Week in Review
Monday Qualifier
Louis Oosthuizen's dominant win may have caught everyone by surprise, but it was still a pleasure to watch
Oosthuizen poses with the claret jug following his unlikely major win at St. Andrews.
The British Open was won by a man of letters, none of them capable of spelling Mickelson or McIlroy, or even Woods, Westwood or Casey, however they're rearranged. So it goes in this game that doesn't follow a script, even when presented with a choice of compelling ones.
The Open at St. Andrews, its gilded history notwithstanding, is under no obligation to follow form, and so the list of winners at St. Andrews in the last 40 years now goes like this: Nicklaus, Nicklaus, Ballesteros, Faldo, Daly, Woods, Woods and...Oosthuizen?
Oosthuizen is a jumble of letters that don't work even when fed into an internet anagram generator -- "Eh I Stun Zoo" is as close as it gets to spitting out anything that makes sense.
Yes, Louis Oosthuizen (pronounced LEW-eee OOST-hazen) is your 2010 British Open champion, and he won in a landslide, by seven strokes, and, as they say, it wasn't as close as the score indicates.
How it played at home is uncertain, though my old friend Gene Wojciechowski (an impressive jumble of letters as well) at ESPN.com hazards a guess: "Go to a mirror," he wrote. "Now spend the next 4½ hours watching your eyebrow hair grow. If possible, do so with the sound of seagulls squawking in the background. Do that, and you'll know exactly what it was like to watch the final round of the Open Championship."
It seems unlikely that a blowout would have been perceived similarly had the perpetrator been, say, Woods at the top of his game, working his artistry, or Mickelson adding to his growing legacy. So it was less the show than its star.
ESPN's Paul Azinger had another take, one with which I agree (sorry, Geno). "I hope the viewer wasn't bored to death by the blowout because what you saw was really a surgeon going around a golf course for four days," Azinger said afterward. "He took this place apart like with a scalpel. He put on a clinic. It was impressive to watch. I hope you enjoyed it because I certainly did."
Oosthuizen may have surgically removed the drama, but the manner in which this heretofore obscure and largely untested European Tour player from South Africa lapped a field of the best players in the world was as compelling as a blowout will get that doesn't feature Woods chasing history of some sort.
That said&
THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE WEIGHS IN
Oosthuizen, 27, might prove to be the next great South African player in a lengthening lineage of them. Or he might not.
Tom Watson said he was "overwhelmed" by how well Oosthuizen played and how good he is. In a post-round interview, fellow South African Retief Goosen suggested that given his maturity and skill, Oosthuizen might win several major championships.
The consensus was that this is a star finally finding his footing, that his textbook swing and poise under pressure promise a long and distinguished career.
Here was how Oosthuizen performed in the run-up to the British Open (working back from his most recent start): Missed the cut at the Barclays Scottish Open, withdrew from the French Open, missed the cut at the U.S. Open, 20th at the Wales Open, 21st at the Madrid Masters, missed the cut at the BMW Championship, missed the cut at the Masters.
It's the record of a struggling journeyman, not an emerging superstar. His performance this year, even factoring in his first European Tour victory (at the Andalusia Open), suggests this major victory was an anomaly.
Lucas Glover was an emerging star, too. More than a year now has passed since his last victory, in the U.S. Open in 2009. A year has expired since Stewart Cink's last victory, at the British Open in 2009. Nearly a year has passed since Y.E. Yang last won, beating Woods at the PGA Championship last August.
Oosthuizen is young and gifted, but let's wait on the coronation.
THE PHIL FACTOR
It's got to be hard being a Phil Mickelson fan. One of the best and most entertaining players in history, he is as likely to disappoint as he is to dazzle.
The reigning Masters champion, Mickelson tied for 48th and was never a factor at the British Open, where form prevailed. In 17 Open starts, he's had only one top 10 (a third in 2004).
IS POULTER RIGHT?
England's Ian Poulter obviously enjoys attention, garnering a fair amount of it with his colorful ensembles and nearly a million followers on Twitter. Remember, too, when he said this: "One day it will be just me and Tiger."
Last week, Poulter made headlines with his pointed analysis of American golf. America's best players are aging, he said, and its younger players are too inexperienced to replace them. "We have a 15-year window," Poulter said speaking on behalf of European golfers generally and Brits specifically. "The Americans have a gap and that gap is being filled by Europeans, guys who are in their late twenties, early thirties and who are doing the job right now."
It's hard to argue his point about the Americans. Only two of them finished in the top 10 at St. Andrews -- Sean O'Hair and Nick Watney (each tying for seventh), each in his 20s and potentially a star, emphasis on potentially. Of the four other Americans in the top 20, one is 51 (Tom Lehman) and the others (Dustin Johnson, J.B. Holmes and Jeff Overton) are in their 20s and still longer on potential than production.
As for the Europeans, they've had a string of victories in the U.S., including Graeme McDowell's win in the U.S. Open. But its core -- Poulter, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy -- has yet to win a major championship. Until it does, it's an empty argument.
TELEVISION: IT'S 'WOOST-HAZEN'
ESPN's most formidable hurdle in telecasting every hour, every round of a major championship for the first time was the pronunciation of the winner's last name. It's not one to flow off the tongue, as several ESPN commentators proved.
"Oost, Oosthaven, Oosthazen, I'm sorry, how embarrassing," Azinger said on Saturday.
At the end of Saturday's telecast, Mike Tirico held up a piece of paper with Oosthuizen's name spelled phonetically, "Woost Hazen," it said.
"Here's one thing that has changed today," Tirico said, crumpling the paper. "All you guys [at ESPN] have been walking around with this. You don't need it any more. Everybody knows about him after today."
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