Wind-Swept Course Suits Watson Fine

Here’s the latest weather report for the British Open: Windy.

Now that’s hardly a bulletin around here, where wind is as much a way of life as red hair, single malt Scotch whiskey and sheep. Anyway, the last player to win the British Open when it was played on this beast of a golf course alongside the cold North Sea showed up Monday to take a quick look around.

And Tom Watson liked what he saw, which was basically fog thick enough to make porridge. In the damp air, there was something that very much resembled gray chill, which came close to matching the resonance of the cold stone houses that stretch along High Street.

No doubt about it, Watson said, this place could pass for 1975, all right. That was when the freckle-faced, gap-toothed 25-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., won his first major championship and the first of his five British Open titles, right here at brutish, unrelenting, punishing Carnoustie.

So what’s it like when the wind howls? Carnasty, of course.

Watson made a quick survey of the old course and predicted a difficult time for all.

“It is going to be a struggle,” he said. “The caddies are best at predicting a winning score and they’re all saying well over par. If we get the blow they are predicting on Thursday, you might see some real tears out there.

“You know, over 72 holes, there are many tragedies. There are tragedies that go on and you just hope to avoid too many of them because every golfer is going to have some: tragedies, bad holes, several bad holes.”

To be sure, it’s probably sound strategy to avoid as much tragedy and bad holes as possible. The problem is, it may not be very possible when the 128th Open Championship begins Thursday on this venerable Scottish links course.

At 7,361 yards, Carnoustie is the longest layout that’s used in the British Open and universally regarded as the hardest, which may or may not have something to do with the list of withdrawals that includes Fred Couples, John Daly, Tom Kite, Steve Jones, Scott Hoch and Ben Crenshaw, not to mention Jack Nicklaus, who isn’t physically up to engaging in hand-to-hand combat with this place.

Watson said he isn’t really surprised.

“I think the handwriting was on the wall,” he said. “When you’re not playing particularly well--playing poorly--you don’t want to put this game to this test. That’s a natural human condition.”

Speaking of conditions, if the weather isn’t tough enough, then there is the rough, which is long enough that it sent Ernie Els into shock when he showed up last week.

Watson says he has heard the complaints about the rough, but he didn’t seem disturbed.

That particular feeling was left to Colin Montgomerie, who doesn’t really like the wind, or at least what it does to golf balls.

Montgomerie called Monday’s weather “a glorious summer’s day.” Maybe in this neighborhood.

Anyway, Montgomerie said he would like it if there is nothing more than a light breeze the rest of the week, presumably just enough to send the fog scurrying from one fairway to another.

“We all hope and pray that it doesn’t become a wind,” Montgomerie said. “If it becomes a wind, you’ll see scores higher than we’ve ever, ever seen in any British Open.”

Montgomerie went on. “Very, very difficult. Very difficult . . . it’s so difficult, so difficult.”

No doubt about it, Carnoustie is difficult.

Watson clearly found it difficult 24 years ago. He had never played a British links course and arrived here with only enough time to play a couple of practice holes. Watson defeated Jack Newton in an 18-hole playoff that wasn’t decided until the last hole. Newton hit his second shot in a bunker and failed to get up and down while Watson made par.

In the victory ceremony, Watson held the claret jug and grinned beneath his houndstooth checked cap.

He had not set foot on the course again until Monday. When he was asked about that victory 24 years ago, Watson said he had learned something about himself.

“I hated losing,” he said.

As for the Carnoustie wind, well, Watson could learn to deal with that.

BRITISH OPEN

WHERE: Carnoustie Golf Club, Scotland

WHEN: Thursday-Sunday

TV

Thursday, ESPN: 6-11 a.m.

Friday, ESPN: 6-11 a.m.

Saturday, Channel 7: 7-11 a.m.

Sunday, Channel 7: 6-10:30 a.m.

LAST YEAR: Mark O’Meara shot a final-round 68, then beat Brian Watts in a four-hole playoff to win at Royal Birkdale.