"And we would expect to be about 30 million this time," he said.

Chuck Culpepper previews the Open Championship for the L.A. Times and offers this surprising revelation about this year's betting.

And speaking of disposable income in a country where recreational wagering long since has shed its last societal stigmas, last year the bookmakers that adorn every main drag made just under 24 million pounds (about $48 million) on the British Open industry-wide, said Rupert Adams of the William Hill agency.

"And we would expect to be about 30 million this time," he said.

That's in pounds, which outdrive dollars roughly twofold.

To some degree, Woods' absence has unshackled bookmakers and enhanced betting value. It has awakened the "middle level of punter," Adams said, meaning the bettor who spends the equivalent of between $10 and $60 on the Open. He counted himself among those punters and said he'd often seen no value in tournaments involving Woods.

Birkdale Clubhouse Description Watch, Vol. 1

venue-royal-birkdale-facilities.jpgMy money is on Martin Johnson making a strong push for inclusion in this contest to best describe Royal Birkdale's clubhouse, but we already have two fine entries:

Brett Avery in Golf World: "its exterior is at once painfully modern and hulkingly out of date, akin to a south Florida condo development, circa 1970."

And Bradley Klein in Golfweek, who calls it both "slightly absurd" and a "compelling anomaly": "...designed in 1935 by George Tonge to look from afar like a massive cruise ship wending its way through the dunes. Think of it as an English version of a prairie schooner."

Perry Wins Again; May Skip PGA Championship To Rest Up For FedEx Cup

perryarms071308-183x256.jpgJust kidding...maybe. It would be fun if he skipped the FedEx Cup to rest up for the Ryder Cup, wouldn't it?

Anyway, the AP game story about the hottest player in the world not named Tiger winning yet again
He never wanted to be the star, the main attraction, but Kenny Perry will have no choice if this continues. The guy who merely wanted to win enough to make the Ryder Cup team is now racking up victories at a rapid pace.

"I don't want to live in a fishbowl," he said. "I don't want Tiger status."
I'll take Tiger's fishbowl!

“I hear the rain may be done, but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

13golf.1.600.jpgLarry Dorman is at Birkdale and offers this scouting report:

The case can be made that Royal Birkdale is in the same league, strategically if not aesthetically, with the other regular courses in the rotation. It can play hard and fast or it can play slightly moist and thick with heavy gorse and bracken that will gobble golf balls the way a Venus fly trap eats flies. This weekend, with the northwest wind whistling off the Irish Sea and the dull gray clouds sticking to the sky like a thick layer of lead tape, Birkdale rolled its shoulders and stirred awake.

Near the grandstand by the second tee, Willie Dunbar, a course worker, was busily checking the footing. In a thick Scottish burr, Dunbar explained he was checking the course for “trip hazards,” trying to ensure that spectators would not kick exposed TV cables or any other protrusions and take a fall. He seemed more concerned that a soft, green golf course would not have enough trip wire to keep the pros honest.

“I hear the rain may be done,” he said, quickly adding in a dour Scots manner, “but you canna believe any forecast past one day.”

Recent rains have made the fairways green and the rough lush and thick, while chilly winds have dried greens and fairways enough to keep it from becoming too soft, the way it was back in ’61. That year some course signage was blown down by howling north winds and rain that delayed the start of the third round.

Meanwhile John Huggan shares this from Phil Mickelson:

"I'm really looking forward to this Open," he declares. "Birkdale is one of my fondest courses. It was there I played in my first Open back in 1991. It is in incredible shape, just immaculate. The greens were still pretty firm despite the rain. If it dries out and firms up over the next few days, as it is supposed to, it will be running hard and fast by next Thursday.

"I like those conditions; they will produce the right winner. The players today are so good and the equipment is so good that the temptation is always there to do something funky to the golf course to make par a legitimate score. I think winning scores should be between five and 12 under par. That is a hard test, a playable fair test. The best golfers in the world should be able to shoot that. That is what I would prefer. It would give the top players the chance to separate themselves." 

"Jesus Christ, he can't help himself, can he?"

In an entertaining autopsy of this week's revelation, Tom English says not so fast on Monty and The Times declaring that the 2014 Captaincy is all wrapped up.

Monty wasn't so much the cat out of the bag as the cat that got the cream. You could practically hear him purring from the back row of the interview room at Loch Lomond.

That's Monty's mantra. Last week, next week, next month, next year, he'll keep at it, he'll keep campaigning for the role in the hope of backing the committee into a corner whereby it becomes a massive story if he does not get it. A snub. A shameful way to treat an old hero. By making noise now he is sowing the seeds for 2014.

Monty's comments are not based on fact, not based, we're told, on any secret promises. From what we can make out they're assumptions based on the hardly fullproof theory of "I am Monty, I want it, I need it, I deserve it, how could you not give it to me?"

