I've no chance in Open, admits Faldo

14 April 2012

Nick Faldo will enter the 134th Open Championship at St Andrews in July. Wild horses wouldn't keep Britain's most successful player from the world's greatest golf tournament, one in which he has teed it up every year since 1976 and which he has won three times.

But Faldo today admitted for the first time that he is unlikely to be a genuine contender.

It was just before Christmas, at the Omega Hong Kong Open, that Faldo said: "I'm really looking forward to St Andrews. I still feel that's a great shot for me. Still do-able."

Now, nearly six months on, the full implications of changes made to the Old Course have sunk in. The Fife links will measure 7,279 yards when the season's third major is played there from 14 to 17 July. That is 164 yards longer than when Tiger Woods humiliated the home of golf with an eight-shot victory the last time the Open paid it a visit in 2000.

On that occasion, Woods didn't find a single bunker over four rounds, a fact derided as "an absolute joke" by Jack Nicklaus.

The R&A were stung into action and among the more drastic measures employed to counter the on-going exploitation of club and ball technology, and the greater athleticism of a young golfing elite, is 40 yards added to the second hole and 37 yards to the par five 14th which, at 618 yards, becomes the longest on any Open Championship course.

Faldo's second of three Open victories, at St Andrews in 1990, is generally regarded as the most impressive of his six major triumphs and he said: "I do believe if I did everything right and I went and played how I intend to play, I could get in there with the mix.

"But finishing it off ? Now, I just don't know. I'm going to go to the Open and give it my absolute best. But look at the guys I'm competing against. It's a whole different ball game."

Like Nicklaus, who at the age of 65 will this summer bid an emotional farewell to the championship he has also won three times, Faldo believes it is time to rein in the distance modern golf balls can be driven.

Many of the finest courses are being tamed because fit, young golfers can belt hi-tech balls over and beyond traditional hazards, allowing them to play more accurate short irons and wedges to greens which the likes of 47-year-old Faldo can only hope to approach with more testing mid-iron shots.

Faldo said: "Length has become a major issue. They added length on to Augusta and it plays right into the hands of the big hitters. And it's such a shame that a masterpiece like St Andrews has had to be altered.

"I was sitting there thinking I had a great chance at St Andrews. But if I'm battling with another 40 yards off the tee I just don't know anymore. That's why I love playing Wentworth. You play a lot of holes for position there."

Faldo heads a list of eight major winners teeing it up at Wentworth in tomorrow's first round of the BMW Championship. And the manner in which Wentworth's West Course rewards a master of the shot-making craft like Faldo is revealed in a cursory study of recent results.

Faldo, who became the event's youngest winner at 20 years and 316 days in 1978, has finished third, fourth, ninth and fourth in the last four PGA Championships.

The surprise is how easily this fiercest of competitors accepts the reduced status of being an outside bet for the Open. Happily married for the third time, and with a baby daughter back home in Old Windsor,

he explained: "A lot of things have happened in my life which I'm enjoying, and golf has taken a couple of notches down on my priority list."

There is, of course, the 2008 Ryder Cup captaincy to think about. And the nomination of Celtic Manor in Wales, host of the 2010 Ryder Cup, as the new home for the Faldo Series and Team Faldo, both aimed at breeding a new generation of champions.

Therein lies a certain irony. For while Faldo has fallen victim to scientific advances, he is exploiting the latest techniques in athlete preparation to produce European Tour winners like Nick Dougherty and last year's English Amateur champion James Heath.

At Celtic Manor, those youngsters will not only have access to magnificent training facilities but they will be taught NeuroLinguistic programming to promote positive thought, body awareness and nutrition.

"It's about the appliance of science," said Faldo. "We have to use technology, too, if we are to compete with the rest of the world."

Alas, for Faldo himself, it seems the appliance of science will shut him out of contention come the Open.

BMW Championship selected first-round tee-times tomorrow: 08.10 - Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spain), Brian Davis, Lee Westwood; 08.20 - Paul Casey, Thomas Bjorn (Denmark), Ernie Els (SA); 08.30 - Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie (Scotland), Luke Donald; 12.55 - Ian Poulter, Jose Maria Olazabal (Spain), Graeme McDowell (N Ire);

13.05 - Retief Goosen (SA), Thomas Levet (France), Darren Clarke (N Ire).

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