“To win the Open is one thing, but to win at St Andrews is something different. It’s a piece of art; a unique, singular place. I really believe the Open should be played there every year. . .  St Andrews, you see, is unique: the Road Hole, Hell Bunker, the museum, the hotel, the shops in the town where everybody is selling golf – all of it.”   – Seve Ballesteros

Let us begin by praising the fuddy-duddies of the Royal and Ancient, who manage to get nearly everything wrong but who have gotten one thing supremely right:  They have kept the Open Championship on the links.   May the gods of golf  bless and protect them and preserve in them whatever antediluvian instinct guides them in this most essential matter, for the Open provides us with an annual vision of the links, of golf as it once was, of the light, the way, and the source.

And let it be obvious, if it is not already, that I am a diehard lover of links golf.  Every year I look forward to the Open for an annual fix, a timely reminder of the pleasures and perils of links golf.  I can’t explain why, but I was hooked on links golf long before I even knew what linksland was; I just liked the shaggy look of those seaside courses that I first saw in the 1960′s when Palmer, Nicklaus, Trevino, and other Americans started making the journey to play in what was then called The British Open.  Everything about the golf over there seemed strange, from the small ball to the knee-high rough to the colors of the turf, the biscuit browns and buttery yellows instead of the green that I was accustomed to seeing at home.   Strangest of all was the history and lore of the event.  I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that the game had originated on these Scottish courses.   It might have been easier to grasp how homo sapiens had evolved from the apes than to grasp how American golf had descended from the game as it was played on the links.

Today, of course, the links don’t look so alien.  I think viewers everywhere are more accustomed to the appearance of the links courses (and they have also become greener and tidier, more like American courses with every passing year).   The announcers no longer describe them  as “moonscapes.”  But the golf is still unpredictable and bracingly different.  The golfers sometimes look bewildered as they try to hit unfamiliar shots or invent shots they never play (in a good year, I probably play more rounds on links courses than they do).    These are the best players in the world, but they sometimes make an unholy mess of it, like modern actors trying to perform Shakespeare.  They can’t pronounce all those archaic words — hell, they don’t always know what they mean.

* * * * *

“Around our office,” says golf architect Tom Doak, “fairness is the f-word.”  That stance is one of the reasons that Doak has been labelled a contrarian, for the prevailing view in American golf course design has been that fairness is a virtue.   “Challenging but fair” is a standard term of praise for a golf course, as is “it’s all right there in front of you.”

Doak absorbed many of his ideas about design at St. Andrews, where he caddied for a while at the Old Course.  From that experience he took away the lesson that links golf is not about fairness.  Linksland is too rumpled and random, and bad bounces are simply part of the game.  Add to that the shifting winds and vagaries of the weather, and ideas of “fairness” begin to seem irrelevant.  It’s not that golf on the links is inherently unfair, but fortune and misfortune are both in its DNA.

I don’t like to see the pros embarrassed, but I do like to see how they deal with misfortune.  I like to see them with their pants legs flapping, trying to steady themselves over a shot.  I like to see how they handle themselves when they have to back away from a putt because the ball is oscillating on the green (even though I think that the penalty for a soled putter is silly).   Do they take their medicine?  Or do they glower?  Do they start missing short putts and looking sorely abused by the golf gods?  Do they bear down and hang in there?

When the wind kicked up on Friday afternoon at St. Andrews, the full range of behaviors was on display.   I can’t say exactly that I enjoyed watching, but I was certainly rivetted.  That is the afternoon when Roby McIlroy, after a brilliant first round of 63, shot an 80.   John Daly, in yet another Easter egg outfit, looked grim and determined, but he couldn’t make anything happen; he wasn’t in contention on the weekend.  To my surprise, Ernie Els seemed as demoralized by the winds as anyone, shooting a 79 and missing the cut; when he stood over short putts, I almost had to look away.   I was thousands of miles from the Old Course watching a picture on TV, but Els just didn’t look as though he had a prayer of holing those putts.

