'Arnold Palmer, still The King'
(By: Ben Coley > SL)
After Arnold Palmer's team won Wednesday's Champion Golfers' Challenge, the stage is now set for The 144th Open Championship.
"Don't you just love it?"
The 1999 Open champion had just rolled in a curling 20-foot putt, enough to secure first place for Team Palmer in the Champions Golfers' Challenge. Minutes earlier his captain, Arnold Palmer, had walked onto the green to a standing ovation. His role now confined to a non-playing capacity and indeed happy to keep his distance from the cup, The King looked somehow smaller than he used to, lost momentarily on the vast canvas that is the 18th green. But golf looks after its icons and the 85-year-old was soon embracing Darren Clarke, Bill Rogers and Lawrie before their victory - decided by aggregate age - was confirmed to those watching.
Afterwards, Arnie spoke to the BBC's Rishi Persad, who as usual found just the right tone. Brief, delicate, respectful but never patronising, he allowed 'the great man' to dictate the course of a chat which lasted just 65 seconds, a minute or so you sense Persad will remember.
"I look at these stands and they were full of people when we started...the enthusiasm, the desire, everything..." said Palmer, his throat drying as he searched for the right words. His eyes left Persad, rolling instead across the undulations of a place which has played such an important part in his adult life. He went on. "The golf course... it looks so magnificent. The only thing I'm sorry for is it isn't 1960."
Persad let him go - "Arnold Palmer, still The King!" - and with five words disappeared any notion of over-indulgence on the part of the R&A.
Even those in the plush greenside hotels, who one suspects may not all know the finer details of golf's handbook, were on their feet to salute a collection of the sport's greatest players. Tiger Woods, whose focus remains a 15th major title and a third at the Old Course, posed for a photograph along with his captain Tom Wieskopf and team-mates Nick Price and Mark O'Meara. Tony Jacklin celebrated Tom Lehman's birdie like it mattered. Pomp and ceremony of the highest order.
St Andrews played fair. The sun was low, the shadows long; benign conditions which if repeated for four days would see records disappear. And yet as the focus shifts to Thursday and beyond, it seems the Old Lady is about to up the intensity. While they should tee-off in sunshine in the morning, come the afternoon gusts are expected and there's a chance that the weather on Friday afternoon could match that of five years ago, when Rory McIlroy's challenge was blown away in 80 strokes.
McIlroy's absence from this 144th Open Championship is a great loss. Until last July many believed that if he were to win a Claret Jug it would have to be here, and returning as defending champion following that romp at Hoylake last summer would've made him a dangerous animal, one capable of eating alive Jordan Spieth's grand slam bid.
Never, though, does an Open at St Andrews rely on one man. They say Ben Hogan didn't even make it to the Old Course, after all. And so when Thomas Bjorn, Greg Owen and Rod Pampling tee this latest renewal off, the world number one will begin a welcome break from the spotlight. It shifts instead to Spieth, under way shortly after half-past nine with Hideki Matsuyama, whose every move will be followed by a horde of reporters from his native Japan, and Dustin Johnson, whose three-putt at Chambers Bay helped keep the wheels turning on Spieth's quest for an unprecedented clean sweep.
Little more than 20 minutes later, Woods takes to the stage. With Louis Oosthuizen alongside him, the last three Opens at St Andrews are accounted for. Jason Day, one of the most prolific contenders in major championships since Oosthuizen's masterclass, somehow slips in unnoticed despite a display of Woods-like defiance at the US Open just one month ago.
What of Woods? At Augusta he appeared free from the day-to-day malaise in which he's slumped on the PGA Tour. Never mind reps, never mind trajectory, never mind release patters - once he went back to the place he loves, instinct took over. If it happens again at St Andrews - and this appears more likely now than it did in the spring - then Woods may end day one, day two or even day three in the mix. Some wrongly consider the majors played when Woods was sidelined to have somehow meant less. It would be fitting therefore were Tiger himself to undermine that point of view by capitalising upon McIlroy's absence.
Whatever it is that lies in store over the coming 72 holes and more, one man will earn a place alongside some of golf's greatest players. The Old Course at St Andrews has a habit of rewarding its most able guests. What part the weather plays who can tell? How sound a preparation Spieth has chosen remains to be seen. But the quality of the champion won't be in doubt. All we can do now, with bets placed and agendas set, is wait for another puzzle to unravel.
Don't you just love it?
