Open hero now a match for game’s greatest players

IT’S time to own up. I was wrong when I wrote that winning the 137th Open Championship wouldn’t mean as much as usual and would be discredited by the absence of Tiger Woods.

The only consolation, I suppose, is that many other commentators went down the same route. Some even suggested that in the records, an asterisk would be put beside 2008.

In hindsight, it was clearly a rash assumption but perhaps an understandable one. For who was to know that Pádraig Harrington would retain the Claret Jug by four shots largely through playing the final nine holes of the formidable Royal Birkdale links in a 30 mile an hour wind in a four under par 32 strokes comprised of an eagle, two birdies and six pars.