THE OPEN | NOTEBOOK
Notes from
Magnicent Muireld
Lewine Mair captures on the highs and lows from a wild and wonderful week.
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s u a l l y, it i s a c a s e o f youngsters ringing their parents to report on a good day ’s work on the golf course. On Open Thursday, it was the other way about as such older hands as Mark O’Meara, Tom Lehman and Miguel Ángel Jiménez were up among the leaders.
In all, five proud and wily seniors – O’Meara, Lehman, Freddie Couples, Peter Senior and Sandy Lyle – made the cut ... the quintet gave a fresh burst of hope to millions on the wrong side of 50. Couples, who finished this year’s Open in a share of 32nd place, would have been proud of the way he improved with age over the four days of the championship, with his scoring sequence one of 75, 74, 73 and 71. Not, mind you, that anyone picked up on it. On Sunday, the questions directed to this former Masters champion were more about the feats of his young amateur playing companion, England’s Matthew Fitzgerald, who won the Silver Medal with scores of 73, 76, 73 and 72.
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O’Meara, though, is one who does not hurry to ring home. Instead, he plays it cool, leaving it for his kids – aged 26 and 23 – to get in touch if they feel so inclined. “Sometimes they send a text, sometimes an e-mail and sometimes they don’t send anything,” said the 1998 champion, who is now 56 and into his sixth year on the Champions Tour. “It used to bother me when they didn’t but it doesn’t now.” Especially on a day like the Friday when he was out in 40 and on his way to adding a 78 to his first-round 67. In all, five proud and wily seniors – O’Meara, Lehman, Freddie Couples, Peter Senior and Sandy Lyle – made the cut. The quintet gave a fresh burst of hope to millions on the wrong side of 50 who had started to wonder if Tom Watson’s second place finish at Turnberry in 2009 was just a figment of their imaginations. Lehman, in assessing how things worked for the older golfer, said that the good rounds could be much the same as they ever were but that the bad rounds were a whole lot worse: “You don’t hit as far as you did and bunkers that are out of play for the youngsters are in play for us.” 40
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Rory McIlroy must be fed up to the back teeth with everyone, from Sir Nick Faldo, to the media, giving their opinions on where he has been going wrong. Yet there is one criticism on which everyone, including the player himself, is agreed. Namely, that his 2013 schedule has been a disaster. This has nothing to do with those around him. Instead, it is all down to the way he is trying to negotiate two circuits at once, his own and Caroline Wozniacki’s. Things were so much simpler in the days when he went out with an Irish girl named Holly. Then, the only dates which his manager of the day, Chubby Chandler, had to take into account were Holly’s school holidays. HKGOLFER.COM
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Clockwise from top: Open legends Tom Watson and Sir Nick Faldo were paired together over the opening rounds – and both missed the cut; as did Rory McIlroy whose repeated choice of driver off the tee puzzled many; Mark O’Meara rolled back the years with a first-round 67 but slipped back shortly afterwards
At the start of the week, Bob Rotella, the mind-man who shepherded Darren Clarke in the hours before his final starting time at Royal St George’s in 2011, gave a telling interview on what goes into the winning of the Claret Jug. “Thursday morning,” he began, “is all about the mental game, about finding a mental place in which you can get yourself to do all the things you can do so easily on the practice range. HK GOLFER・AUG 2013
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Clockwise from top: Miguel Ángel Jiménez led the way after 36 holes but found bunker trouble over the weekend; Dr Bob Rotella and Darren Clarke, one of his many golf pro clients; Graeme McDowell’s less than flattering comments about the Scottish Open in the lead up to the championship rather backfired after Phil Mickelson’s triumph at Muirfield 42
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“The first tee,” he continued, “is challenging enough, but the scale of the challenge on the Sunday is bigger by far – and reaches a crescendo with the final putt.” In which connection, he said that a player does best to go with his first instincts. “When someone has a putt to win and his first look tells him that it is straight, he will often say to himself, ‘It can’t be straight, you can’t have that easy a putt to win the Open’. He will then start looking from a host of different angles and that’s almost always a mistake. “After trusting his first instincts and committing to the line, he must ‘see’ the putt going in the hole before following his usual routine and ‘letting it happen’.” Which is much the same as the feeling that Phil Mickelson ascribed to all his putts as he came down the stretch on the Sunday. “I just putted those greens phenomenally – some of the best I’ve ever putted. The birdies kind of happened; they weren’t forced.” On a rather different tack, Rotella talked of the different nationalities and the very different traits they bring to bear. He said that the attitude of Australians and South Africans was in the same league, with both loving the game to the point where “winning is not their only reason for joy”. In the UK, he thought that top golfers had a problem from their peers who, instead of enjoying their success, were apt to send out the message, “You’re no longer one of us ...” He described the Americans as more of a