Daly and Els weren’t the only players whose Open fate was decided that afternoon.  The Friday drama, with the cut looming, is never as focused as the Sunday drama, but it’s just as intense.  And it can be cruel.  It was certainly “unfair” that the afternoon pairings played in winds so ripping that play was actually suspended for time.  But that’s the rub of the green.  It’s a fine old phrase, with that “rub” conveying the same bristly discomfort as it does in the phrase “rub the wrong way.”  What gets rubbed is what’s at the core of a golfer’s character, his confidence and poise and resolve.   And that’s why the game needs the element of chance and misfortune. It makes the golf gods seem a little closer.

* * * * *

Louis Oosthuizen played beautifully.  He’s not the first obscure player to win the Open, but I can’t remember any player, obscure or world-famous, who made it look so easy.  I include Tiger Woods, who won at St. Andrews in a walkaway but never dropped the game face.   (Speaking of Tiger, I really expected him to be a factor on the weekend after an opening 67 and then, on Friday, an impressive 73 during the worst of the afternoon’s weather.  He kept himself in it with that round, and he seemed patient, quietly determined, as he went about his business, not ruffled by the elements of by the delay that made the round so interminable.  But on Saturday and Sunday he was grinding without making up any shots,  and he lapsed back into his habit of dramatizing his woes —  the deep groaning bend with the hands on the knees,  the disgusted wave of the putter at yet another botched lag putt).

Until Saturday, I didn’t think Oosthuizen could win.  The  unheralded players who have won the Open (Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis) have usually crept in toward the end.  They didn’t have the pressure of holding the 36 hole lead.  I half-expected Oosthuizen to suffer a meltdown similar to McIlroy.  I thought his playing partner on Saturday,  the weathered and well-padded Mark Calcavecchia, had a better chance of hoisting the Claret Jug than Oosthuizen.

They both started with bogeys on the first hole, but Calcavecchia was the one who couldn’t pull himself together.  He bogeyed the second hole, and then third, and then double bogeyed the 4th.  Oof.  He was through. Oosthuizen, meanwhile, had settled down, picking up where he’d left off after the first two rounds.  He was driving the ball in the fairway, hitting full-bore iron shots, rolling in putt after putt.   Conditions out there were tough — you could see Tiger and the others struggling — but they didn’t faze  Oosthuizen.   The only sign of effort was when he stood behind the ball to ready himself for a shot, and lowered his head as if in silent prayer.  He was unhurried and occasionally, when he rolled in putt, showed a bit of his gap-toothed grin that earned him the nickname Shrek..  He looked as though he was having fun.

Oosthuizen shot a 69 that afternoon and stood at 12 under, four clear of the nearest man, Paul Casey.

When the final round began, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thinking of what had just happened to Dustin Johnson at Pebble Beach in the U. S. Open.  Of McIlroy on Friday.  Of  Jan van de Veld at Carnoustie.  Of i990, in another Open at St. Andrews, when Nick Faldo started the third round 4 in back of Greg Norman and finished  5 ahead.  In other words, I was thinking of the scenarios for collapse that would likely play out over the afternoon.

None of them did.  I was wrong, and so were the TV announcers who invoked all these disastrous precedents during the telecast.   The hobgoblins just weren’t bothering Oosthuizen.  Paul Casey was playing well but couldn’t gain a shot until the 8th, when Oosthuizen three-jacked.   Then, on the 10th hole, Ooosterhuizen rolled in the 40-footer for eagle.  And that was that.  It was a footnote that on the 12th, Casey pulled his drive into the gorse and took 7.   As he said later, he wasn’t going to catch Oosthuizen anyway.

What is one to make of Louis Oosthuizen?   Where has he been all this time?   He was in his sweet spot all week long.  He finished at 16 under, and he gave the impression that if anyone had really pressed him, he could have gone lower.  He looked calm and comfortable all week.  His relationship with his caddy appeared to be one of respect and rapport.   He has a lovely wife and six-month old daughter.  His name is on the Claret Jug.  In the post-round interviews he was affable, modest, and humorous.   On the course and off, he handled himself with aplomb and grace.

I hope he’s not a one-time wonder.  I almost feel I owe him an apology for imagining all the ways he could blow it.

* * * * *

As long as there’s been competitive golf, there’s been pressure.  Even the steeliest, flintiest players have been susceptible to it.  Old Tom Morris was shaky over short putts and some accused him of “funking,” as in he “funked that wee putt.” Fast-forwarding to the modern era, we can all name players who’ve seemed more likely than others to wilt under pressure.  And in an age where everyone thinks he’s Dr. Phil, we all have our ideas about who is most likely to choke and why.

