I'm Jean
Van de Velde, and I can't believe my eyes. The soggy final round of the
2007 Open Championship is on TV, and the cameras are showing Carnoustie's
18th hole from every angle. Or at least they say it's the 18th hole.
Where's the boomerang board that smacks two-iron approaches backward across the
Barry Burn? Where's the knee-high rough that swallows golf balls without even a
hint of a burp? Where are the swarms of African tsetse flies and the blinding
smoke from brush fires set by the R&A? When I famously blew my three-stroke
lead on the 72nd hole of the 1999 Open, the 18th was so tough that you needed a
team of Navy SEALs to get across the Burn. Paul Lawrie, who beat me and Justin
Leonard in a four-hole playoff, celebrated by getting a tattoo: I BIRDIED THE
LAST AT CARNOUSTIE.
And it wasn't only the 18th hole. The fairways at the '99 Open were 12 yards
across at their widest point, the greens were overseeded with ornamental
cactus, and the par-3s had pot bunkers--between the tee markers! Only one guy
equaled par in the first round, and that guy, Rod Pampling, shot 86 on Friday
and missed the cut by three strokes. The headline writers dubbed it carnasty,
and it was. When I jammed home my clutch putt for a triple-bogey 7 to gain
the playoff, I joined Paul and Justin at six-over-par 290. It was the highest
winning score in an Open since 1946, when Sam Snead won with the same number at
St. Andrews.
But now it's 2007, it's Sunday afternoon, and I'm watching Padraig Harrington walk onto the 18th tee with a one-shot lead, and--sacre bleu!--he's nine under par! What's more, 18 others are under par and my (almost) winning score is going to be beaten by 44 players--none of whom, I might add, had to hit out of rough genetically engineered to match the tensile strength of 30-gauge electrical wire. Stewart Cink shot a first-round 69 and said, "The course is playing about as easy as it's going to play." Paul McGinley, who shot two rounds in the 60s this week (nobody did that in '99), said, "It's playing soft. The bite in the course is gone."
Speaking just for myself and France, that bites. And what was I supposed to think yesterday when Steve Stricker equaled the course record with a seven-under 64? "Those greens were so ridiculous, I mean hard," Steve said. I thought he was mocking me and the other '99ers until I realized he was talking about the greens at Oakmont during last month's U.S. Open. Carnoustie's greens, by comparison, were as soft as a steak-and-kidney pie. "I've never seen a links course where the fairways are so pure and the greens so good," Sergio García said after his first-round 65. "You could hit a five-iron, and it wasn't going to release 15 yards."
Are you kidding me? In '99 you'd hit a five-iron off the tee of a par-4 and watch the ball bounce 100 yards before disappearing into intermediate rough as thick as Boo Weekley. "Unfair and ridiculous" is how Tiger Woods later described that setup. But now it's 2007, and players are sticking their irons from lies that an archeologist couldn't get to in '99.
Attendez. Harrington has just driven into the burn, taken a drop, hit his third into the burn, taken another drop and made double-bogey 6. Well . . . c'est la vie.
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