Inside the Open

It is mid-morning on a sun-drenched Thursday in early September. On the range at Hamilton Golf & Country Club, a solitary figure removes an iron from his bag and, with a swing as easy as a kite string unfurling, begins hitting toward a flag a hundred yards away. Balls soar gracefully through the air as he repeats the swing over and over. Embedding it. Burning it in.

Jimmy Walker knows all too well, as do all of the competitors at the 102nd Canadian Open, that the range of skill between the top player in the world and the thousandth is fractional. It is mental resolve, sustained over eighteen holes for four consecutive days, that translates into winning. Walker knows that, if it comes down to any of the shots he is practicing, he will need his muscles to remember what to do. The last thing he wants to do is think.

Soon the range begins to fill in. Frank Lickliter II drags on a cigarette between wedges. Tommy Armour III, resembling an old sea lion, takes a spot at the far end of the range. Greg Kraft, from Bel Air, swings with only his right arm. Lee Janzen shows up two spots left of Lickliter, two right of Kraft. Calcutta-born Arjun Atwal arrives looking dapper in black pants set off by white shoes, belt and shirt. Next is one of Atwal’s playing partners for the day, John Huston, in the sneakers he will curiously wear during the round as well.

Two arrivals in particular set the crowd abuzz: that of 26-year-old Englishman Justin Rose, who takes a spot near Armour at the far end of the range, and of Mike Weir, who returns my good luck wish with a brief nod. The other players look up at Weir despite themselves. Though easily mistakable for someone’s little brother, he is regarded not as that diminutive Canadian leftie but as someone who owns a green jacket. Weir starts to perform his familiar half-swing and visual check — exuding, just minutely, an uncharacteristic aura of tension, a possible effect of the burden he feels in front of a home crowd so vehemently pulling for him.

The first at Hamilton is a stunning par-4 that sweeps out in a broad swath of emerald before veering left toward the green. Halfway down the fairway the leaderboard shows that the sunny conditions have given way to several fast starts. Jesper Parnevik is four under through twelve. Jim Furyk, he of the backswing that looks as though it gets lost three times before reaching its apex, has holed out from 120 yards on the third, placing him, too, at four under. Brad Faxon is three under, defending champ Mark Calcavecchia the same.

Standing at the rope deciding which trio to follow, I watch ball after ball fly down the fairway, each arcing like a rainbow and landing like a dewdrop. Most players hammer their drives into the middle of the fairway; none does worse than missing it by a few feet. It is these misses, however, that make the difference between winning and losing.

I decide to follow Rose, Atwal and Huston. Atwal, whose parents Roopi and Bindi have temporarily left the construction and mining company they own in Calcutta to be in Hamilton this week, experiences slight troubles out of the gate. Huston begins in almost surreally inept fashion, carding five over on the first three holes. His expression turns from one of shellshock to one of resolve, but it is, of course, too late. To win a professional golf tournament you can’t give away strokes on Sunday — and you certainly can’t give them away on Thursday.

As Rose bombs one off the tee and then sticks his approach, his fiancée, Kate, tells me she saw something different in him at the Deutsche Bank Championship last week, where he finished tied for fourth, his best result of the year. As Kate finishes saying this, Rose guides his ball through 35 feet of green and 12 feet of break toward the hole. It disappears over the front lip, eliciting a roar from the gallery. Rose has found, perhaps, golf’s winning combination: hard work and the elusive ability to deflect pressure. He crosses one ankle over the other and looks up with an expression I’ve seen on many golfers’ faces. It hides a thought everyone welcomes but no one dares speak aloud:

Could this be my week?

* * *

Twenty-one-year-old Victor Chesielski is an ordinary kid — he watches Prison Break religiously, likes to hang out with his buddies and has an older sister who adores him. There is one thing that makes him different from most others on the planet: He can hit a golf ball a long way, and, at least most of the time, straight.

