused on Rocco Mediate who was among the leaders at the end of round one. The second most popular topic was the awful English weather; on Thursday it was chilly, raining, and the winds were very strong, very difficult to contend with because they seemed to come from different directions on every hole. It was particularly miserable in the morning when the average score was 78. The winds made play trying and complicated all four days of the tournament.

On the second day Rocco faded a bit and Greg Norman grabbed the headlines after two rounds of 70. Norman, 53 years old with a 23-year-old body (so said some impressed golfer) seemed like a serious contender for the first time in a decade or more. It was a readymade story, an old worthy of past glories with a sad record of losing 4 Majors when he had the 54-hole lead; plus he was on his honeymoon with his new wife, the former Ice Queen of Tennis, Chris Evert. They got married three weeks ago and she had breathed new life into The Great White Shark, taking on the role of his muse and inspiration, filling him with ideas about a comeback, perhaps even winning The Open, which would be a wonderful finale to their honeymoon. On the other hand, his game wasn’t in shape to play competitive golf on the highest level, as he has been playing more tennis than golf. But with Tiger absent his story was the next best thing. So he was talked about, written about, and there was a lot blah, blah, blah about his winning The Open, a kind of retro Cinderella story. Actually, K.J. Choi, the straight shooting Korean pro, had the halfway lead at end of Friday. Camillio Villegas, the lean but sinewy Columbian who has been nicknamed “Spiderman” because of the horizontal contortions he gets into when sizing up a putt, shot the low score of the tournament when he birdied the final 5 holes for a sterling 65. Finally, Paddy Harrington, last year’s champion, was lurking in background. It was assumed his sore wrist would prevent him from winning again.

On Sunday morning the headline in the Tucson paper read: NORMAN ON THE MARCH TOWARD GOLF HISTORY. He was in front by two strokes after Saturday’s round. Some felt his renewed enthusiasm for life, the gift of new love, would help him overcome all the baggage of his past. Tom Watson believed that. Julius Boros had won a major at 48; he felt sure The Shark could pull it off at 53. His broadcast partner, Paul Azinger, was more skeptical. Meanwhile, Choi slipped to a 75 on Saturday and Paddy Harrington ended the day in second place and, therefore, Norman’s playing partner for the final round. David Duval, who had shot a 73 and 69 the first two days, put himself out of contention with an 83 on Saturday. Another miraculous resurgence bit the dust.

Sunday brought all the dreamers back down to earth. Norman bogied the first three holes while Paddy got 6 pars in a row. Then Paddy bogied three in a row and Norman got back in front by a stroke, but it didn’t last long, as he got in the rough too often and his putts weren’t falling any more. Up in the TV Booth Paul Azinger kept criticizing Norman’s course management. He thought with the wind the way it was, gusting up to 40 mph, he should put his driver away and play it safe with irons off the tee. But Norman has always been a gunslinger, someone who shoots for birdies not pars. I think he was in the fairway 5 times off the tee all day, not so good. Meanwhile, Harrington regained his momentum and confidence, getting a birdie on 15 and then he clinched the victory with a spectacular eagle on the 17^th hole, when he hit a 5-wood to within four feet of the pin. At That point he was up by four strokes and it was a good thing too, as Ian Poulter made a charge, but came up short, but securing second place. Norman ended with a 77 and a third place tie with Henrik Stenson, who won in Tucson in 2006. (By the way, that was a mistake Mike Tirico made on the air: He said Stenson had never won in the states.)

In the post-game interview Harrington said winning last year was thrilling and exciting, as a first Major would be, but he found this second Open title more satisfying because it put him in elite company; it validated his ascendancy to Number Three on the top ten list, in back of Phil Mikelson, who was a washout at the Open, and Tiger Woods, the ailing King of the Mountain. He felt he had arrived and it was a tremendous boost to his confidence.

Norman was philosophical. Naturally, he was disappointed, but he did much better than he expected going into the tournament, so he felt he shouldn’t complain too much. Only time will tell if the weekend was an anomaly in his current life, or the start of something big, like a reinvigorated career on the Champion’s Tour. They would love to him playing regularly. He doesn’t need to do it for money, which he has plenty of, but for that feeling of satisfaction that Harrington was talking about. And he needs to exorcise some demons.

Come on Chris; work your muse magic on him. The World of Golf is better with him in it.

One more thing: While in second place in the State Farm Classic in Springfield, Illinois, and playing well, the often beleaguered Michelle Wie made another boo-boo that shot her down so unnecessarily: She forgot to sign her score card, which is an automatic disqualification. If there was one cow-pie in a big field, Wie would find a way to step in it.