THE LUCKIEST GOLFER

The Miami Herald ^ | Tue, Jul. 22, 2003

[presidio9]

With all due respect to PGA Tour golfer Ben Curtis, the title, ''Champion golfer of the year,'' seems an awkward fit. Mr. Curtis is an unknown rookie who walked away with the claret jug on Sunday in the British Open.

The Open, one of golf's four big tournaments -- or majors -- is intentionally designed as a grueling test. Playing conditions are awful -- it often is cold, blustery and wet. Fairways are pinched to the width of a traffic lane, the rough is knee-deep, and greens are as slick as a marble tabletop.

Usually, the Open identifies the golfer who is the best player, has control of his emotions and the patience of Job. Sunday's final round began with Mr. Curtis and some of the world's best players, including Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Thomas Borjn, David Love III and Sergio Garcia, bunched within two strokes of each other. By day's end, Mr. Curtis emerged victorious because he shot the day's best round, a 69. He also won because in the course of the week, he suffered fewer ''unlucky'' breaks. This happens when course conditions are so severe that excellent shots aren't always rewarded and bad shots get ''lucky'' bounces. Organizers should ponder if the 2003 Open put too high a premium on luck.

[N. Theknow]

David Love III ?

Wonder if he is any relation to "Davis?"

[kb2614]

"With all due respect to PGA Tour golfer Ben Curtis"

Doesn't sound like the author respects Ben Curtis at all.

[discostu]

Golf is a lot like QBing or goaltending. The ones that are successful put the past in the past. You can't let a bad hole (bad pass, missed save) even enter your mind at the next hole. This is even more important at the British because you will have at least 2 bad holes a round. That's what makes it the most interesting of the majors, it's always cruel.

[kb2614]

DOH!!!!

stupid double post!!!

[marlon]

Perhaps the author should play the course and see how "lucky" he would be.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Nonsense. Ben Curtis deserved his victory.

[Always Right]

Anyone who is 'lucky' enough to be within two strokes of the lead, is good enough to deserve tp win.

[kb2614]

I would like to be that lucky on the municipal course I play on!!

[proxy_user]

Apparently they have sprinklers, but didn't use them. They didn't want to make the course too easy.

It wasn't.

[dead]

They didn't want to make the course too easy. It wasn't.

I’ll say. I liked when they’d show a hole and give the statistics regarding the performance of the best golfers of the world.

“Ten percent of the drives on this hole this weekend have remained on the fairway.”

Those are my lifetime drive statistics.

[fish hawk]

I'm not even a golfer but I was rooting for Curtis. New name, new blood, going to get married real soon, and his dad on the phone showed family love and support. God bless you Curtis and hope to see your name up there quite often like in the beginnings of Woods and Garcia.

[proxy_user]

What I saw in Curtis was that he didn't make mental errors. Thomas Bjorn did:

1. Lose your temper in a sand trap, take a two-stroke penalty. Thoroughly unprofessinal.

2. Leading by 3, fail to get out of a sand trap. OK, that can happen, but there's no reason to try to get too perfect at that stage of the tournament.

3. His second attempt to get out of sand trap was a serious mental error. He should have got out of the trap, walked around, thought it over, and hit a different shot.

Obviously, on a course like that, bad things can and will happen, but Bjorn only compounded his troubles.

[dwilli]

It's a links course, the British Isles are full of courses
almost identical to it.

[MissTargets]

It's nice to see a Northeast Ohio resident do well.
Here is an article that you all might be interested in.

Ken Curtis

[msdrby]

We (prof engineer and I) watched as Tiger expressed his frustration in a childlike manner (I am not a big fan of his anyway), and then we watched Curtis work hard to do his best. There are two things that I am reminded of when I compare Curtis and Woods.

Slow and steady wins the race. (from Aesop's Fables)

It's not a drive, it's a putt. (My father's standard response when I used to complain that my little brother was driving me crazy.)

[xzins]

Shots that seemed excellent but then went awry weren't excellent.

LOL! Great point.

You'd think they were saying that some excellent shots miss the target. I'm gonna have to tell the deer that when I go hunting this winter!

Maybe they'll just fall down for me.

[MissTargets]

Oops! BEN not Ken.

[discostu]

The back 9 really seemed to put the zap on Tiger's head (11 bogies and 1 double bogie) and wound up eating all the momentum he built in the front. Tiger has a major temper, which I think hurts him in the end because he's not good at putting the past where it belongs. Curtis seemed to have a solid "holy crap I'm contending" attitude which is generally good for an athlete, it removes pressure and make it easy to forget flubs and move on to the next hole.

[southernnorthcarolina]

...that course, for all the hype, looked like a goat path. Haven't they invented sprinklers in England yet?

The interior of England, the suburbs of London in particular, has hundreds of "parkland" (as they call them there) courses -- manicured, irrigated, and very similar in appearance to U.S. country clubs.

However, the Open stands by tradition, and conducts the tournament only on true "links" courses. I believe there are nine courses on the official rotation, of which seven are in Scotland. This year's venue, not far from the Cliffs of Dover, is the southernmost of the courses used. Links courses were built on land not conducive to farming. Sandy soil, close to the ocean and exposed to periodic gales. Typically, trees cannot survive on such land. The links courses are not photogenic, true, but if you looked closely, the fairways and greens, if not emerald green, were in pretty good condition. Not so, of course, the waist-high rough, and the pot bunkers (the originals of which, by the way, were "naturally occuring," being dug by sheep into the sides of hills as shelter against the elements -- they'd strip away the thin layer of vegitation, and of course they'd hit sand).

Links courses are all about the weather. If it had rained last week, and the wind had held off, it might have taken 15 or 20 under par to win. Conditions being what they were, however, both the fairways and the greens seemed to shed golf balls. Depending on the direction and force of the wind, and the amount of roll allowed (you couldn't often pitch your shots to the pins due to the hardness of the greens), a 180-yard shot could call for anything from a wedge to a 2-iron. It was an utterly different game than Americans are used to, which makes Ben Curtis' feat the more amazing.

[Ghengis]

I recall this same paper writing the same crap after Ohio State beat their Miami Hurricaines last January 3rd.