The British Open began today and already some very low numbers on the board at Royal Lytham in England. Every major has their thing. The Masters is the pressure cooker that has had the best players constantly rise to the occasion. The PGA is on your local public course and the guys can all shoot about -34 over a four day tournament. The US Open is played on the most ridiculously hard courses invented by man. The British is a schitzo four days that are totally determined by the weather conditions which will range from pleasant to light rain to monsoon, and no wind to breezy to tornado conditions, amazingly all in the same day.
Today, the course played pretty easy. Adam Scott posted a -6 for his round, Zach Johnson at -5 and a slew of big names at -3, including everyone's favorite adultering golfer, Tiger Woods. There's also a bunch of other guys under par as well.
So let's get to the Tiger Woods portion of the weekend, which is all anyone really cares about. Whether you love him or hate him, the sport is VASTLY more interesting when he plays well, and for the third straight major, he played pretty well to open the tournament. Saturday, of course, used to be moving day for El Tigre but recent majors have seen that as the day he wilts. So, let's take today's -3 with a bit of a grain of salt.
Couple things to look at for the next 3 days. The first hole is a long par 3. Tiger birdied it today and you could tell it instantly buoyed his confidence as he went on a mini tear to start the tournament. Early Par 3 birdies do that for your confidence. How does he respond though if it goes the other way on him, if he takes the bogey to start the day? Also, the course is a Par 70, which means only two par 5s on the course, so there aren't going to be many situations where he can just get there in two and 2 put for birdie. He will need to win the tournament on Par 4 second shots, getting close enough for makeable birdie putts and then he's gotta knock those putts down.
We'll see what happens. Nice to have real sports around again. Olympics coming real soon now as well.
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