Vic, who only qualified for the tournament earlier this very week, has done more than slip in among the other entrants; midway through Friday, he has achieved inadvertent celebrity status. Due to the dual disappearing act of Mike Weir and Stephen Ames — Weir having left his stroke at home, Ames having withdrawn due to back spasms — Vic’s steady play and genuine self-effacement have suddenly thrust him into the role of Great Canadian Hope.

Blonde hair flaring out the sides of his hat, Vic tees off, the gallery following him twice the size of that following Weir a day ago. Among this throng is a private mini-contingent of supporters, Vic’s smiling visage ironed onto their white T-shirts. Though not quite Arnie’s Army, Vic’s Vanguard is every bit as passionate.

Vic pulls his drive into the rough, yanks off his glove and smacks the butt-end of his club into the ground as he strides away. To succeed, he knows, he must keep his emotions at bay, but knowing doesn’t make it any easier. Facing his first true test of the day on his second shot, Vic passes, reaching the green. But with a jumpy stroke he hits his 40-foot putt 30 feet, then leaves the 10-footer short as well, taking bogey. On his fifth hole, as Vic lines up his approach, the leaderboard announces the projected cut at even. Vic sits at one over. He hits an imprecise approach into another bunker, then chips weakly out, leading to another bogey.

Friday’s drier, breezier conditions deal the entire field a humbling blow, as though having teased them the first day only to show its teeth now. Rose cards a 71 after a record-tying 63. Aussie Nathan Green, a former crematorium worker, mounts a brief charge before fading. Jimmy Walker, with twin 71s, simmers in the clubhouse.

Such is the shifting nature of this field, even the television crews don’t seem to know where to focus — which is why, when Vic the Stick’s 3-iron on the 210-yard sixth flies toward the green, bounces once and rolls into the cup, not a single camera is there to capture it. Two holes away, players look up in reaction to the ovation. Later, on his final hole of the day, Vic sinks a tricky 6-footer, removes the hat and smiles. He is playing for the weekend.

* * *

As the sky crashes throughout Friday night, players and fans sleep soundly; only one person lies restless. Bill Paul, listening to the pounding rain, watching the flashes of lightning, is hoping this will exhaust itself by 7:20, Saturday’s first scheduled tee time.

Paul’s is no easy task. As tournament organizer, he must not only choose a course that will draw a good field but also make decisions regarding all the things those roaming the grounds aren’t aware of — parking, interviews, marshalling, admission — while coordinating over 1,700 volunteers. “They make the tournament go,” he tells me. “If you had to pay each of them even minimum wage, you couldn’t afford to run it. They’re the ones that help create a memorable overall experience.”

If the enthusiasm displayed by the young crowd is any indication, the tournament is that and then some. When I ask 11-year-old Ryan Missios and his younger brother, Andre, 7, if they’re having a good time, their eyes light up. “Great!” Ryan says. “Awesome!” adds Andre. They smile at their father, Tim, who grins back.

Paul has been involved in 30 Canadian Opens but seldom gets to witness any golf. “I haven’t seen a swing this week,” he says, interrupting himself to answer his walkie-talkie. During the few minutes we chat, he’s stopped by four different people. He hears his share of complaints during the week but enjoys his role too much to give it up. “When I was a kid I’d work at the Open, doing grunt work just to get close to all these guys I’d read about — like George Knudson smoking on the tenth green, only a quarter inch of rope separating him from me. Now I get to help create that feeling.”

The rain-assisted conditions yield immediate advantage, birdies immediately dotting the scoreboard the way bogeys did yesterday. The day turns into a game of leapfrog, a logjam of competitors chasing the rabbit, Rose, who has surged to 10-under. With each flip of the leaderboard, the galleries grow more frenetic. Every other major sport allows you to watch all of the players all of the time. Only in golf must spectators choose which part of the match, and which players, to see.

Well into the tournament’s third day, that decision is becoming not easier but harder. Competitors are darting up the leaderboard and sliding back down it like gamepieces in Snakes and Ladders. Vic the Stick remains within sniffing distance for most of the day, reaching 3-under through 17, but by now he knows that when he returns to classes at the University of Waterloo on Monday, it won’t be with a winner’s cheque. No matter — Victor has done more than enough to suggest he will fulfill the promise of his name.

