The Open It Surely Different

The U S Open gave us an opportunity to watch the National championship  of golf in prime time.  Watching golf live at ten pm is wonderful.  As far as I am concern  today's regular TV programming can go in the garbage can so any time sports that are important to me can be watched live during the 7-11 pm time frame is fantastic.

The World Championship of golf The Open gives you the extreme opposite.  Wake up at Six and turn on the Telly.  So far however about all the golf that we have been able to see are replays of Thursday and wind.  Not only is it early golf but at 5pm the Open is just wrapping up as the sun sets in Scotland.

How in the world is that possible since we know Scotland in five and a half hours  ahead of the east coast of the U.S?  Let's get out our map and find  out  why.    The first reason is Scotland is at a latitude of 56 degrees.  Rocky Mount is 35 degrees.  The goggle button tells me one degree of latitude is 69 miles.  Saint Andrews is not only five and half hours ahead of us but is also nearly 1450 miles north of us.  Boston is only 540 miles north of us.

Just a look back at science class and the closer you get to the North Pole the longer the sunlight and sunset in Scotland is around 10:30pm.  If someone asked you where Denmark was you would probably say that that is near the Artic Circle.  St  Andrews is due west of the northern part of Denmark across the North Sea.  Just a little adjustment to the northeast is Norway.

Watching the Open is different  from any other sporting event.  This wind deal leaves me setting the record button as already the British Open will play the 4th round on Monday.  Here we head to Sunday golf knowing Sunday is not the end.

Halfway home Dustin Johnson is the leader.  His history from being penalized for grounding his club in a bunker and three putting from 12 feet to lose this year's U.S. open  you would think Johnson would fall off a ledge never  to be heard from again.  Yet, he is the leader.  Kinda pulling for him just because of his perseverance.

Tiger Woods  use to set records all most every time he played golf at how well he played the game.  Today he sets records at how poorly he is playing.  His driver has always been long  but never accurate.  He always  whenever he hit his irons  he always hit them pin high and his putter was perfect from eight feet in.

His driving is the same but he no longer can count on his accurate irons or his deadly putting.  There will be days still when all three work the same day but for all three to work together for four days I think Jack Nicklaus record of 18 majors is safe.