Surviving the British Open

First appeared on July 22, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

As a young boy I remember watching the British Open with my father. The driving rain sweeping down over a lifeless moonscape, hurricane force winds ripping at the flagsticks and forty degree temperatures in July, all foretold of a bleak existence and instilled in me early on a fierce determination never to visit.

England, where the beer flows warm and shirty people tell you to buck up when its monkey’s outside. A Fantasy Island for the downtrodden where, instead of Mai-tai’s and leis, the women greeting you hand out cricket bats and ponchos.

From the comfort of his chair, my father slipped peanuts into his Coke while miserable men in flapping rain gear braced themselves against a treacherous wind, a howling fury battering every shot. All this as I caught myself taking in the warmth and comfort surrounding me, wondering why I would ever even leave the room.

This is of course what we Americans are. For ending the Big One and giving the world a cheap automobile and airplanes, we deserve a little pampering. We make cars with heated steering wheels and we want extra fries with that and faster Internet service and somebody to put our shopping cart away at Wal-Mart once the car is loaded.

We see St. Andrews on the telly and cringe, thinking Scotland as a vacation destination could only appeal to a grizzled Polar Explorer or the English. An angry sea throwing itself against the rocky shore sending giant curtains of mist exploding into the air. A sky the color of concrete under which jaded locals with ashen faces huddle, the collars of their Pea coats turned up, speaking fondly of that magical Thursday when they were school children and a strange round object filled the sky and warmed their world, if but for a short time.

Every year at this time the golf world descends upon this barren rock in the North Atlantic, a place so forbidding that more than 300 years ago our forefathers packed up all they had and ran for the hills. Embarking on a trip where, compared to the near constant dreariness of England, they were willing to brave small pox, scurvy, a dangerous sea voyage into the unknown and a mob of angry natives armed with bows and arrows and hatchets carved from stone fixed to sticks using the hide of the deer, an instrument of death so skilled with were they that it could be thrown from great distances and still split the hairs upon your head.

So from near and far they journeyed to the Old Course in St. Andrews Scotland, which is not England you say. And this is true, if you are also willing to argue that Illinois is not Nebraska. Even ESPN, whose power is so great a SportsCenter commercial with Putin and the San Diego Chicken sharing an elevator would surprise no one, couldn’t dress Scotland up for, despite filming in HD, she still came through your television appearing black and white.

The American spirit, albeit portly and somewhat self-serving, is no stranger to the Open having won half of them since 1990. In the end two Americans found themselves in contention late as their countrymen could only watch from the comfort of their living rooms while St. Andrews gnashed her terrible teeth and rolled her terrible eyes and showed her terrible claws.

Ultimately, the award for hanging on the longest in the 144th Open Championship went to Zach Johnson, who seems bright, talented and well spoken, though we’ve no way of knowing if he corrals his own shopping cart at Wal-Mart.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams