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A proud history at Royal Birkdale, a strong contingent and no Tiger Woods. Add to that a defending champion under an injury cloud and all factors point to arguably the best chance in years of an Australian winning the British Open when golfest oldest major gets underway on Thursday.
Tiger still the talk of town ahead of Open
World No.3 Geoff Ogilvy believes the conditions will suit him and the 17 other Australians.
“Links golf suits us because we play in a lot of wind, we’re used to the wind part, and we play on quite firm golf courses,” said Ogilvy.
The former US Open champion took Sydney amateur Rohan Blizard under his wing for a practice round as a fierce wind swept the course at Southport, near Liverpool, today.
Last year’s winner, Padraig Harrington revealed he was having treatment for a wrist injury he suffered at the weekend. The Irishman managed only nine holes in practice and said if it was any other tournament, he would have pulled out.
Rated a 25-1 shot by the bookmakers, Ogilvy believes Birkdale course will provide a stern test.
“The golf course is fantastic – it’s really difficult,” he said. “It’s playing really long, quite narrow. The rough is pretty healthy. It’s just a very green Birkdale.”
While Ogilvy reiterated there would be no asterisk against the title to denote Woods’ absence from the tournament in his book, fellow Australian Richard Green, who tied for fourth last year at Carnoustie, believed there was a feeling the field was more open.
“It’s always a very competitive golf tournament, that’s for sure,” Green said.
“But with him not in the field, I think everybody’s going to feel like they’re going to be a chance of winning the British Open, so it’s going to be very competitive.”
Green said he had drawn a lot of confidence from his course record-equalling 64 in the final round last year.
“That was an amazing round of golf I’ll always remember,” Green said.
“The one thing I’ve taken out of it is the belief that I can compete at the British Open.
“That’s one thing I’ll take into this week and go out there and do my best to try and give myself another chance on Sunday.”
Green tied for third at last weekend’s Scottish Open.
“I was pretty determined over the last three or four weeks to get myself into form and ready to play this week and I feel pretty confident that I’ve done that so far,” he said.
“I always highlight the British Open every year as the part of the year that I want to be playing my best golf … it’s such a great tournament and one that all Australians really want to win.”
With so many Australians in the field, including world No.4 Adam Scott, Green thinks the chances of one of them winning the title are improved.
“All the guys that are here are all playing great golf and making good names for themselves so it’s going to be good, hopefully one of us can get up,” Green said.
Stuart Appleby said the course perhaps suited Australian players like Peter Thomson, whose control led him to five British Open titles, two of them at Royal Birkdale, and Ian Baker-Finch, who won on the same course in 1991.
Only Australians and Americans have won the Open at the venue, with Arnold Palmer (1961), Lee Trevino (1971), Johnny Miller (1976), Tom Watson (1983) and Mark O’Meara (1998).
“Knowing that, you’d like to, as an Australian, use that as a distant form of extra motivation – to know that Australians know how to do it around here,” Appleby said.
“It’s certainly very much an accuracy course off the tee, it’s very tight.
“We’d love to think an Aussie can win this week for sure. The chances of it happening are real enough because we’ve got enough players.”
Thick rough resulting from a wet summer means hitting straight in the notorious breeze will be more important than ever, while the redesigned par-5 17th has raised eyebrows with its heavily undulating green.
“It’s probably a little overdone, that’s probably the way to put it, very severe, unlike the rest of the course,” Appleby said of the 17th.