‘win-at-all-costs’ people who, if they are not winning, see themselves as losers. Yet he said that he had noticed a sea change in the American psyche over the last few years. Where once their winners would be treated as Gods, they are nowadays starting to get a bit of flak when something goes wrong. “If they want to stay great, they have to learn to handle it,” said Rotella. He likened the Spaniards to the South Americans in being very emotional – a characteristic he sees as a thoroughly good thing, particularly when someone is playing well. “Most cultures teach people to keep their feelings under wraps but I have no problem with someone like Sergio Garcia who talks openly about everything, from his golf to his girlfriends. He says what he really thinks and it mostly works well for him.” Rotella was not about to put Asian golfers in the same category to Spaniards. To him, they are at the other end of the spectrum, though he notes that the different Asian lands turn out different golfers. He believes that Koreans, for instance, are tougher than their Japanese neighbours, more focused and more aggressive. “The worst guys out there,” he said in relation to the overall field at Muirfield, “are those guys who over-react to every bad shot and don’t enjoy the good ones.” At the previous week’s Scottish Open, much was made of Graeme McDowell’s – and others’ – criticisms of the Castle Stuart course. The gist of what they had to say was that the course did not make for a good test immediately prior to The Open. Others promptly pointed to how, in each of HKGOLFER.COM
It was Graeme McDowell’s caddie who said that he had never seen more players having to exit the bunkers in a less-than-orthodox fashion. Some contestants were on their knees as they played from a bunker’s upper or side lip. the two previous years, the Claret Jug had been won by Scottish Open players – Darren Clarke in 2011 and Ernie Els in 2012. It was Els who predicted that if the same thing happened three years in a row, which it now has, every golfer in the world would be rushing to the Scottish Open. What is more the fact that the 2014 installment is to be held at Royal Aberdeen would be virtually irrelevant; they would go if the event were being staged on a nine-hole course in Thurso. Mickelson predicted at his final pressconference at Castle Stuart that the manner in which he had won his Scottish Open title could serve him well at Muirfield. To recap, he had two putts from 15 feet to win from Branden Grace. His young family, who had been in the players’ lounge, were ushered out to the 18th green to see the denouement, only for their father to take three putts. The children stayed put for a play-off down the 18th in which everything came right as Mickelson tied things up with a delicious little approach from short of the green. “The way I was able to re-focus and finally get the job done has helped me to pick up confidence for next week,” he said. Body language spoke louder than anything else when Mickleson detonated that last-green roar at Muirfield, the one which told everyone that the Open-championship-winning putt had just been holed. HKGOLFER.COM
Those still out on the course slumped as one, their thrill for the chase exhausted. One moment the cameras would pick up on these disheartened and deflated souls playing their way back to base and, the next, there would be a shot of Mickelson in one of his happy family huddles beside the home green. If that particular juxtaposition of events will furnish one abiding image of the 2013 Open, the Muirfield bunkers will provide another. It was Ken Comboy, Graeme McDowell’s caddie, who said that he had never seen more players having to exit the hazards in a less-thanorthodox fashion. Some contestants were on their knees as they played from a bunker’s upper or side lip, others had one leg in the trap and one out. Jiménez, who played so well for so long before finishing in a share of 13th place, was pictured on the practice days playing a bunker shot on his knees whilst smoking his trademark cigar. So good was the result that you half expected this one-of-a-kind Spaniard to bring out the cigar when he had much the same shot to play again during his second-round 71. The emcee at an HSBC luncheon asked Gary Player how many press-ups he did a day. “Twelve hundred,” answered Player. The emcee then turned to Colin Montgomerie, another HSBC ambassador. “And how many do you do?” “Twelve hundred fewer,” came the reply. HK GOLFER・AUG 2013
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