Can Tiger tame Turnberry?

IF Tiger Woods gets his putter working and manages to keep his golf ball in play for a reasonable amount of the time over the next four days, there can be no doubt as to who will be holding the claret jug on Sunday evening.

The runaway world number one has been denied a 15th major championship chiefly by poor putting and that weakness was at the fore in the US Open at Bethpage last month.

Having finished sixth there – just as he had done at the Masters in April – Woods groaned: “My good ones aren’t going in and my bad ones aren’t even close.”

Since then, he has triumphed in his own AT&T National tournament and seems on top of his game. Furthermore, the greens here are in mint condition – Greg Norman yesterday described them as the best he has seen – a world away from the sodden surfaces which frustrated him at Bethpage.

Few know better than Woods how big a role luck – and draw placement – plays on these occasions. The R&A, who run the Open, still persist with a one-tee start and that means play getting under way at 6.30am and continuing until after 9.30pm. The weather on the west coast of Scotland can change drastically in that time period.

Pádraig Harrington was one to suffer in this regard 12 months ago and so his victory was all the more creditable. He goes in search of an Open hat-trick, a feat achieved only twice before, by Australian Peter Thomson from 1954-56, and Bob Ferguson (1880-82).

As history beckons for the 37 year-old Dubliner, sadly his confidence levels appear at an all-time low. The tinkering to his swing in an effort to improve his game is blamed for an amazing slump in form that has seen him miss five successive cuts since finishing 49th in the Players Championship in May, and three more before that. It is a miserable record, and has resulted in a drop from third to 14th in the world rankings.

Harrington has his own way of diagnosing what has been happening to his game. “Golf for me has always been a juggling act of keeping all the balls in the air and keeping everything working together. I’ve concentrated on one ball a lot and so a few of the others have fallen on the ground. It’s a question of picking them up and getting them all together again.”

He has worked hard with the two coaching Bobs, Torrance (swing) and Rotella (mental) in an attempt to meet that objective but accepts that it’s more in hope than confidence that he goes into action at 2.20pm with Jim Furyk and Geoff Ogilvy.

In spite of all the gloom, there are positives not least the vast improvement to his short game on the way to winning last week’s Irish PGA Championship at the European Club. And then there are his renowned fighting qualities. If he was built any other way, it is most unlikely that he could have captured this championship last year after starting with a round of 74, or the USPGA, in which he came from nowhere with two closing rounds of 66 for a two-shot win.

He was not in the best of health at either event, bothered by a wrist injury in the first and suffering from dehydration in the second. But he made light of those handicaps, and he is now injury free. Where Harrington is concerned, anything is possible.

Nevertheless, form suggests that Rory McIlroy is the most likely Irishman to make an impression this week. It’s not that he has done anything very special of late, it’s more a case of his natural ability and ebullient personality leading many to believe that something big must happen for him sooner rather than later.

His mantra is patience, trying to convince himself not to try and win the championship on the first day when there are three more still to go. As he notes: “You don’t have to shoot the lights out because level par is a great score in a major championship.”

Graeme McDowell’s recent form offers little encouragement, but he finished 17th and 18th in the last two majors and is usually seen at his best on the biggest occasions, but as yet has failed to prove his staying power over 72 holes.

The best you can hope for from the four other Irish players, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley, Damien McGrane and David Higgins, is that they make the cut and enjoy productive weekends after that.

As always when it comes to the biggest occasions of all, there are countless imponderables to keep interest levels up. Can Woods, the 12/5 favourite, justify those odds and eat further into Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors? Can Sergio Garcia finally capture the major? Will an Englishman, be it Paul Casey, Lee Westwood or Ian Poulter, bridge the gap since Nick Faldo’s victory back in 1987? And if it’s not Woods, will another American – such as Kenny Perry, Anthony Kim or Hunter Mahan – return with the claret jug?

South Africans and Australians once had proud records in the Open thanks to the exploits of Bobby Locke and Peter Thomson but their most recent champion was Ernie Els in 2002 and his form has dipped alarmingly in recent years, though Retief Goosen and Geoff Ogilvy know what it takes to win major titles and Adam Scott is a rich talent.

Germany’s Martin Kaymer is the man in form on this side of the world after successive victories in the French and Scottish Opens. Might he succeed where the great Bernhard Langer never did?

So many questions. They will all be answered in what promises to culminate in an exciting climax around 6pm on Sunday.