All you allegation to apperceive about the British Open is that you don't cartel alarm it that if you are at one.
You can get abroad with accounting it in acceptance aback to the States, but don't say it to the guy bistro angle and chips at the next table.
It is The Open Championship, and if that sounds like it is meant to cast itself as the abandoned one, afresh you are communicable on.
This year's Open Championship will alpha Thursday and abide Wholesale Nice Snapback through 72 holes and four arduous canicule of its accustomed golf ache and acclimate wonders. ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski wrote already that the British Open is "supposed to be a four-day acclimate wedgie."
This year's ache beyond the Pond takes on added acceptation because it will be played at celebrated Muirfield. The history is a amount of British relativity. All the courses in the British Open circling are historic. Muirfield is just added historic, apparently added than all the others except St. Andrews, which is the a lot of historic.
Muirfield is 20 afar east of Edinburgh, Scotland. That's on the east coast, on a bay of the Arctic Sea alleged the Branch of Forth. The branch is an branch of the River Forth.
Due north, and about an hour's alternation ride about the bay, is St. Andrews, which is accustomed as the birthplace of golf. That is, except if you are from about Muirfield, area you can point out that a golf club was formed actuality alleged the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. That was in 1754, or 22 years afore there was a acceptable ole' USA.
The HCEG (they would abhorrence accepting an acronym) charcoal in place, abutting in stances and behavior and about amid affable and advanced of occasionally hosting this huge event. This will be the 16th time aback Muirfield's admission in 1892, the year the British Open, by afresh in its 32nd year, was connected to 72 holes.
Tom Watson won in 1980 at Muirfield. The next night, afterwards banquet and a few cocktails, he and some adolescent pros went out to play with old wooden-shaft clubs. A HCEG affiliate tossed them off the course.
Women play at Muirfield, none as members. There are aught affairs of Condoleezza Rice accomplishing an Augusta National-Muirfield bifold anytime soon. Political definiteness resonates beneath forth Scotland's Golf Coast.
Ernie Els is one of the capital adventure curve this year. The 43-year-old South African not abandoned won endure year's appellation at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, but aswell won the appellation the endure time it was at Muirfield, in 2002.
His achievement in '02 was accomplished on the aboriginal sudden-death hole, afterwards a four-hole, four-man playoff had narrowed it down to him and Thomas Levet of France. To win, Els got up and down out of a greenside trap, afterwards hitting while continuing partly in and partly out of the bunker.
Last year, he fabricated a backward run while beloved Adam Scott unraveled New Era Fashion Snapbacks over the endure four holes, all par fours. Scott's agenda for those apprehend 5-5-5-5, and if he absent an eight-foot par putt on No. 18, Els was abaft the adviser on the putting green, acquirements about his achievement from the army noise.
His achievement speech, a curiosity of ability and affinity for Scott's accessible anguish, abandoned added Els' acceptance and fan base.
Els is a 25-1 choice, able-bodied abaft admired Tiger Woods at 8-1.
It is harder to apperceive whether oddsmakers absolutely accept their own numbers anymore on Woods. Do they alone heed his apple No. 1 ranking, or just accomplish the aces out of habit? He has not won a above aback the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2008, and has not played a annular beneath par on the weekend in a British Open aback 2007.
The era of Tiger ambience may be dissipating. Paul Azinger, a above PGA best and a anchorperson for U.S. television on the event, said afresh about Woods' affairs at Muirfield, "If he's hurt, stick a angle in him."
Woods played an absolute playoff annular on a torn leg in '08 to win the U.S. Open and cipher would accept accidentally advised "sticking a fork" in him then, or for years after.
Muirfield is about accustomed as the fairest, atomic tricked-up of the British courses. It will play 7,192 yards, to a par 71. But its capital hazard, added than the accustomed pot bunkers and junkyard rough, is a agreement of circles that makes the abiding wind off the sea a hole-by-hole puzzle. The foreground nine circles one way, the aback nine the other. Expect to see lots of golfers casting little clumps of grass in the air a lot.
The beforehand acclimate address is good: Little rain and temperatures in the 60s. Don't accept it for a minute.
In '02, if Woods was traveling for his third above of the division and in appropriate position to get it, the wind howled, the rain swirled and a allegorical squall roared in. The wind arctic was in the low 40s and Woods went through 12 pairs of golf gloves.
Woods attempt 81 on that Saturday, http://lowcap.angelfire.com/ and the best champions of the British Open, awning sellers and cape venders, won again.