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Columnist Dean Juipe: Old Course at St. Andrews Isn't Always a Pushover

Waist-high rough.

Unrelenting winds.

Devouring bunkers.

When the Old Course at St. Andrews is flashing its teeth, it's vicious.

It's not only unforgiving, it's the Venus' flytrap of golf courses. Even those shots that are struck precisely and with the best of intentions can be swallowed whole, disappearing into a wasteland of stroke-inducing repercussions.

The Old Course is a marvelous site for golf. Those with the $128 greens fee -- or those contestants in this week's British Open -- can play a round amid Medieval ruins and retrace the footsteps of the sport through this cathedral-like setting.

It has to be an unforgettable experience.

But for all its deadly pockets of resistance, the Old Course is not tricked up or Tiger proofed. When the winds are tame and the fairways are bowling-alley fast, St. Andrews is quickly declawed.

When it's serene, low, low scores can become the norm. When Nick Faldo won the British Open on the Old Course in 1990, he finished an astonishing 18 under par.

Critics emerged from the Firth of Forth to claim the course was becoming obsolete, that its once-sprawling fangs were irrelevant in the face of the modern player with high-tech equipment.

The same complaints are apt to be heard yet this weekend. But only if the weather remains tranquil -- or tranquil by Scottish standards -- is the Old Course a pushover.

Put a little bite into the breeze and St. Andrews will exact its toll.

But whether it's gusty or peaceful, unruly or idyllic, the Old Course remains a deserved site for a major championship. It has an unmatchable history as a visually stimulating lunar-like layout that brings sentimentalists to their knees.

It's fun, too.

Maybe this is a selective remembrance, but wasn't it always cold and rainy for the British Open in years past? Didn't the golfing gods see to it that players of all nationalities were not only penalized for their play but frozen solid in the process?

For Americans watching on TV, the British Open has always been a gleeful experience. Yes, the best players are participating, but, gee, isn't it thrilling to see them trying to hit out of a hay field or from one of the many burns that zigzags through the course or from a steep-banked pot bunker that dwarfs the extractor?

Those images may yet be repeated as this year's tournament unfolds and everyone not named Tiger Woods tries to keep Woods from winning the event, as many preordained after he walked away with the U.S. Open championship at Pebble Beach last month by an extraordinary 15 strokes.

Bad weather or good, Woods is already in the hunt and he needs only the British Open title for a career Grand Slam.

This year would be as good a time as any for him to get it. Strictly for romanticism's sake and its tie in with the year 2000, the Old Course was awarded this year's Open with the hope it would come to be recalled for its historical importance.

If Woods wins, it will have achieved that goal.

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