Royal St George's and its howling winds set Sergio Garc�a, Luke Donald and Ryo Ishikawa a stern inquisition at the Open
It is a maxim when setting up golf courses to host Open Championships that the task is not to embarrass or humiliate but instead challenge so that, by the end, the best golfer, with the greatest array of shots and imagination to use them, should receive the Claret Jug on Sunday evening. The defence of such courses lies primarily in the weather and the pin placements.
Royal St George's, with its humpy, lumpy fairways and rolling greens, offers that bit more than most, and when the wind biffs across this spartan south-east-most corner of England, and the rain slants in, this can be the sort of place of which Torquemada would approve. The layout twists and turns so that in the wind each hole offers a different examination. No two offer the same direction: downwind and into it, crosswinds from left to right, all test to the full the ability to shape the ball, to hold it steady. The fairways can throw even the most well struck shots into trouble.
On Thursday, from the moment shortly before 9.30am that the world's No1 golfer, Luke Donald, and Sergio Garc�a teed off in the company of the precocious Japanese teenager Ryo Ishikawa, there was no respite. At times, as they made their way hard by the foreshore in the middle of the round, the cooling towers of the defunct Richborough power station misted away as the promised rain began to fall, and the three dug their hands in their pockets and ploughed on with hunched shoulders, it was brutal.
These are the days when patience is the virtue, when misfortune, of which there will be plenty, is greeted with equanimity. By the end of their round, four and a half hours of toil, Donald had battled his way to a one-over-par 71, containing three birdies and four bogeys, including three in five holes on the back nine, while Garc�a finished where he started, a potentially excellent round (with five holes to play he had risen to two under par) spoiled by an errant driver for which not even his powers of recovery could compensate.
For Ishikawa, meanwhile, a chastening experience on the front nine, over which he took 41 shots, six over par, was offset by a back nine of 33, two shots better than Garc�a and four fewer than Donald.
Three tournament wins this year and a host of top-10 finishes have elevated Donald to the top of the tree and there is an expectation now rather than hope that he can take the step up to a major winner as befits No1.
The applause as he walked on to the 1st tee was generous, more so than in previous years, he observed later, and he split the fairway with his tee shot, only to see his approach scoot through the green. A beautifully judged 60-foot putt and a tap-in gave him his par.
This, though, was going to be a day where his putter was little more than tepid. Although he holed for his first birdie from 12 feet on the par-three 3rd, all 240 yards of it and the only unbunkered short hole on the entire Open rota, he missed a second from 10 feet on the next, and dropped a shot on the 6th when his par putt from six feet did a grand tour of the hole before horseshoeing out.
A birdie on the long 7th from around 30 feet took him back under par again, only for the work to be undone by bogeys on the short 11th, where he was bunkered from the tee and missed from 10 feet, the 13th where he left a chip short and failed to convert it, and the difficult 15th where he failed to capitalise on a perfect tee shot. Redemption came for Donald on the 17th, where his tee shot kicked left into a nasty lie, but with a nice angle to the flag. His perfect approach to 10 feet did the trick.
Meanwhile, birdies at the 12th where he played a majestic approach to no more than 18 inches, and the 13th, where he punched his long approach in low under the wind and holed from 15 feet, had propelled Garc�a to two under par. His driver was starting to malfunction now and on the 15th he carved his tee shot right and into the crowd almost 200 yards from the flag. An eternity followed before the ball emerged from the tunnel of spectators, coming up short of the green in a cross bunker that was always a possibility.
The lie was a tricky one ? these bunkers are genuine hazards rather than the get-out option they are on so many courses ? but somehow he got the ball up steeply and on to the green from where he was able to trickle a putt down and in from 10 feet. Seve, his mentor, would have been smiling down at that.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/jul/14/the-open-2011-sergio-garcia
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