This Sporting Day:
The 2006 British Open

Tradition is a wonderful, noble concept that adds credence and perspective to an event. It allows you to move forward through looking back, driving forward into the unknown horizon while occasionally looking back to remember where you came from and what it meant. And so it is with golf’s British Open, the most traditional and sentimental sporting event on the calendar.

Since 1860, when Willie Park Senior won the first Open Championship at the Prestwick Golf Club, the Open has thrived on tradition, increasing in prestige and worth with every passing championship. It is the undisputed peak of the golfing mountain, the achievement that surpasses all others.

This year’s chapter takes place at Royal Liverpool, aka Hoylake, on an oft-criticised but time honoured links course that will see all players tested to their zenith. This is the first time since 1967 that The Championship will be played at Hoylake. And if most commentators are to be believed, it will be the last, a farewell they say, to a course now deemed obsolete and unsuited to modern golf. But this commentator…well, he hopes Royal Liverpool fights on because it is courses like this that have built the British Open to its current stature and if one tournament respects its history, it is the British Open.

Teeing off favourite will be, as always, the incomparable Tiger Woods. He walks the hallowed fairways as defending champion and pre-post favourite and with the specter of his recently deceased father at his side but he will stand tall and will not capitulate to the pressure that any of these three factors-let alone all combined-would lead most mere mortals to bow to. Not Tiger. He will thrive under the weight and within the moment. He always has. And I would bet that he always will.

But enough of the Tiger superlatives. All has been said elsewhere and anything I add will merely be repetition.

I will leave it at this. Tiger will be getting my money to take out the 135th Open Championship. He currently sits at $6 with most bookmakers and this seems like a pretty decent price all things considered. Now the grieving is subsiding, Tiger will be motivated to win a big one for his dad. There is nothing bigger than the British Open. He handles links courses as well as anybody in the field and this course, with its shortness and unprotected dog legs, will suit the Tiger to perfection. And his recent form has been acceptable, running second in the Western Open in only his second tourney back since his father’s death.

Conversely, his main opponents seem to have some black marks next to their name. Phil Mickelson, the best player over the last twelve months, will enter the tournament with the ghosts of his U.S Open capitulation still haunting him. His British Open record is also not wonderful, with his only top thirty finish in the last half-decade being his 2004 third. Vijay Singh has been out-of-sorts this year, recording only one PGA victory and missing the top five in both the Masters and the U.S Open. Ernie Els has been playing ordinarily of late, recording only three top ten victories all year, not recording a single tournament victory.

So Tiger appears to have the measure of his main rivals. But the British Open has thrown up some funny results before. Just ask 1,000/1 to one chance Todd Hamilton. So sit back and enjoy the 135th Championship and if Tiger wins, he will add the most emotion charged chapter to an already wonderful tale.