Having spoken to two members of the tour committee, we can say that Monty is being premature here. Maybe he will get it – if you put a gun to the head of both committee members they'd say he probably will – but they cast their eyes to the gloomy heavens above Loch Lomond when Monty's quote was read to them. One said: "Jesus Christ, he can't help himself, can he?" The other was a lot less exasperated and a great deal more sarcastic: "Does Monty want to be captain at Gleneagles? Bloody hell, he should have said something before now."

 

Kenny Perry Peaking Just In Time For U.S. Bank Championship

He shares the third round lead at the John Deere Classic, is looking for his third win in five weeks, but has one defender for skipping the Open Championship in Jay Williamson.

“He’s made a commitment to this Tour because he knows that this Tour has put him where he is, and I think other guys need to take a look at what he’s doing because he’s taken a lot of heat for that,” Williamson said. “He’s a guy that really values what the Tour means to him.”

Hey Jay, The Open Championship is a PGA Tour sanctioned event too, you know.

"If I had won, I would have a real cool trophy sitting in my office right now. And a couple more dollars in my bank account. And I'd be a part of history. That's what would have been different.''

gwar01_080711watts.jpgI don't know about you, but I'm really struggling to get excited about the Open Championship, what with players dropping like flies, Tiger out, Kenny Perry staying home...well that's not the worst thing...and Birkdale's only real interest relying on a goofy green going bad (or not), but I did thoroughly enjoy two preview stories looking at Brian Watts.

You may remember he was the fellow that nearly won last time at Birkdale, which ESPN.com's Bob Harig reminds us in catching up with Watts, now on the comeback trail. And in Golf World, Lorne Rubenstein takes us through Watts' odd series of misdiagnosis' and those unforgettable 18th hole bunker shots.

BARKLEY: "Live blog? What's that?"

BarkleyPhone.jpgRick Chandler at Deadspin will be live blogging Charles Barkley's play at the Tahoe celebrity event for NBCSports.com He checked in with Barkley at the range and the round mound of rebound did not know what a live blog was! Then again, I don't know if anyone has ever lugged a laptop around a golf course tracking someone's round. Blackberry maybe, but a laptop?

Deadspin featured this shot of Barkley on the range, accompanied by three friends named Corona. And msnbc.com is sharing this cruel video of his swing for all to study that mind-boggling pre-impact hesitation move.


"I feel it is not out of character. It's simply an extension of the bolder featuring I had attempted at 11 and 15"

maar01_britishopen_birkdale.jpgI'm trying to get in the mood for the Open and know I will when I get that first whiff of links in HD next Thursday (and no Bobby Clampett!). Perhaps the most interesting pre-tournament item will be the new 17th green and the R&A's ability to manage it.

I was skeptical when they first announced in 2005 that they were redoing the green (a redo of a new green for the last Open at Birkdale) and even Peter Dawson, in his now infamous "the game has moved on since then" press conference understands they have to be careful with the speeds.

Golfweek
ran a cartoon lampooning the new No. 17 this week, but Golf Digest's Ron Whitten likes it.

Prior to the 1998 Open, the club also cut down some 6,000 trees that had cluttered the dunes and buffered the mighty winds. Even with a new two-level green, the par-5 17th was the easiest hole in the 1998 Open, so Martin Hawtree rebuilt it a second time, using the back half of the old green as the front half of a new one, and running the remainder up into hand-carved dunes. The contours give the green real character, in contrast to Birkdale's other, more docile greens. He admits some club members don't like it, finding it freakish and out of character. "I feel it is not out of character," he says. "It's simply an extension of the bolder featuring I had attempted at 11 and 15, which were also somewhat controversial after the rebuild."

Ahhhh...the green is not out of character because it matches the other two Hawtree redid.

Now that's an architect who has been spending way too much time around The Donald!

"Where does the "w" go in awkward?"

I prefer Michael Bamberger's reasons for Tiger's Ryder Cup assistant captain invite rejection over the rationale Tiger offered. Especially the last two:

6) In the team room, I'd have to act like I feel we have a better team than the Euros. My acting's pretty good, but there are limits.

7) I have more good friends on the Euro team than the American team -- where does the "w" go in awkward?

 

"Both Opens need to introduce a multi-tiered entry-fee system whereby tour players are charged a sum they may think twice about relinquishing so easily."

John Huggan talks to agent Brian Marchbank, who helps explain the WD disease that keeps hitting the U.S. Open and Open Championship international qualifiers.

I'm not quite buying this from David Fay in year three of the WD shenanigans.

"I want to know what the players are thinking," said Fay. "Why are they entering in the first place? Has something happened? Or are we doing something wrong?"

Times Pencils Monty In For 2014 Captaincy; First The Great Scot Must Write Unprecedented Apology Letter

John Hopkins and the Times headline writer give Monty the gig based on Monty's presumptuousness. Quite generous for a paper of record, I must say. Funny, I can't seem to find an official announcement anywhere.

Oh, that's right, they need to pick Captains for the two Ryder Cup before 2014!

Meanwhile, Lawrence Donegan isn't quite ready to write Monty's name in yet.

