British Open Has Been Tough On Americans

Ben Crenshaw, a connoisseur of golf’s rich history and tradition, not to mention being one of the game’s brilliant shotmakers, is among three dozen American golfers on their way to the British Open at Royal Birkdale this week in what is becoming a continuing crusade to stem the tide of European success at the highest level of professional golf.

Crenshaw also is a realist. He thinks he knows why Europeans have won five of the last seven British Opens, why they’ve won six of the last nine Masters, why they haven’t lost in the last three Ryder Cup matches.

“Actually it’s a number of things,” Crenshaw, the 1984 Masters champion, said last week. “First of all, they have some outstanding individual players. They are extremely motivated, they work very hard at their games, and they have all the shots you need to win under any conditions. The courses they play on the European tour are rustic, natural and unkempt. And they’re confronted with more natural elements -- rain and wind especially -- that makes them better players.

“And agronomy has a lot to do with it. It’s gotten so good in this country, and this may sound wild but it’s almost gotten too good. On tour, we almost never get a bad lie. Our courses are soft, we hit it and it stops, so we make the same kind of shots all the time. Everything is so predictable, and some of our players today are not enamored with less than perfect conditions. They play bump and run over there; we never see it.”

So, in the latest world rankings, based largely on the most recent results from events all over the world, Ian Woosnam of Wales is No. 1, Jose-Maria Olazabal of Spain is No. 2, Nick Faldo of England No. 3 and Greg Norman of Australia No. 4. Payne Stewart, winner of the U.S. Open last month who was second in the British Open a year ago, is the first American, at No. 5, and of the top 10 there are five Europeans, one Australian and one South African. The other top 10 Americans are No. 7 Paul Azinger and Fred Couples at No. 8. Azinger and fellow Americans Scott Hoch and Larry Nelson withdrew from the British Open last week.

At Royal Birkdale, a links course near the Irish Sea with deep rough and narrow fairways, Woosnam is the pick of the English bookmakers, who make him 5-1. Faldo 6-1, sixth-ranked Seve Ballesteros and compatriot Olazabal both 8-1 and Stewart, Couples and Norman 8-1.

Still, Crenshaw (40-1) adds an asterisk to his praise of the foreign delegation. “They’re very strong at the top,” he said, “but I really believe if you look at the European tour compared to the (U.S.) PGA Tour, we have much more depth. Yes, their best players are outstanding, but you go up and down our tour and you’ll see a lot of guys who can win anywhere any week.”

Nevertheless, the success of Europe’s big six -- Masters champion Woosnam, defending British Open champion Faldo, Ballesteros, Olazabal, Britain’s Sandy Lyle and Germany’s Bernhard Langer -- since the mid-1980s has many in the U.S. establishment wondering if the current continental balance of power in the game is just a fluke, or a trend that will continue into the 21st century.

Some say it’s a little of both.

“Look, when we had guys like Hogan, Snead, Nelson or Demaret, we dominated golf,” said Johnny Miller, the NBC-TV analyst who won the British Open at Royal Birkdale in 1976. “Now the Europeans are doing the same thing. Woosie, Faldo, Seve, those guys are just unbelievably great players, and that’s been the heart of their Ryder Cup team. When they go downhill, who replaces them? Who knows.

“The difference in their top guys and some of ours is that they seem to turn pro at a much earlier age, 15 or 16. They came up from caddie ranks or working 12 to 14 hours in a pro shop. You tell me if a guy like that won’t be tougher than a guy who goes through our junior program, wins in college and joins our tour. And in the majors, tough guys win out.

“A lot of the guys on that European tour never went to Oxford or Cambridge, I can tell you that,” Miller said. “It’s that Lee Trevino mentality a lot of them have, and that’s hard to beat.”

The European tour is played on a variety of courses, under all manner of weather conditions. The fact that Europeans no longer play the smaller British ball, which went out of existence in the early 1980s, has improved their games and made them more competitive on North American courses.

The European tour has become Americanized in other ways. They are playing for significant purses, using the best U.S.- and Japanese-made equipment and showing up more frequently on European television. As a result, there has been a golf boom all over western Europe, meaning more courses are available to more people, yielding a larger talent pool for the future.

“I would say the competition level of their tour is where the PGA was 15 years ago,” said Tim Finchem, deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the PGA Tour. “We had a small number of guys -- Nicklaus, Watson, Trevino, people like that -- who were a cut above everyone else. Now, one of 60 or 70 guys can win out here. On their tour, one of the reasons they’re so high in the rankings is that their best players are either winning or finishing in the top 10. Because there’s not as much competition; they’ve only got four or five guys to beat.”

Still, no one disputes that the top Europeans can compete with the top Americans at any venue, though they have not had nearly as much success in the U.S. Open or PGA Championship, where the courses usually are set up with long, thick rough, slick greens and obscure pin placements.

“But I do think they have adapted better to our way of playing than we have to theirs,” said Ken Venturi, the 1964 U.S. Open champion at Congressional now a CBS-TV analyst.

“I also think their guys might be a little hungrier. The worst thing you can build into a player is softness. Our guys make so much money and they’ve got different priorities now. They ought to try sleeping in a Motel 6 for five or six weeks and see what it’s like.”

Crenshaw talked about another difference between the European and American tours.

“I was talking to Mike Smith, a guy on our tour who played over there,” Crenshaw said. “His theory is that guys in Europe have nothing to do but play golf and sleep. Here, we’ve got so many other things to do, off-the-course activities, appearances, families. You can go to a mall and see a movie. Some of the sites they play in are somewhat remote. So when they get up in the morning, they practice before they play. It stays light over there forever, so when they’re finished, they play some more.”

Who does Crenshaw like in the British Open?

“I’ll take Payne Stewart,” he said. “He’s playing well. So is Lanny Wadkins. They’re tough guys too, and that’s what it takes.”