On Sunday afternoon, watching Oosthuizen play one gorgeous shot after another, I revised some of my ideas about pressure.  Some thoughts:

• The conventional wisdom just doesn’t hold up when it comes to today’s young players in majors.  By conventional wisdom, I mean the notion that young players advance in small increments, learning to contend and win at each level before advancing to the next.   They are expected to make mistakes and to have a couple of near-misses that will steel them to handle the pressure of big events.  By this standard, Oosthuizen — who missed seven cuts in the eight majors he’d played prior to the Open — was nowhere near “ready” to win.  But the same could be said of Lucas Glover, who won the 2009 U. S. Open, or Y. E. Yang, who won the 2009 PGA Championship.  Neither of them had as easy time of it, either.  The 2009 U. S. Open would have tested anyone’s nerves, with the bad weather, the delays, the suspensions of play — but Glover hung in.  And Y. E. Yang, going head-to-head with Woods in the 2009 PGA, wasn’t thought to have a chance.  So at the very least, the theory of advancing by gradual increments has some monster holes in.
• Here’s another piece of conventional wisdom that seems seriously limited:  Experienced players have an edge.  That’s surely true, but only up to a point — and after that point, experience seems to work AGAINST a golfer.  The veteran — see Calcavecchia, above — seems MORE likely to feel the pressure than a young player like Oosterhuizen who’s getting his first taste of it.  Just  think back to the U. S. Open, where Els, Woods, and Mickelson were all in pursuit on Sunday but couldn’t come through with the shots when they needed to.  Woods is a special case, but Els and Mickelson made mental blunders, hit inexplicably bad shots, and couldn’t hole putts when they needed them.  After a golfer has been burned a few times, as Els was in 2004, when both the Masters and the Open Championship slipped away at the last moment, it seems as though he flinches when he ventures too close to the fire.   Since 2004, his record at the Masters has been abysmal (47, T27, CUT, CUT, CUT).  He’s done better at the Open, and probably could have won a couple — but I remember his performance at Hoylake, where he hit the ball better than anyone and couldn’t get it done on the greens.  I’ll be amazed if the Big Easy wins another major, but his career seems to follow the pattern of many another great player (Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros) whose string of major victories came to a halt after a bitter loss.
• A corollary of the above:  Pressure isn’t one-size-fits-all.  It seems to affect certain players more at certain championships than at others.  Sam Snead used to say that if he’d won that first U. S. Open, he would have won ten — another way of saying that he put himself under the heaviest pressure at the U. S. Open, trying too hard to win one.  The same may be happening to Mickelson right now in the U. S. Open.  Phil will keep winning Masters till he’s 50, but is he going to get over the Open jinx?  I doubt it.  He won’t win an Open Championship, either, not if he plays the way he did at St. Andrews.  They guys in the broadcast booth kept saying he has too much talent not to win an Open, but Phil was floundering around behind the grandstand somewhere when they said it.   Other famous examples of great players who felt the pressure of a specific event:  Palmer at the PGA, the one major he needed to complete his grand slam; Watson, ditto; and harshest of all, Greg Norman at the Masters.

Okay, enough.  My final word on pressure is . . . to promise to shut up for a while.

* * * * *

As a rule, I’m not wild about the features that get spliced into telecasts of the majors, those films that are meant to tug at our heart strings or make us proud of the game.  They’re usually too sentimental for my taste, but I didn’t tire of the shots of St. Andrews –  – the swooping aerial views of the sea and the cliffs and the ruins, the slow pans of the grand ampitheatre of the first and last hole.  I liked seeing the old sepia photographs of Tom Morris and watching the footage of Bobby Jones, hearing his voice loud and clear as he pays homage to St. Andrews.   I couldn’t get enough of the footage of the previous Opens at St. Andrews, with Nicklaus tossing his club, Ballesteros exulting, Daly looking as though someone had slugged him when Rocca rolls in that putt from the Valley of Sin.  I’ve been to St. Andrews several times, but never to an Open, and I kept kicking myself that I didn’t go this year; I want to be part of that scene at the 18th, where the whole town — the whole of golf — seems to be perched over the links.

