ART SPANDER
SANDWICH, ENGLAND |
To the British,
the Open Championship, that exercise in
broken umbrellas and broken dreams – for
verification, see Donald, Luke and West-
wood, Lee – is less a golf tournament than
a national treasure to be protected at all
costs from Americans.
We are, as George Bernard Shaw pointed
out, two nations separated by a common
language. More than that, we are kept
apart by different sporting philosophies.
bunker on the fourth hole, named “Hima-
laya,” big enough to hide Rupert Murdoch’s
embarrassment, and, some 90 miles from
London, for being the most southerly of
courses on the Open rota.
There’s a quote attributed to Jack Nick-
laus, “Open venues get worse the farther
south you go.” Whether Jack, who shot 81
the first round of the Open in 1981 at St.
George’s, actually said that is problemati-
cal. But if there were a course below this
one, it would be in France, 22 miles away.
Sandwich, the town bordering St.
George’s, has nothing to do with Subway or
your local delicatessen. The name comes
The remarkable Spaniard, Miguel Angel
Jimenez, 47, he of the pot belly, cigar and
ponytail, also has chin whiskers. Glover
has the full beard. He started it because he
was bored last winter, then decided not to
shave. The talk was the last person with a
full beard to win an Open was Tom Morris,
but in truth it was Bob Ferguson in 1882 at
St. Andrews.
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