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Comment: Golf has forgotten who really counts

"Play was going on at every other seaside course down the Fife coast in those same 40 mph winds."
"Play was going on at every other seaside course down the Fife coast in those same 40 mph winds."

The scandal of the 144th Open Championship is not green speeds or a golf equipment industry out of control, and is definitely not that a journeyman Australian pro missed the cut.

We’ll get plenty of that in the next few days, maybe over years in the fallout of this championship if we don’t get some sort of dramatic finish that overwrites the narrative of Saturday’s fiasco in today’s final round. Much of the flak will be directed at the R&A, and rightly so.

Scott Hend, the Aussie who took a double bogey when out in the “unplayable” high winds of Saturday morning and went on to miss the cut by two, opened both barrels on the R&A for forcing the players out at that time, saying that everyone knew it was unplayable.

I’m not entirely in disagreement with Mr Hend, for whom one media centre worthy wanted to start up a fan club yesterday.

But really, honestly, it’s not about him, and his failure or otherwise to make the cut. He had 35 other holes to do something about that. You’re not the story here, son, and neither are any of the cosseted millionaires who spent Saturday in the comfort of the St Andrews Links clubhouse.

I stood out at the 11th later in the day when the 10 and a half hour delay was well advanced, and it seemed unplayable to me, but only really because of the green speed. Play was going on at every other seaside course down the Fife coast in those same 40 mph winds. We played on in such winds in the Opens of Turnberry in 1986, at Muirfield in 1987 and 2002.

The greens this week are fast, we are told, because the ball goes enormous distances and if players are hitting wedges in, there’s got to be something to keep them honest when they get there.

But greens are also fast because the players want them that way. Listen to them whine whenever they’re a touch up on the stimpmeter.

But that’s not the story here either. The public don’t care much about this ongoing and fractitious debate within golf, and most have no idea what “the stimp” is.

The scandal was what I saw at 3.30pm on Saturday afternoon, heading to the tented village for a beer; the 16th green/17th tee stand, not the greatest vantage point on the course, but packed full of spectators, not a seat to be had.

Eight hours after the delay had started, two and a half before another ball would be struck, on a beautiful, sunny if slightly windy summer’s day.

The crowds on Saturday were amazing. People stayed, hoping insanely that there might be play. When play restarted, their enthusiasm was undimmed. All they want to do is see their favourites, the guys they’ve got a bet on, and yes, to gasp when Dustin Johnson mashes a drive.

They’ve paid £80 to get in, which is another scandal, but it is what it is. The disgrace on Saturday was that these people’s loyalty was taken for granted by everybody; by the R&A, by the players moaning about their chances being compromised, by the golf nerds in the media tent myself included debating technology and “the soul of the game”.

The spectators were the most important people on the premises on Saturday. If golf has a problem, it’s that the sport seems to have forgotten that.