Old Course blows golfers’ minds Unknown Oosthuizen grabs lead before wicked winds wreak havoc British Open

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2010 (5877 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Followers of the European Tour may know Louis Oosthuizen, possibly even by sight.

But for those in the New World who rarely rise before dawn to listen to literate Britishers tell droll stories about semi-familiar names on the world’s second-best golf circuit, here was your 36-hole leader of the Open Championship — by five strokes, no less — in the media tent Friday, filling in a few blanks:

Like, how to pronounce his name (Oest-Hayzen), why his friends call him Shrek (“It’s the gap in the teeth. Some of my friends say I look like Shrek… and you can’t choose your friends, what can I say?”), and why he prefers Louis when his actual name is Lodewicus (“That’s a passport name. I won’t talk to them if they call me that.”)

Other nuggets, courtesy of the European Tour, in case he doesn’t disappear from view by Sunday?

— The 27-year-old from Mossel Bay, South Africa was sponsored, mentored and generally nurtured by the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation from age 17 until he turned pro in 2002, because his parents, who are farmers, could not have afforded to support his golf ambitions.

— He had to win the Andalusia Open in March to qualify for the Masters, and did… but had to leave the trophy behind in Malaga because the airlines declared it a dangerous object and refused to accept it as hand luggage.

— While playing the BMW Championship in London, he was persuaded to trade in his Mercedes for a BMW X5, but when he drove it home to Manchester, where he lives, it was too wide for his garage doors.

And yes, he did book accommodations here for the entire week, though he has missed the cut in eight of the previous nine majors in which he has played. (Rude question, but the British scribes didn’t major in tact.)

What we already knew, without having to ask, was that Oosthuizen had played in the worst of Thursday’s conditions and shot an almost routine-looking 65, behind only Rory McIlroy’s sizzling 63, and had come back in the better half of the draw, early Friday — if rain and gusting winds can ever be called “better” — and fired a plucky 67 to sit five shots clear of second-place Mark Calcavecchia as night fell on the Old Course at St. Andrews.

McIlroy, 21, so sure and relaxed Thursday, was blown out of his comfort zone by the high winds Friday afternoon, like most everyone else, and plummeted to a fat 80.

Meanwhile, the 50-year-old Calcavecchia — the 2005 Canadian Open winner who says he will skip next year’s British Senior Open to be back at Vancouver’s Shaughnessy, where he won five years ago — is right there with a chance, 21 years after his British Open win at Troon.

Tiger Woods, who has won the last two Opens played at St. Andrews, birdied the 18th for 73 and is still very much in it at four-under-par.

“Right now, I’m eight back, so we’ll see,” said Woods. “Tomorrow is supposed to be another windy day and maybe some rain on Sunday. We’ve still got some pretty good golf ahead of us. I’m not exactly where I want to be, but today was a day I could easily have shot myself out of the tournament, and I pieced together a pretty good round.”

But this one is Oosthuizen’s to win, if he has the game to do it, and the nerve.

“Well, it’s the position anyone wants to be in, playing a major on the weekend,” said Oosthuizen, who got his round going with three consecutive birdies at the fifth, sixth and seventh holes, and finished it off with a birdie at the 18th. “It’s what we work to achieve. It’s just a matter of making a few crucial putts.”

Weather was always meant to be part of the plot, and through two rounds it has claimed some victims. Each half of the draw has had some fair, some foul.

Friday morning featured early downpours, a brisk breeze that abruptly made a U-turn without signalling, and just generally unsettled weather — rainsuits on, rainsuits off, umbrellas up, umbrellas down. But Oosthuizen, Calcavecchia and Miguel Angel Jimenez each managed to get it around in 67 strokes, and a number of others posted sub-par rounds before west winds gusting as high as 66 km/h at the 7th and 11th greens kicked up, oscillating golf balls, ruining scores and even causing a 65-minute, mid-afternoon suspension of play.

“I think we caught a big break, the early starts,” said 1996 Open winner Tom Lehman, who shot 68, as did U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell.

“Not so much that it didn’t blow and wasn’t rainy, but we went out with the wind helping the first six or seven holes, then it laid down a bit, then it switched directions and from 12 onward there was a right-to-left wind helping, which is way, way easier than the one that blows in your face.”

Calcavecchia was the first player off the tee Friday at 6:30 a.m., with perhaps 20 people watching and his wife Brenda caddying for him. He said he didn’t mind the adverse conditions too much, though he has arthritis in his knuckles.

“But the few weeks I did play on the Champions Tour it was kind of interesting: Bob Tway had a kink in his shoulder, Stads (Craig Stadler) has no left hip left, and everybody is falling apart. I feel outstanding compared to a lot of those guys,” he said.

With the wind’s help, he played the inward nine in 33 with birdies at the 11th, 12th and 18th. When a couple of other early starters, Paul Casey and Ricky Barnes, gave multiple strokes back in the late going — Casey with a triple bogey at the Road Hole, after driving left through the fairway, Barnes making double at 14 out of Hell Bunker, then bogeying 15 and 17 — Calcavecchia found himself alone in third. And then McIlroy imploded with bogeys on four of his first eight holes.

— Postmedia News