Trio lead Irish hopes at sodden Open

By Simon Lewis, Lytham

Given that the last 15 majors have been won by 15 different players, it is clear picking a winner of this week's Open Championship is something of a mug's game. After all, which of us pondered the prospect 12 months ago and came up with Darren Clarke?

Yet the nature of this Royal Lytham & St Annes course on the Lancashire coast, and the conditions that will define it, suggest that an experienced links head will win the day and the run of nine consecutive first-time major winners that began with Graeme McDowell at the 2010 US Open will come to an end.

Sunday's champion could come from anywhere and anywhere in Ireland will do.

There are at least three live Irish contenders for the Claret Jug, all of whom will tee it up tomorrow in the opening round.

World number two Rory McIlroy is the shortest-priced of them with the bookmakers behind tournament favourite Tiger Woods, and the Holywood star has been looking very relaxed after a week of practice rounds under all manner of conditions at Lytham.

The 23-year-old is also enjoying the calm a year on from the self-described “madness” that greeted him when he pitched up at Royal St George's as the newly-minted US Open champion. Gone too are the nagging doubts about form following a worrying run of missed cuts that included his US Open title defence at Olympic in San Francisco last month.

If McIlroy's ball-striking is back to its scintillating best around Lytham, then his ambition to move from a one-hit wonder to multiple major winner could well be realised.

McDowell, too, is in good form following his runner-up US Open finish at Olympic last month and has already declared Lytham his favourite Open venue while Padraig Harrington looks well worth his return to the business end of the odds lists as he closes in on the third Claret Jug that will put him alongside the likes of Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus in the pantheon of Open champions.

Darren Clarke's ambitions as defending champion may be less adventurous, however. The player who won hearts at Sandwich last year is desperately short of form, but returning the Claret Jug that brought him so much pride could well ease the pressure.

There could well be a Silver Medal to go with the Claret Jug if Portrush's British Amateur champion Alan Dunbar outlasts Austria's Manuel Trappel to become the lowest amateur, while fellow Ulsterman and four-time European Tour winner Michael Hoey returns to the majors for the first time since his Open debut at Lytham in 2001, when he was Amateur champion.

For the whole of the field, though, the message is clear about what it will take to become Open champion on Sunday evening – play it straight and stay out of trouble.

As the jetstream that has hammered Britain and Ireland this summer was forecast to dump rain on the already sodden links on England's north-west coast until 4am tomorrow, championship officials admitted to concerns about “half a dozen” of the course's 206 bunkers, but were unapologetic about the thickness of the rough that threatens to consume any errant stroke these next four days.

“The course is at the moment perfectly playable,”R&A Championship Committee chairman Jim McArthur said yesterday. “Obviously the weather has caused us some problems, and perhaps some more to come.

“The greens are fine. They're putting well. The trueness and the smoothness are good. They're a bit soft and a bit slower than we'd probably like at this stage of the Championship. There are some bunkers which are causing us some concern because of the water table and the level of the groundwater, but we're confident that the Rules of Golf, which are available, will help us cope with any situations which develop there.

Preferred lies and lift, clean and place, McArthur added, “will be a last resort for us”.

As for the very thick rough, areas of which tournament favourite Tiger Woods deemed “unplayable” earlier this week, R&A chief executive Peter Dawson said: “The champion on Sunday I doubt will have won from the rough. I think he'll be winning from the short grass, so there's a premium on hitting fairways this week, obviously. But if you stray a long way off the fairways, and the fairways are reasonably generous, if you stray a long way off, then you're going to be penalised.”