The British Open

I’ve enjoyed watching The Open Championship. It has taken me a while to stop referring to it as the British Open. Well, that isn’t true I still call it the British Open most of the time. But I know better.

I think at the onset it was one of those nationalistic things, like chanting U-S-A at the Olympics. I felt referring to it as THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP was a put-down to the United States Open. But I outgrew that. Somewhat.

I watched Saturday as competitors played with wind and rain and 58 degrees. I smiled as I thought my Grandmother McBride, with a broad smile of her own, would refer to it as picnic weather in Scotland. I delight in watching well-paid, comfortable professional golfers play in such weather. Perhaps for the same reasons that I will text my sons to flip the television to the “Ohio State game”, they’re playing in deep snow. Or that I watch NASCAR highlights to see the wrecks. Or I watch boxing.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I like to watch golf played in weather I would never want to play in. If it were raining so hard that I had to wear my cap backward to prevent the raindrops pouring from the brim from distracting me, well, I wouldn’t be playing.

Wait, I first learned to play golf in northern Arizona. Spring golf meant there were snowdrifts beneath the towering Ponderosa pine trees. But those were different days.

I recall when following his golf muse and dreams of the modern grand slam, Arnold Palmer went “across the pond” in pursuit of a British Open title and brought an America awareness to the event. American television soon followed.

I first recall considering it and it’s sponsoring organization, The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, to be quite elitist. Playing on a mountain course with cottonseed hull greens, I hadn’t yet realized that Golf Club and elitist was not an oxymoron.

Regardless, The R & A at the time required use of its ball, a smaller ball than the American ball and that all television commentators be British. I guess I didn’t mind the ball, but I struggled with the commentators. My ears were not tuned to their curious accents.

And I played sand traps, their courses had bunkers, pot bunkers, pot bunkers in the fairway, greenside pot bunkers so deep you can’t see a man standing in them.

Vince Lombardi famously said, “A winner sees a green near every sand trap. A loser sees two or three sand traps near every green.” Wonder if Coach ever saw a pot bunker?

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-anda- half-inch course… the space between your ears.” – Bobby Jones

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.