No Tiger, so this one’s wide Open

LONDON -- Apparently they’re persisting with plans to hold a British Open starting Thursday, and apparently fans remain intent on attending it in droves, and apparently Britons will employ one of their various sinful reflexes and bet on it with cheery dispatch.

It all speaks to the doggedness of the human animal, given the unfathomable Woods-lessness of the occasion that’s brimming at Royal Birkdale in Stockport on the west coast of England.

As the first major tournament sans Tiger Woods since the Texan Mark Brooks edged the Kentuckian Kenny Perry to win the 1996 PGA Championship in Louisville as dinosaurs roamed the earth, the 137th Open would seem a good bet to prove conclusively that no one person trumps a revered event, a bit of a question given the Woods colossus.

House-renters are up, golf-wagerers are rejuvenated as they bet on everything from who’ll win to Ian Poulter’s clothing to whether the winner will wear a cap, and apparently a Claret Jug will go to an apparent British Open champion, even if the first question he’ll get will go something like, “Is your title devalued?”

“I still believe and I’ll say it again, the game of golf, it will live on past Tiger Woods and past whoever the next best player will be after Tiger Woods,” three-time major winner Ernie Els said last week at the Scottish Open.

Of course, he also said, “And on the other hand, the best player of this generation is not there, and whoever is going to win next week, whoever is going to play well next week, is going to have to answer questions of, ‘Do you think you would have beaten Tiger if he was here?’ And it’s one of those things.”

Referring to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major titles and Tom Watson’s eight, three-time major winner Phil Mickelson said in Scotland, “I don’t look back at the field they played, I just look at the tournaments they have won.”

Of course, he also said, “It’s going to have a negative effect, obviously, on television ratings, on fan interest and so forth. I think it also opens an opportunity for a number of players to come through and maybe win tournaments that they might not have won, who knows?”

Asked how many fans might have canceled rentals since the Woods withdrawal on June 18, Ralph Jackson of the principal Realtor Ball & Percival said, “Not one single person.”

He went further and likened it to the Grand National steeplechase race, whose popularity stems partly from the fact that nobody really has any idea who might win. “I think, from my perspective, it has actually created a lot of interest because it leaves it wide-open.”

On the subject of disposable income in a country where recreational wagering long since has shed its last societal stigmas, last year the bookmakers that adorn every main drag made just under 24 million pounds (about $48 million) on the British Open industry-wide, said Rupert Adams of the William Hill agency.

“And we would expect to be about 30 million this time,” he said.

That’s in pounds, which outdrive dollars roughly twofold.

To some degree, Woods’ absence has unshackled bookmakers and enhanced betting value. It has awakened the “middle level of punter,” Adams said, meaning the bettor who spends the equivalent of between $10 and $60 on the Open.

On the English morning of June 18, before Woods announced his knee injuries, his impending surgery and his rest-of-year hiatus, before the sun rose in America, Woods stood at 13-8 to win the Open, a routine sort of number with Woods but an absurd number in golf, where in pre-Woods days Nick Faldo or Nick Price or Colin Montgomerie used to draw 8-1 if especially backed.

Adams actually joked to interviewers that morning that he wished Woods would take the rest of the year off, especially given a Woods-wins-three-majors bet that figured to cost William Hill about $400,000 if Woods pulled it off.

Now Adams sees “an extremely open book, the best possible for a bookmakers,” while Nick Weinberg of Ladbrokes sees “a balance of the books.” Said Adams, “Everybody in the book’s first 30 or 40 has been extremely well-backed,” and both the wagering and the outcome have become “jolly difficult to forecast.”

On Saturday, Sergio Garcia led at 8-1 on William Hill and 10-1 on Ladbrokes, followed in both by Els at 9-1 and 12-1. Vijay Singh, Adam Scott, Geoff Ogilvy, Retief Goosen and Jim Furyk stood plausibly enticing at 25-1.

Specialty bets had tilted. Ladbrokes, Weinberg said, used to run one for who might finish second, but, “Because Woods isn’t there now, it’s so open that we don’t really need to offer any other markets like that.”

Who’ll finish second has become who’ll finish first.

“Before, you’d see money for British golfers from what we call patriotic punters,” Weinberg said, but in Woods-lessness those bets seem both patriotic and capitalistic.

The prospect of a European winner, 5-1 for the Masters this year at William Hill, stood at 2-1 as of Saturday, and at Betfair, another popular British outfit, the region-of-winner favorite had shifted to Europe, even if the specialty bet for “Top Nordic” had gone unchanged and the 1999 French tragicomedy Jean Van de Velde stood at 1,000-1.

This return to openness has such a 1990s retro feel that Adams of William Hill said he felt happy for most everybody except one Scottish punter, who in 2000 or 2001 put roughly $20,000 on Woods to break Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors by the end of 2010.

A win there would’ve fetched about $218,000, Adams said.

“Obviously that was looking bloody good,” he said, “but now, not so sure.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

British Open

Facts and figures on the 137th British Open, which begins Thursday:

When: Thursday through July 20.

Where: Royal Birkdale (7,173 yards; par: 34-36 -- 70).

TV (all times PDT): Thursday and Friday -- 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (delayed), TNT. Saturday -- 4-6 a.m., TNT; 6 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Channel 7. Sunday -- 3-5 a.m., TNT; 5 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., Channel 7.

Purse: 4.2 million pounds, or $8.236 million. Winner’s share: 750,000 pounds, or $1.487 million.

Defending champion: Padraig Harrington.

Last year: Harrington ended Europe’s eight-year drought without a major by closing with a 67 at Carnoustie to make up a six-shot deficit against Sergio Garcia and defeat him in a playoff. Harrington twice hit into Barry Burn on the 18th and made a double bogey. Garcia bogeyed the last hole to fall into a playoff, and Harrington seized control with a birdie on the first hole.

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-- Associated Press