LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — The Scots have never shown any obvious regret for inflicting golf upon the world, though it is hard to tell how hard they may be laughing behind their thick stone walls and their blank stone faces.
Golf is, in civilized climates, played upon the choicest real estate, in overplanted nurseries and among manicured gardens, through tall trees and over blue water, upon lawns and landscaped terraces.
On this tormenting island it is played in neglected pastures and on barren waste, unfit for hiking or hiding. Golf does not improve the neighborhood, it interrupts it. Golf, without scenery, might as well be bowling.
The game here is played in places where the sky hides on the horizon and the endless gray is broken by patches of living brown. When the wind blows, and it has howled so far, the game becomes torture to even the most accomplished golfer, as the guardians of the oldest tournament mean it to be.
Such a place is Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s, the royal part being added just in case the odd prince drops by and not because it is a royal pain in the, uh, elbow, though it is. I’m guessing that the ampersand is just to make the club stationery look more English.
When Hale Irwin first came here he thought he had landed on the moon. One small step for man, one giant leap from pot bunker to pot bunker. Such despair pleased the locals immensely for it proved that they had got it right. Golf is not meant to be a game, it is a persecution.
Royal Lytham & St. Annes is the shortest of the courses used for the British Open, or, to indulge a common conceit, The Open, which is to say that any other but this one must have a first name.
This is the 130th Open and the 10th time this place has hosted the tournament. Its champions list includes Bobby Jones, in the very first one held here in 1926, Gary Player later, Seve Ballesteros twice and Tom Lehman the last time, five years ago. Tiger Woods is expected to replace Lehman here and himself just last year.
Said the Danish golfer Thomas Bjorn, “There are 155 good players here and one that’s out of this world.”
That is the usual pre-tournament Tiger talk, of course, and the bookies all agree, making Woods 3-2 to win and nobody else (meaning Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson) any better than 16-1.
As for Woods, he swears to love being the favorite and is looking forward to suffering the variety of new torments.
“You try shots you don’t normally try,” Woods said. “I had a 100-yard putt at St. Andrews last year. You could never do that in the States.”
Woods mortified the Royal & Ancients last year, shooting 19 under par, the most under ever in any major golf tournament. So, the fact that the weather prospects for the week include the sort of conditions that wrecked the Hesperus is being taken as a sign that order is about to be restored.
As the Scots say, “Nae rain, nae wind, nae golf.”
On the last practice day Wednesday, there was a lot of the first two and little of the last. The place looked like a chorus of lost souls stuck in the rain, shivering in ski caps and turtle necks, unable to find a taxi.
The gabled and Gothic old brick heap that serves as the clubhouse, shone in the syrup like some horror prop in a vampire movie, which, more often than not, the British Open turns out to be.
Pot bunkers, 196 of them, are scattered like open sores across the course, some six feet deep and doorless. Ordinarily the rough is a bath mat. Due to the rude, wet weather, it is waist high.
The course is disarmingly designed to tease a golfer into thinking he is in charge, starting with a par three, playing downwind the front nine and then turning into the expected gale off the Irish Sea, unseen but unmistakably, according to my nose, close by, somewhere beyond the row houses and corporate tents.
Doug Sanders defined British Open golf forever. “In Britain,” he said, “you skip the ball, hop it, bump it, run it, hit under it, on top of it and then hope for the right bounce.”
Golf, without pain, might as well be walking.
Because of the damp summer, moss has grown on some of the greens. It may never be known if a rolling stone gathers no moss, but may find out if a Titleist does. Yet, not wind nor rugged rough, strategic sand nor fairways that are shockingly green instead of their usual rusty orange may provide the real test here.
The attentive protectors of golf’s dignity, though still allowing Jasper Parnevick’s up turned cap, will be especially alert this year for the kind of disturbances that marred last year’s Open. That would be the presence of streakers, a fad in England that was passe in America a generation ago.
Five streakers made it to the sacred greens of St. Andrews last year, one young lady close enough to give Woods a naked hug.
The Lytham folks swear they are ready. Explained Hugh Campbell, chairman of the championship committee, “All of the marshals will be well briefed so they know what to look for.”
Some things you just can’t make up.