Tee shots key for British Open

TURNBERRY, Scotland – They’re talking about rough here so lush and dense and nefarious that players could lose golf balls or even golf bags or maybe even the occasional caddie.

They’re talking about bunkers, a rash of new fairway bunkers, bunkers that sometimes appear lunar in depth and as if equipped with large invisible vacuum cleaners.

Mostly, though, the contestants at the 138th British Open, which begins Thursday, have been talking about tee shots, as if Turnberry’s first Open since 1994 will hinge even more than usual on what happens at tee boxes fraught with peril, a worry having nothing to do with the cliff-top tees where a mean gust might blow somebody into the Firth of Clyde.

Two-time defending champion Padraig Harrington said it “definitely suits somebody who’s going to drive very well.” The 2008 runner-up Ian Poulter called it “a very difficult golf course from the tee.” The highest-ranked player on hand other than Tiger Woods – No. 3 Paul Casey – called it “a tee-shot golf course.” And the player right behind Casey at No. 4, Kenny Perry, implored, “You’ve got to hit a lot of fairways this week.”

For Woods to tack a fourth win onto a year he already calls “a tremendous success” even without a major title yet, for him to log a 15th major title, for him to win a fourth Claret Jug and burnish Turnberry’s knack for rewarding golf’s brightest lights, he’ll probably have to sustain what began at Jack Nicklaus’ tournament in Ohio, the one where Nicklaus kidded Woods about his sudden tee-shot accuracy.

When Woods arrived at Royal Liverpool in 2006, he ranked 139th in driving accuracy, scrutinized the course and hatched the imaginative strategy of trying to win without his driver. Using it only once all week, he relied on clubs like his two-iron and shot merely 18-under par to win the thing.

When Woods arrived at Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament in early June, his driving accuracy in four stroke-play tournaments in 2009 had been 60.7 percent, 60.7 percent, 64.3 percent and 44.6 percent. That he’d finished tied for ninth, first, tied for sixth and fourth in those events would seem another clue that he might be unusually adept at golf.

Well, that week, while letting the driver come out to play with the others, he hit 87.5 percent percent of the fairways, including 100 percent – 14 for 14 – on the closing Sunday.

Now, he eyeballs a major course whose three British Open winners are Tom Watson in 1977, Greg Norman in 1986 and Nick Price in 1994, three best-on-earth-at-that-time sorts, with an intensely honorable mention to Jack Nicklaus, who finished one behind Watson but 10 ahead of everyone else in 1977.

“I think you look at the guys who were some of the best ball-strikers,” Woods said, “and at this golf course you can understand why. … You’ve got to hit some really good shots and you’ve got to understand why the last three champions are some of the best ball-strikers. You have to do that here.”