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Winning is the only thing

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Posted: Saturday July 17, 1999 07:24 AM

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland (CNN/SI) -- One of the great lines in the media center during Thursday's abomination more formally known as the first round of the British Open here was from a muttering little fellow staring at the huge scoreboard.

"Just because they gave birth to the game here," he said, "doesn't mean it has to die here, too."

It had all the trappings of a funeral, to be sure. In the end, the best 156 players in the world finished a collective 1,142 strokes over par. For perspective, a year ago on the same day the same number of players at a far more benign Royal Birkdale were a miserly 322 over. Twenty seven broke par that day last year. Not a one Thursday. Just one, in fact, managed to get it as low as 3 under during his round before collapsing.

But there is a more basic and yet subtle undercurrent this year that must be advanced for your consideration.

"Par doesn't mean a damn thing," said one veteran player. Winning is all, one shot better than the next man. And that is precisely how they have played the game in Scotland since some masochist invented it four or five or six centuries ago.

In America, par is almighty, the Holy Grail, what either keeps us fighting or sends us to tennis or bridge (or off a bridge). Such a relative thing, an arbitrary number decided by someone else as the medium achievement. Anything better is grand. Anything worse is less so.

In Scotland, winning is almighty. Period. They tend toward match play mostly here, hole by hole, and thus par means absolutely nothing. One lower than your opponent is everything.

And thus the Scot likely viewed Thursday's first round of the Open a bit different than the rest of us. That Rodney Pampling, who is married to a sports psychiatrist and might start a trend if he keeps this up, shot even par to lead it means only that he leads it. One better than the rest.

Truthfully, it would be a far less stressful way of facing the game for all of us. Instead of climbing that hill toward 72 (or 71 or 70 or whatever the layout artists decide), we simply climb toward one less than the man across the fairway.

After all, these folks supposedly DID invent the game, didn't they? Regardless of the horrors of their designs, they must have known something.

 

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