As play on Saturday gives way to dusk, the leapfrog game concludes with the rabbit still ahead. Rose, at 11-under, is peering downward at the rest of the field, just as he was after two rounds of the Deutsche Bank tournament. He couldn’t hold the lead then; doubtless he is asking himself if he can hold it now.

* * *

At 2:00 on Sunday — like Thursday, sunlit, though more brisk — Rose, in subdued grays, takes the first tee to thunderous applause. He holds up the club, locks in his target, gets into address, and pulls the trigger. It’s a slight push, off the fairway by a foot.

Immediately evident is a change in Rose’s physical bearing. His walk is not the easy swagger of the prior three days. He does not chat breezily with his playing partner, Bart Bryant. The differences in circumstances are vast. Fuzzy boom mikes are held beside him as he lines up his shots. Half a dozen reporters murmur to their studio anchors. Spectators line the fairway three and four deep. The day’s incomparable pressure in its first few hours has already jostled several players out of contention.

From a perfect lie on the second fairway, Rose short-arms his swing, landing in rough to the right of the green. I ask Kate whether she’s nervous. “Not at all,” she lies, her tense body language reflecting Justin’s. On the par-5 fourth, he misses the fairway again, forcing himself to lay up. He hits it above the pin, leaving himself a downhill, side-sloping putt, which he leaves eight feet left. A moment later, from 20 feet below, Bryant drains his birdie putt to pull even. Rose misreads his par attempt.

On the next, a short par-4 where one may either try to fade his ball onto the elevated green or play to the safe, fat area, Rose goes for broke and comes up short. Bryant plays it safe. In front of Rose as he assesses his chip is the leaderboard showing that Jonathan Byrd has gone to 12-under, Steve Lowery to 11-under. Half an hour after teeing off, Rose has not only relinquished the lead, he suddenly finds himself tied for fourth.

At the tenth, Rose sinks a long breaker to finally card a birdie. Within the crowd one feels a shared hope that this might finally swing his momentum. But his drive on eleven veers right of the fairway, stopping at the collective feet of three young maples. Sensing the tournament slipping out of his grasp, Rose succumbs to an amateur’s recklessness; instead of punching out, he tries to thread the ball between two of the trees.

He swings; his chin drops. The ball ricochets off a branch and back toward the fairway. From there Rose gets it to the front edge of the green, and from there, stiffly hits his putt five feet short. He slides the remaining five-footer past the hole, then, despondent, sinks it for double. The agonizing realization that he has blown the tournament is stamped on his face.

A moment later, Bryant, quietly stalking the top of the leaderboard, sinks a mirror putt coming the other way to move to 11-under. At the same time, Furyk, his swing making up in precision what it lacks in grace, has emerged from the pack like a resilient flower blooming while others wilt. Four-under on the day, 13-under for the tournament, he sits alone in the lead.

I reach the seventeenth fairway in time to see Furyk birdie the hole for the fourth day in a row, widening to two strokes his lead on Bryant, two groups behind. As Furyk approaches the eighteenth green, a cheer rises from the thousands of spectators packing the grassy amphitheatre around it. He sinks the par putt, pumping his fist.

Bryant matches Furyk’s feat on seventeen, getting up and down from a greenside bunker to make birdie for the fourth consecutive day. He has one hole — the toughest hole on the course, the exquisite, monstrous eighteenth, demanding a lay-up to a creek 300 yards out and an uphill shot to a sloping green protected by bunkers on either side — to make up a stroke. After a solid drive, his second shot comes up just short, puncturing his hopes for a playoff.

Bryant pars the hole to finish one back. Furyk, triumphant, lets the smile he’s been keeping inside spread across his face. With this smile is disclosed the true charm of any golf tournament: Only when it is over do we learn who the spotlight was really on.

Golf Canada 

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I.J. Schecter
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© I.J. Schecter 2003