Less reasonable, however, were his thoughts on the captaincy of the European Ryder Cup team in 2014, when the event will be staged in Scotland. "I will do my best to play in 2010 and possibly in 2012," he said in response a question about his prospects of becoming captain. "Then [I'll] do something else in 2014."

The implication was obvious, just as the presumption underlying the comment was outrageous. There are other candidates for the job - Sandy Lyle being the most obvious one - who might argue they deserve a shot at the captaincy in 2014. Montgomerie's legion of fans and media cheerleaders will no doubt view such interventions as "Monty being Monty" and, in some respects, they would be right. His outspokenness is part of what makes him such a fascinating sporting figure.

Meanwhile, seems Monty got a little carried away last week and will be sitting down to craft a doozy of an apology letter. Donegan again:

Less easily brushed aside, however, is his behaviour during the second round of last week's European Open in Kent, when he chided a Sky television sound man who wandered into his gaze as he lined up to play a shot. "I am the reason you are here and don't you forget that," he said, a remark which drew a stinging rebuke yesterday from Ewen Murray, who heads Sky's commentary team. "When he boards the first tee he is akin to an angry incredible hulk," said Murray said yesterday.

Montgomerie seemed suitable chastened when confronted with his friend's unfriendly view of his conduct, saying he intended to write a letter of apology to the sound man. "You know what I am like. I say these things on the spur of the moment. I don't mean them," he added.

Dear Sound Man, I say these things spur of the moment and I don't mean them. What I meant was, we are all here for the same reason and we must not forget that: to watch me play golf. Remember, we are in this together my friend. Yours in harmony and car detailing heaven, Monty

"I'm already in the British Open, and I'm still not going."

I guess I'm not surprised by Kenny Perry's ambivalence toward the Open this year. When he fired a course record 62 at Riviera I was in the final stages of the club history, I asked him if he would pose with a sign that read 62 and the day's date, course, etc.... You'd think I had asked him to read the Torah....backwards, on camera, for Golf Central. 

Since then I've always seen him as Bobby Joe Grooves of Dan Jenkins' You Gotta Play Hurt (not the more refined Bobby Joe of later years). Bobby Joe would have skipped the Open in heartbeat for a chance to play in Milwaukee, as Perry will be doing next week.

Doug Ferguson tries to understand Perry's thinking and concludes that Perry is a bit batty for skipping next week.

Why would anyone skip a chance to play one of four major tournaments that define a career? How does it look when one of the top Americans ducks a major to play against the B-Flight in Milwaukee?

The most peculiar part of Perry's decision is that he finished 16th or better in three of his last four Opens. His best finish was at Royal St. George's, where he wound up four shots behind Ben Curtis in a tie for eighth. That was in 2003, the best season of Perry's career.

Anyone playing this well - and few are better at the moment - can win anywhere.

Such a decision contrasts with Sean O'Hair going through hoops to get a passport to St. Andrews in 2005 after winning the John Deere Classic, or Bob Estes flying across the ocean as an alternate and leaving without ever hitting a shot.
And...
Besides, his captain is squarely behind him.

``I don't care and he doesn't care,'' Azinger said about the British Open flap. ``So why should it bother anybody else? The guy has the guts of a burglar. He's going to be 48. He can do whatever he wants. I'm happy for him.''
There's a metaphor Kenny's wife will want to stitch on a throw pill.

Kenny has the guts of a burglar. -Paul Azinger


Reading today's press conference, Perry comes off as less Bobby Joe and more genuine in his thought process, however limited you may think it sounds.

Q. The pundits are always telling you what you should do. You should have not been in the TV booth at Valhalla at the PGA, you were supposed to play the British Open next week. Are you a contrary guy and do you get tired of people telling you how to run your business?

KENNY PERRY: Well, you know what, I'm not going to lie; it kind of bothers me a little bit. But you know what, I'm an independent contractor. I can do whatever I want, and I like that. I like being able to make the decisions I want to make, and I think it's best for me and my family, and that's the way I want to live my life. If they don't like it, that's fine. They can say all they want to.

But my only goal was to make that Ryder Cup team, and if they're going to -- for me if I was going to play the British Open, I'd have to miss this week, and this is a week I love playing. I was going to have to miss Milwaukee next week, which is a tournament I've won. I've had eight Top 10 finishes there.

I mean, the British Open is a great tournament, don't get me wrong. If you win, you know, a major, everybody looks at all the people in the world when they win majors on your résumé. That is the ultimate.

But it's just at this stage in my career it's just not a goal of mine. I love my family, and I want to play the golf at the courses I enjoy playing at these last couple years, and I'm going to go out on my terms, not on their terms.

Q. If you win this week and get a spot in the British Open, you'd pass it up?

KENNY PERRY: I'm already in the British Open, and I'm still not going.
Oops.
Q. How hard is that -- how different would your perspective have been 20 years ago making the same decision?

KENNY PERRY: I wouldn't have made the same decision 20 years ago.