Old Course Won’t Reveal As Much This Time Around Nearly 125 Years After First British Open, Golf’s Best Can No Longer Be Measured

What better place than at the oldest golf course prior to the oldest tournament to consider who is the best golfer around.

The simple answer may simply be: No one.

When the 124th British Open starts on the Old Course at St. Andrews on Thursday, golf will have come full circle from the first Open in 1860. That tournament was an attempt to identify the best golfer.

The answer then was Willie Park, the first British Open champion.

This year’s British Open may provide no answers. The champion at 450-year-old St. Andrews may very well simply be the one of among many very good golfers who happens to be the best this particular week.

“The competition around the world is just so much stronger that is was 20 years ago, 10 years ago even,” U.S. Open champion Corey Pavin said before leaving for St. Andrews.

Consider this. Since the 1990 British Open, when Nick Faldo won his second major championship of the year and third in two years, there have been 19 major championships. They have been won by 17 different golfers.

The only repeat winner was Nick Price, with two PGAs and a British Open. And the only perennial favorite is Greg Norman.

“I guess the only constant there is is that he’s the only constant,” Jay Haas said about Norman. “It’s been a different winner (in the majors) each time. A few more shots here and there, a one-putt here or there, and you’d say, ‘Well, he’s the guy who has dominated the last 10 years.”’

But no one has dominated for a 10-year run since the Tom Watson Era ended with his victory in the 1983 British Open.

Price from August, 1992 through the end of last year was the dominant golfer, a reign of less than three years. Price’s run may not be over, though he has not won this year. The door also may not be closed yet on the Faldo Era, though he has not won a major since the 1992 British Open. And Norman may yet truly step up among those who can dominate major championships. But he needs to win somewhere beside the British Open.

Credentials for greatness for all three - Price, Faldo and Norman - would be helped enormously by a victory this week at St. Andrews.

Beyond the Big Three, picking possible winners at St. Andrews amounts to rounding up the usual suspects. Pavin had his breakthrough victory in a major and Davis Love’s second place in the Masters finally gave him a top-10 finish in a major.

Ernie Els has shown flashes of the form that won the U.S. Open last year, while Fred Couples and Paul Azinger continue to tease that they are back from injury and illness. Watson, a five-time British Open champion, still strikes the ball as well as anyone, putts equally poorly, but is always a threat in Scotland, particularly if the wind blows.

It seems like only a matter of time until Scotsman Colin Montgomerie wins a major championship. And Lee Janzen is as good as anyone at protecting a lead on Sunday, if he gets one.

But for now, this seems to be true: The time at the top has gotten shorter. For whatever reason - the distraction of outside business interests, the comfortable living that can be made just finishing 10th every week, or the growing number of good golfers around - this is true. No one is king for long anymore.

“I think that is true, that the reigns are getting shorter,” Pavin said. “because there’s so many good players now than there have ever been.’

Staying on top is made even more difficult today because of “the media, the pressure of everybody making a big deal out of who’s No. 1 and everything,” Haas said.

Price, who missed the cut at the Masters and the Houston Open in April after being virtually unbeatable last year, says it’s nearly impossible to dominate these days.

“I’m not saying that it’s impossible to dominate for five, 10 years,” Pavin said. “I just think it’s going to take an exceptional player to do so.”