Danny Willett shrugged his shoulders, grabbed his tee, and returned to his caddie beside the fourth tee at Royal St. George’s.
He’d just hit what …
Danny Willett shrugged his shoulders, grabbed his tee, and returned to his caddie beside the fourth tee at Royal St. George’s. He’d just hit what he thought was the ideal drive during his final practice round at the British Open, only for one of the bumps on the course’s lunar-like landscape to throw it offline and into the rough. « Kicked left, » Willett said, before smiling. « Never asked for it! » Expect the unexpected will be the motto for the world’s best golfers this week as they get a crack at links golf for the first time in two years in this picturesque corner of southeast England. In some respects, this British Open will feel as though golf has returned to normal. There will be some 30,000 fans roaming the Sandwich links daily from Thursday, the biggest golf crowd at a major since the pandemic. One man was wearing a dragon onesie next to the ropes on the sixth hole Wednesday, having been cruelly fooled by a group of friends into wearing a costume. Those ooohs and aaahs and rumbling roars from a distance are all part of Open lore, and they’ll return. How golf missed them last year, when its oldest championship was canceled for the first time since 1945 because of the coronavirus outbreak. « Big-time sporting events need big-time crowds, » R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said. Then again, this week couldn’t be more different.