Every golfer alive knows how St. Andrews looks, how the town and the golf course bleed into one another.  The Auld Grey Toon with the cobblestone streets, the square-cut stone buildings and the slate roofs.  The cliffs, the ruins, the castle, the swirling sands on the beach — these images are indelible by now, shared by golfers all over the world.  This is the home of golf, and the design of the town seems to put everything in a just perspective — there’s the Old Course, at the doorstep of the university and the cathedral.  The way they are all connected tells us that golf is a high and civilized endeavor, on equal footing with the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of faith.

The whole place feels improbable but inevitable.  St. Andrews, as is often said, is golf’s cathedral, and golfers do go there in a spirit of reverence.  But  because the history of the place isn’t just the history of golf, St. Andrews has always seemed to have the atmosphere of an ancient cathedral, a place that has been there for centuries and that has seen, endured, and absorbed just about every kind of human experience.   In any case, St. Andrews is the place where the emotions in the game run deepest and express themselves most clearly and strongly.

This year there were two moving farewells.  Tom Watson crossed Swilcan Bridge for the last time in competition.  He stopped and waved, standing there silhouetted against the crowd and, in one shot, against a sunset in Scottish sky.   Here was the American who’d embraced the Open Championship, winning five times, and winning on every Scottish course in the Open rota — except St. Andrews.  In 1984, it looked as though he would complete his Scottish slam and win on the Old Course, but he’d come to grief on the Road Hole, making a 5 when he needed a 4 to stay even with Ballesteros.  Every fan of the Open has seen the tape several times, of Ballesteros on the 18th green finishing his round with a birdie and celebrating the moment as Watson waits — not far from where he stood on the Swilcan Bridge — knowing that his bid has fallen just short.

Watson didn’t win another major after that, though — as we all know — he came close.  His performance at Turnberry in 2009, though he came up just short, was surely the most brilliant golf a 59-year-old has ever played over four rounds of a major.   Like everyone else, I was pulling for him.   How could anyone not root for him after the gallant way he kept competing over the years, over the decades, when putting stroke deserted him?  How many times did he get himself into contention in a big event only to fail?  One lasting image of Watson is of him standing on a green, a few feet from the hole, looking at the ball that has just slithered by the cup.  The disappointment had to be harrowing, but he kept going.  He didn’t have to.  He didn’t have anything to prove.   The swing stayed young and he kept coming back for more.  That he endured those years when he couldn’t buy a putt, endured them with that game smile on his face, endured them and kept coming back, is an achievement of heroic proportions.

And then there was Seve Ballesteros, present at the Open by video, hovering over it like a ghost.  He had announced his intention to come to St. Andrews to attend the Champions Dinner.  Inspired by Watson’s performance at Turnberry, he had also announced his intention to play a 4-hole exhibition.  It became his goal as he attempted to recover from brain cancer, undergoing multiple surgeries and debilitating treatment.  Everyone in the golf world knew about his condition and his battle with cancer, but I can’t imagine that anyone was prepared for the video tape that aired during Open.

I certainly wasn’t.   I was shocked by the video.  Undone by it.  I’ve never seen anything like it on a golf telecast.   It shows Ballesteros  as a man reduced to helplessness by brain cancer.   Head shaven, shirtless, frail, Ballesteros holds onto a nurse as he slides off an examining table.  Then we see him in the darkened radiation room,  strapped to a table,  his head  secured in a padded vise so that it will not move during the treatment.  When the color picture goes to black and white, and we see the crossed lasers on his body, we are looking at a stark image of mortality.

This was a man who always seemed alive and vital in every cell of his body.  And he was a proud man —   haughty and arrogant, some thought, but certainly not the kind of man who would allow himself to appear so vulnerable.  Yet here he was, on screen at the Open.  He was actually at home in Spain, but as far as the world was concerned, he was here at St. Andrews, back among the Scots who had adopted him as a favorite son.  The tape was played, and there was also footage of other golfers, including Daly, watching it in silence. Toward the end of the tape, the old spark came into Seve’s dark eyes and you could hear the courage and humor as he said that he wanted his mulligan.  Then there was a close-up and Ballesteros made a gesture like blowing a last kiss.  He had been talking about St. Andrews and what the Open meant to him.  He said, “I love you all.”

So long, Tom.  So long, Seve.