Loose Impediments

Still One of the Best

For four days and 71 holes, the drama at the 2009 British Open built perfectly. As if on cue, golf's leading men and potential spoilers exited the stage in succession: Phil Mickelson before the tournament, Tiger Woods on Friday, Steve Marino on Saturday and on Sunday, Ross Fisher with a quad on the 5th, Matthew Goggin with three consecutive bogeys from the 14th through 16th hole and Lee Westwood with back-to-back bogeys on the 15th and 16th.

That left Tom Watson to finish out what would have been the greatest golf tournament in history. But while the alternate ending was heartbreaking, it shouldn't diminish what Watson accomplished in what will be his next-to-last British Open, unless the R&A changes the rules and lets him play past the age of 60.

As sports psychologists like to point out, it's about the process, not the outcome. And the process, like watching a real-life "Field of Dreams," was what enthralled the golf world for four days and still makes the 2009 British Open one of the greatest golf tournaments ever played.

As we recover from the tremendous buildup and the astonishing turn of events of the tournament's final hour, here is my first stab at placing the event among the 10 greatest British Opens ever played. The list after the jump.

Ten to Watch

One thing I enjoy about watching the British Open, especially during the early rounds, is the strange names that always pop up on the leader board. After a steady diet of Cink, Perry and Toms, I'm ready for a dose of Bhullar, Oosthuizen and Echenique.

Sometimes, those unfamiliar names never come off the board. While the last four Opens have gone to top players (successive back-to-back wins by Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington), there have been three unlikely winners in the past 10 years: Paul Lawrie in 1999, Ben Curtis in 2003 and Todd Hamilton in 2004.

They were almost joined in 2002 by another dark horse, Thomas Levet. The Frenchman bogeyed Muirfield's 18th hole in the final round to fall into a four-way playoff, won by Ernie Els.

Given this history and the unpredictable nature of links golf, it is likely that there will be another relative nobody in contention this week at Turnberry. His name may be little-known when it appears on the leader board, but it may not remain that way by week's end.

In that vein, here are 10 dark-horse players under the age of 30. You can take your much-fussed-over youngsters like Rory McIlroy, Anthony Kim and Ryo Ishikawa. I'll take my chances with this group, from which someone is just as likely as the marquee names to make an impact on the tournament by week's end.

The full list after the jump:

This List? It Was a Shoe-In

As a teenager, I worked at my dad's sneaker store, so by osmosis, I became pretty familiar with shoes. (As well as, unfortunately, dirty socks of all kinds. This was in the days when salespeople actually found the shoes for you and helped you put them on instead of leaving you to forage through piles of boxes. I am just an outsider in the shoe business now, but isn't this current system actually more work for the staff, who now have to tidy up the strewn boxes at the end of the day? On the other hand, they no longer have to be exposed to dirty socks, so I guess it's a push. What I really didn't comprehend was how people couldn't muster the effort to put on clean socks, especially when they knew they were going shoe-shopping. You would imagine this would apply mostly to kids, but a surprising number of adults were also guilty.)

The best part of the job was that I was always the first kid in school with the cool new pair of sneakers like the first Air Jordans. (This status sort of made up for all the Al Bundy jokes I had to endure. My favorite was the Nike Terminators, a pair of which I still have somewhere and used to break out every once in a while. They were always conversation starters, but now that Nike and others picked up on the retro appeal and have reissued the Terminator and other classics, I feel the appeal has been cheapened.

I bring up this backstory because unless you've been Rod Blagojevich's lawyer or have had the misfortune to have entrusted Bernard Madoff with your or your charity's money, footwear has been a major topic of conversation in the past week. In fact, shoes have never been discussed this much unless you were a Sex and the City cultist fan.

I am talking, of course, of Muntader al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his size 10s at President George W. Bush during a press conference.

Continuing this theme of notable footwear, you'll find nine other famous and infamous shoes throughout history in addition to al-Zeidi's after the jump. (Don't worry, there are some golf shoes on the list.) Why did I compile this list? You could say the subject runs through my sole.

Memories of Troon

Watching the Senior British Open at Royal Troon over the weekend, I was reminded of a couple of memories from the 1997 Open there. The first was of Justin Leonard, who played nearly flawlessly in the final round to shoot 65 and win the Claret Jug. The following year Golf Digest, for whom I was working at the time, signed Justin to be a playing editor. I wound up collaborating with him on several instruction articles, including a series called "Smart Golf," which we thought would play to his strengths because he had the reputation of being a canny, strategic player*.

Missing Links

The end of the one-two punch of the British Open* and Senior British Open* means my favorite stretch of televised golf is over, and I am facing serious withdrawal—50 weeks without seeing a links course on TV. Of course, the Ricoh Women's British Open could have satisfied my yen for another week, but the Ladies' Golf Union decided to hold this year's event at Sunningdale Golf Club, outside London.