What You Don't Have to Do to Win the British Open

You don't have to be a low-ball hitter. You don't have to have a dozen different punch shots in your arsenal. You don't even have to enjoy links golf.

A golfer who has any of those attributes - or especially all three - might be better suited to a British Open golf course. But having any of those attributes isn't necessary to do well.

Tom Watson, for example, was a high-ball hitter; did not - by his own admission - have a lot of different shots to call on - and, at least in the beginning, hated links golf. Yet won five Open Championships. How? Just by being so ... damn ... good.

Golf World and Melanie Hauser of PGATour.com cover the same ground in two different articles about Watson's British Open success. Watson is coming up a lot this year because the last of his five Open wins happend at Royal Birkdale, in 1983.

He wasn't a noted manufacturer of shots, not a fan of the knockdown that cheats the breeze. Watson hit the ball high, which normally is no friend in the wind, but there was attitude to go with the altitude.

"I always hit it solid," he says in the matter-of-fact manner that is as much a part of his countenance as his gap-toothed smile. "I rarely mis-hit the ball."

 Hauser begins her article this way:

You want the truth?

There was a time when Tom Watson didn’t like links golf. Detested? Nah. More like disliked. Intensely.

And Golf World explains why:

His introduction to links golf was inauspicious, to say the least. He hit a drive off the first on the exact line his club caddie told him to take. "He said, 'Hit it right there,' and I hit it right where he told me," Watson recalls. "Couldn't find my ball. Looked for it and looked for it. I finally saw this little pot bunker, 40 yards off line from where I hit. Sure enough, it was in there. My very first shot at links golf. I said, 'This isn't golf. This is luck, or bad luck.' "

Watson won that year, but it was a while before he warmed up to links golf. I suppose if you keep winning on a links, you'll eventually start to enjoy links golf.

Despite winning two of the first three British Opens he entered, Watson still wasn't comfortable with links golf -- its pinball bounces, the limited value of a yardage book, even the way the shorter-than-U.S. standard flagsticks messed with his depth perception. "In particular, I didn't like St. Andrews," says Watson, who finished T-14 there in 1978. "I didn't care for all the blind shots and the bumps and such." Watson fared worse in 1979 at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, but within his T-26 finish came a revelation -- as sure as taking to warm beer and overcooked vegetables.

"I just gave myself a talking-to," Watson says. "I was really fighting myself mentally with this stuff. One particular hole at Lytham, a par 5, illuminated what had to be done on a links course. Play the bounce. The first day it played into a strong wind and I hit driver, 3-wood, 5-iron. Next day, downwind, I hit driver and then had 210 yards to the flagstick. It was an 8- or a 9-iron, and I hit the 9. Today, that's nothing. But in those days, you just didn't think about that [club] from that far away. But I hit the shot and judged it right."

What made Watson such a force at the Open Championship? Well, we should keep in mind that he was - by far - the best player in the world for much of the time during his run of Open victories. That's a good place to start.

But what many people don't remember about Watson - because since about 1986 he's been a mediocre, often even a poor, yips-afflicted putter - is that Watson was arguably, in his prime, the best putter of his time. Certainly the best big-game putter of the post-Nicklaus, pre-Tiger era. Combine his tee-to-green game - "I rarely mis-hit the ball" - with his putting prowess of that era, and you've got a guy who's going to be less bothered by and better able to handle everything links golf throws at a player.

Watson wasn't just a great putter back then, he was scarily aggressive - which surely helped on the slower Open Championship greens.

Here's Andy North:

"He was so bold, it was easier for him to get locked in on the speed than a lot of other guys," says close friend Andy North. "He hit his putts so solidly and was so aggressive, [those greens] fit his putting stroke beautifully."

And Jerry Pate:

"I never saw anyone hole putts like that. Tiger's putts, and Ben Crenshaw's, they go in like a rat sneaking in a hole at a carnival. They hit softer putts, and the hole just kind of swallows the ball. Tom's would be going 900 miles an hour. Often they would hit the back of the cup and pop up in the air a little and then go in."

Hauser's article is sort of the Cliffs Notes version. The full Golf World article is well worth the read.