Tiger and Phil vanished from this major season. But at Lytham, history lingers

The Women’s Open Championship is being held this week at Royal Lytham, where Annika Sorenstam completed her career grand slam in 2003. A few months earlier, she had played in a PGA Tour event, at Colonial. Interest in Annika, 23 summers ago, was high, intensely so, and her golf, like her personality and her language, was memorably precise.

I was once following her in a tournament round during this time period and heard Annika ask a playing partner to mark her ball on the green before Annika played a shot—from 130 or more yards out. After the round, I told Annika that I had never heard a player make such a request, not from that distance. “You should watch me play more golf,” Annika said in her no-nonsense way. Ah-nee-KAH. I often wondered how she would adapt to life in Florida—she was so Swedish. Nelly Korda, a child of European parents herself and the reigning U.S. Open winner, has a great opportunity this week to make her own linksland mark on the game, by winning her first Open Championship in the very place where Annika won hers.

I was at Lytham for that Open, 23 summers ago. (In a feat of sportswriterly wanderlust, I covered the Open at Royal St. George’s, the Senior Open at Turnberry and the Women’s Open at Lytham in three consecutive weeks. My wife moved us into our current house smack-dab in the middle of that trio. Barbara Nicklaus told me this: “Tell Christine she’s lucky—I once moved with Jack; he packed one box and said, ‘I’m done—I’m exhausted.’”) Annika won her lone Open by a shot over Se-Ri Pak, another future World Golf Hall of Famer.

On the Sunday of the tournament, she did laundry and watched “Saving Private Ryan” before making the short drive from her rental house in Lytham to the club and its famous red-brick clubhouse, ancient and creaking. The tournament was sponsored by Weetabix, the British cereal company. Annika wore a necklace sent to her by a stranger who claimed the necklace could improve performance. She talked often to Tiger in those days, comparing notes.

“This is what it’s all about, to play in a major championship where you have to perform,” Annika said in victory. She was emotional in victory and, in her own way, was letting loose. The day, the week, the competition, the winner—it was all intense. Maybe this week will be equally intense. For now, we can enjoy watching the week play out. Nelly, Lydia Ko, Charley Hull, Jeeno Thitikul: the stage is yours, ladies. You’re borrowing it for the week from Bobby Jones, from Ernie Els, from Annika Sorenstam. Lytham is not the loveliest of championship venues but it has produced a list of winners that will stand up forever. The men’s Open is returning there in 2028. Next year, in Jerusalem. That is, the Old Course, in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Ernie did not play at Royal Birkdale last week, but he did play in the Senior British Open at Gleneagles, at the King’s Course, where Jerry Kelly won, at age 59. I think that’s a big deal, to win a Senior British Open, a U.S. Senior Open, a Senior PGA Championship. I think you should be able to play your way into the World Golf Hall of Fame on the basis of what you do in the three great men’s championships for the 50-and-over crowd. The King’s Course is rolling and beautiful but also American and resorty. Warning: This take could be dated! I don’t think I’ve been there since caddying in the 1991 Scottish Open, and my guy (Peter Teravainen—legend) missed the cut.

This week, the Champions Tour is holding an event in Portugal, at a course Els designed. Els is playing, as are Darren Clarke, Stewart Cink and Padraig Harrington, to cite a foursome of former Open winners. Padraig played at Birkdale and shot a first-round 80, grinding his bottom off from the first tee to the bottom of the 18th hole. “I’m never embarrassed by anything I do on a golf course,” Padraig told me after his second-round 69. Of course not. See: Harrington, Padraig; propensity to grind. He plays in the Open every year, and I expect he will continue to do so for as long as he qualifies.

This year, neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods was in the field at Royal Birkdale. This was the first year since 1994 that neither played in a major championship. So weird. Tom Watson was at Birkdale—the five-time Open champion was named a “Global Ambassador” by the R&A in 2018—and one morning he was in Birkdale’s Art Deco ship-at-sea clubhouse, talking about Byron Nelson’s experience in the ‘37 Open at Carnoustie (getting there by boat) and also how today’s top players would play Birkdale much as he did in 1976. Golf hands itself down, one generation to the next, better than any game I know. You hope, for their sake and for golf’s sake, that Phil and Tiger can find their way back. Not as players, but as global ambassadors.

By tradition, these celebrated golfers—Tom Watson, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Annika Sorenstam, to offer up another foursome of Open winners—have long, long sunsets. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy, Open winners well under 40, might have a fantasy about getting away from the pressure of public life, the pointed iPhones and the autograph requests and reporters asking you to recall this or that. They may also find that once golf hooks her claws in you, you don’t have as much free will as you think you do.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com