AMID the crash, bang, wallop of a modern-day Open Championship, where the fraught golf writers are constantly thundering away at the keys of the laptop like Little Richard delivering one of his piano-pounding epistles, this hattered correspondent managed to read an article about space debris and the amount of rusting thingymebobs cluttering up the galaxy.
Having been billeted in the quirky, yet curiously alluring, resort of Pontins for the week, I thought to myself, “Crikey, some of those fusty technological antiquities must have been used to furnish my bloomin’ chalet”.
The apartment that time forgot? The television was so archaically befuddling, for instance, I ended up just watching the kettle.
For Jordan Spieth, meanwhile, time stood still on Royal Birkdale’s 13th hole on Sunday as one of the Open’s most memorable moments slowly unravelled.
We are getting spoiled in golf’s most celebrated championship. At this captivating rate, the 147th Open at Carnoustie next July will probably be decided by a hole-in-one during a 12-man play-off.
It will need to go some way to top events over those last few holes at Birkdale, after all.
A lot had been made about the global game’s current era of relative parity – with the last seven majors being carted off by a succession of different, first-time winners. There is certainly nothing wrong with that and we should always celebrate the diversity and the depth of talent that abounds.
At the same time, however, golf and sport in general tends to flourish out with its normal boundaries when the marquee players are conquering at the showpiece occasions.
Sunday’s showstopper thrust golf into the spotlight as it came barging into the wider public consciousness.
Of course, certain outlets will still put emphasis on a bloke on a bicycle winning the Tour de whitsitsname or England’s women cricketers beating India, but in a jam-packed sporting market place, the Open could not have scribbled a more captivating conclusion.
The R&A stated that 235,000 marched through the gates. It was a good job Phyllis and Ronnie from Bootle turned up to make it a convenient round number instead of 234, 998.
The Birkdale bonanza set a record as the best attended Open outside of St Andrews. And this for a pursuit that, according to the doom-mongers, is in rapid, terminal decline.
Of course, the problem for a pursuit sorely absent from terrestrial TV is that it still needs exposure instead of a scenario whereby a thrilling Open ends, everybody works themselves into a panting lather for a day or two and then forgets about golf until the next major comes along.
You can have gimmicks, celebrity presenters and fireworks in an effort to “appeal to a broader audience” but the game, essentially, needs nothing more than the best players doing what they do best.
That Spieth will be heading to the PGA Championship in three weeks aiming to become the youngest player to achieve the career grand slam will keep things resonating.
This erudite, respectful young man prefers to play down the rampant comparisons with the game’s greats. Inevitably, the predictions are again being made that he can go on to emulate the multiple major triumphs of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods.
Spieth has been here before, of course, and was lumped with similar burdens of expectation when he won the Masters and the US Open in 2015.
Similarly, Rory McIlroy was tipped to exert a stranglehold when he won his fourth major in 2014. The Northern Irishman has not won another since.
As Spieth has pointed out, the magnitude of the accomplishments of Nicklaus or Woods continue to dwarf all that he or McIlroy have achieved but it’s important to savour these fine players penning their own success stories instead of obsessing about them re-writing Tiger’s tale.
It seems for all they win, it’s never going to be enough. Spieth will be the centre of attention at Quail Hollow next month. By the end of the PGA, though, we could be back to another first-timer winning a major.
That’s the unpredictable wonder of this game.
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