"The essential problem with the British Open is that it's always played on links courses"

Sounds to me like Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press has spent a few too many days under the hot sun studying the misunderstood genius of Warwick Hills. Or, he just needed to fill some column space.

I've made up my mind. I hate the British Open.

And don't give me this "cradle of golf" and "oldest championship" argument. I don't care. If you want antiquity, go visit pyramids.

This is golf. Or at least it's supposed to be golf. Instead, we have to watch the best golfers in the world strike balls that land and roll another 50 yards on courses so rock-hard and dried-out they make I-94 look soft and supple. And I'm getting tired of it.

I'm tired of seeing so many pot bunkers in play it makes the course look like the face of an acne-riddled teenager.

This is special:

The essential problem with the British Open is that it's always played on links courses. The U.S. Golf Association's definition of a links course is "tracts of low-lying, seaside land (that) are characteristically sandy, treeless and undulating, often with lines of dune ridges and covered by bent grass or gorse."

Basically, these courses were built on fallow ground that linked the sea to farmland. My bet is that golf was invented when two Scotsmen looked at the useless land and one said to the other, "Fancy a game of hitting a rock with a stick for four hours?" If only the other guy had said, "Nah, let's visit the pyramids," we all would have been a lot better off.

Comments

[cmoore]

That is easily one of the most uninformed columns I have ever read on any topic. That's like me, a lawyer, trying to write an opinion on whether a bridge meets engineering standards. In the end, the author seems to suggest that the world would have been better off without golf at all. Someone please take his laptop away.

[r.a.c.]

and people wonder why Americans are often perceived as "ignorant".

[Glyn]

What in the world is wrong with watching play on a different type of golf course once in a while? I can watch the "normal" kind every day of the week. I like seeing something different for a change.

[CBell]

Bet he offers a lot of insight on World Cup soccer and the Tour de France, too.

[JPB]

Well, the whole thing was horrible, but the part where he thinks the Scotsmen would ever take 4 hours to play, thus implying he thinks the 4 hour round is standard makes me think drawing and quartering is perhaps not as cruel as we have assumed in the last couple hundred years.

[Jim]

to cmoore - why did you think a luddite like that would have a laptop? I hope the roller derby never changes its circle - he'll go into severe depression

[MacDuff]

can we assume there's a vacancy at the Detroit Free Press for a golf correspondent?

[Smolmania]

Just looked up moron in my Funk & Wagnalls. Guess whose picture appears?

[Steven T.]

Let's see tennis has 4 majors:

Australian on composite courts

French on clay courts

Wimbledon on grass courts

US on hard courts

Why can't golf have 1 major on a links course?

Monarrez is really a golf writer? One would never know from this article. I guess he was disappointed that there were no water hazards or Fazio waterfalls at Hoylake.

[AC]

Look on the bright side. He makes us all look good.

[Dave Marrandette]

This is extremely unfortunate. This guy is actually employed as a golf writer by the Detroit Free Press and is actually a member of the Golf Writers Association of America.

To the DFP: Please call me! I am available for employment as a golf writer.

[matt]

I just sent carlos the link to this page - my guess is that he won't understand any of the criticism of his column, if he makes the effort to check it out.

[ian andrew]

Hoylake was an odd tournament with the weather, I would suggest he doesn't paint all British Opens with this one; and I in turn will try not to paint his career with that ridiculous column.

[LEFTY]

The question is, what would you do if they decided to incorporate Loch Lomond into the Open rotation?

My answer is too graphic for this website.

[Shaq Buddy]

The good new is Carlos and I will never hold each other up on a course as we will never play the same course!

[the village idiot]

although he's spot-on about the way golf was invented when he mentions the two Scotsmen (read: shepherds) loafing around on some otherwise useless land, and deciding they had nothing better to do than stupidly knock a ball around with a stick.