BY PAUL MAHONEY
WEDNESDAY
Arnold Palmer
ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND |
Wel-
come to Scotland. Anyone know
how to build an ark? Sideways rain
and a 30 mph gusting hooly cancel
the Old Geezers Hip Replacement
Invitational (sorry, Champions’
Challenge). Twenty-six former
winners of the Open fly into St.
Andrews hoping to play the first,
second, 17th and 18th. They get to
sip port and play cribbage in the
R&A clubhouse instead. Probably.
Arnold Palmer holds court in
the media centre and cries. He has
hands like shovels and fingers like
burned sausages and a face like a
turtle that has been left out in the
sun for too long. He’s 80 with a Tin-
tin quiff. Cool. And, boy, he loves to
chew the fat. He reminisces about
his first visit to the Old Course for
the 1960 Open.
John Daly does it again in his lucky
pants – a sentence that’s much funnier in St.
Andrews than it is in Arkansas. It’s a lost-
in-translation thing. He shoots 66 sporting
Jackson Pollock No. 5 trousers – a sentence
that makes no sense in Arkansas. He’s back
in the media centre at the Open for the first
time since 1995 when he won with a mullet
and a green, sleeveless windcheater.
“The good thing about these pants is you
can get dressed in the dark and any shirt is
going to match,” he says, working his audi-
ence. He’s 44 now and says he’s no longer the
Wild Thing. “I'm not drinking and I just can't
eat as much of the bad crap as I used to,” he
says. So what do we call him now, then? “Oh, I
dunno,” he says, pausing for comedic effect. “Mild Thing?” Belly laughs all round. Though it’s only half the belly it once was. Rory McIlroy has never shot worse than 69 on the Old Course. Still hasn’t after a 63 that is the lowest first-round score at the Open and ties the best score at a major. His eight other rounds are 69, 69 (both as an amateur), 67, 68, 67, 68, 65, 69. He leads by two shots from South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen. “Seeing Graeme (McDowell) win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach made me realize that winning a major might not be as far away as I thought,” McIlroy says. “I don’t want to be the only Irishman at the Ryder Cup that hasn’t won a major.”
John Daly
FRIDAY
Rory McIlroy has curry and Diet Coke
for supper on Thursday night in the
Jigger Inn adjacent to the 17th green
and the Old Course Hotel. Then there’s
a wind problem on Friday at St. An-
drews. Coincidence? Lodewicus The-
odorus Oosthuizen (real name) gets the
luck of an early draw and the calmer
weather. He posts 67 to get to 12-un-
der par then heads back to his B&B to
laugh at his rivals blowin’ in the wind.
This year’s recipient of the Greg
Norman/Tom Watson Former Cham-
pions Comeback Silver Plate is Mark
Calcavecchia, champion in 1989. He
goes out in the first group at 6:30 a.m.
and is back indoors with a 67 before
the wind has properly got out of bed.
The 50-year-old enjoys his customary
couple of pints each night in the com-
pany of Brenda, his wife and caddie. “I
haven’t grown up any,” he says. “I’m
still 30. I think us old guys can hang
with the young guns.”
Wind stops play at 2:40 p.m. for one
hour and five minutes. Just enough
time for Ian Poulter to nip into the hotel
for a pot of tea and a cake. “And no, it’s
not Earl Grey,” he twitters. “That’s like
drinking my nan’s perfume.” Nice.
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