Golf is a game for both champs…and chumps

Xander Schauffele of San Diego, Calif., is the new prince of professional golf, having won half of 2024’s four major tournaments – the PGA Tournament and The Open Championship.

Most recently, he fired a brilliant final round score of 65 on July 21 to earn a two-shot victory in The Open played at Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland.

Didn’t that event used to be known as The British Open? The answer is: “No, yes and it’s complicated,” thanks to the R&A, the governing body for all the world of golf…except the United States and Mexico.

The R&A takes its name from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland, founded in 1754. (Here is a view of the 18th hole from the tee.)

 

The R&A’s most prestigious tournament – The Open – was first played at Scotland’s Prestwick Golf Club in 1860.

The R&A became a separate entity in 2004 and made it a priority to instill usage of the “proper name” of the tournament as “The Open” or “The Open Championship.” In 2016, NBC Sports had to formally agree as part of its broadcast rights deal with the R&A.

 

Retired pro golfer Johnny Miller, who was NBC’s lead golf analyst in 2016, said he was rather proud of the fact that he only “messed up” one time, uttering “The British Open” on the air over four days.

 

Americans are to blame. The term “British Open” was “invented” to distinguish the championship across the pond from the “U.S. Open,” which was first played in 1895.

That has always railed the people in the United Kingdom. Finally, the R&A made it a mission to eradicate “British Open.”

The nitpicking seems a bit silly, acknowledged Englishman Nick Faldo, a three-time winner of The Open, who also holds a U.S. Open title.

 

Golf can be a brutal game, but Schauffele, who tamed a beast of a course at Royal Troon, made the game look so easy.

 

Charles William Nevius, a sports reporter for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif., has an opinion about golf, calling it “the dumbest game ever. It is pointless, time-consuming and infuriating. I try to play as often as possible.”

Nevius said: “I am not any good at golf, but I have only been playing for…oh…30 years. When I started, I hit everything on a low banana slice to the right. Today, I have improved to the point where I have no idea where the ball will go.”

 

Nevius is not so good at football, either.

“Mark Twain called golf ‘a good walk spoiled,’ but at least we are out in the air. These days, when being a fanatic sports enthusiast means buying the special cable package so you can watch all the football games on Sunday, golf is still a game that people get out and play,” Nevius said.

 

“The Holy Grail for us recreational sod-thumpers is to break 80. So, a few weeks ago, when I found myself looking at a 4-foot putt on the 18th hole that would have given me a 79, I was just this side of hyperventilation. I had, of course, never broken 80.”

 

“I looked at the putt from every angle. I plumb bobbed. (I don’t even know what plumb bobbing means or what it is supposed to do.)”

 

“In 1970, Doug Sanders had a 30-inch putt to win the British Open.” (Tsk, tsk.) “He recalls getting over the ball, taking his putter back…and missing.”

 

“I have ‘Sanders-ized’ many, many putts in my day,’” Nevius said. But this time, his ball miraculously fell into the cup for a 79. A great thrill washed over his entire body.

 

“Stupid game,” he mumbled.