British Open Capsules: Oosthuizen pulls away to dominating Open title

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) — Louis Oosthuizen walked over the Swilcan Bridge toward a victory that was never in doubt Sunday at St. Andrews, another big moment in sports for South Africa.

This celebration, though, carried a different tune.

The drone of vuvuzelas, all the rage at the World Cup, was replaced by the skirl of bagpipes coming from behind the Royal & Ancient clubhouse. For the 27-year-old South African, the sound could not have been sweeter.

With a performance that rivaled the dominance of Tiger Woods at the home of golf 10 years ago, Oosthuizen led over the final 48 holes and blew away the field by seven shots to capture the British Open.

“To win an Open championship is special,” Oosthuizen said. “But to win it at St. Andrews ... it’s something you dream about.”

The timing could not have been better — one week after South Africa concluded a wildly popular World Cup, and the day Nelson Mandela celebrated his 92nd birthday.

“It felt a bit special, really,” he said. “When I walked down 18, I was thinking about his birthday.”

By then, the hard work was done. Oosthuizen (WUHST’-hy-zen) made only two bogeys over the final 35 holes in a strong wind that swept across the Old Course. He closed with a 1-under 71 for a seven-shot victory over Lee Westwood, who was never in the game.

The only challenge came from Paul Casey, who got within three shots after the eighth hole, then drove the green on the par-4 ninth. Oosthuizen answered by hitting driver onto the green and knocking in a 50-foot eagle putt to restore his cushion.

Three holes later, Casey hit into a gorse bush and made triple bogey, while Oosthuizen holed an 18-foot birdie putt.

Oosthuizen spent the final hour soaking up an atmosphere unlike any other in golf with his caddie, Zack Rasego. He finished at 16-under 272 and became the first player since Tony Lema in 1964 to win his first major at St. Andrews.

Just as Lema did when he won, Oosthuizen ordered bottles of champagne for the press.

Never mind that everyone struggled to pronounce his name. All that mattered was the spelling on the bottom of that claret jug. And yes, the engraver used the abbreviated version — Louis — not his given name of Lodewicus Theodorus Oosthuizen.

With the fifth victory of his career, Oosthuizen moved to No. 15 in the world. And as a sign of just how global golf has become, it’s the second time this decade that the four major championship trophies reside on four continents.

“Nobody was going to stop him,” said Casey, whose adventures in the gorse sent him to a 75 and a tie for third with Rory McIlroy (68) and Henrik Stenson (71). “He didn’t miss a shot today. I don’t know if he missed one all week. That was four days of tremendous golf. He didn’t flinch today.”

No, there was only that gap-tooth smile that earned him the nickname “Shrek” from his friends. And there was amazement across his face when he cradled the oldest trophy in golf, a silver claret jug with his name etched alongside Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and the other South African winners — Gary Player, Bobby Locke and Ernie Els, his mentor.

Without the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation in South Africa, the son of a farmer could not have afforded the travel required to reach the game’s highest level.

“It was great to have a South African winning it on Mandela Day,” said Dennis Bruyns, the chief executive of the Southern Africa PGA. “And there was a great sense of satisfaction in having a South African caddie with him, too.”

It was the fifth major for the Springboks dating to Retief Goosen winning the U.S. Open in 2001, and the first at the British Open since Els won at Muirfield in 2002, a victory that inspired Oosthuizen.

“Shrek is on the move,” Goosen said. “I knew he had a lot of talent. He grew up in an area (Mossel Bay) that’s very windy, so for him, these conditions are normal. The guy’s got one of the best swings on tour. I think he’ll be around for many years to come.”

Some 45 miles away, Player was returning from a golf outing and listening to every shot on the radio, proud as can be. He saw the potential during a practice round they played at the Masters this year.

Player called Oosthuizen on Sunday morning and gave him a pep talk.

“I told him he’s got to realize that lots of people are hitting bad shots,” Player said, not knowing how few of those the kid would hit. “And I told him the crowd was naturally going to show a bias. But I reminded him when I played Arnold Palmer in 1961 at the Masters, only my wife and my dog was pulling for me. I told him he’s got to get in there and be more determined to win.”

Oosthuizen was relaxed as he could be, putting his arm around Rasego after hitting off the 18th tee and walking over the Swilcan Bridge, thousands of fans packed into the grandstands, along the road and peering out the shop windows.

“It’s a proud moment for us, especially with the Old Man, winning on his birthday,” Rosega said. “Winning at St. Andrews, it’s unbelievable. He deserves what he’s just done.”

The 150th anniversary of golf’s oldest championship was memorable in so many ways.

It began with Rory McIlroy tying the major championship record with a 63 in some of the calmest conditions at the course. It ended with someone other than Woods hoisting the claret jug in front of the R&A clubhouse.

Woods tapped in on the final hole and removed his cap to salute the gallery, just as he did the last two Opens at St. Andrews. Only this time, the tournament was still two hours from finishing. Woods made two double bogeys on his way to a 72 and tied for 23rd.

It was his seventh tournament of the year without a victory, matching the longest drought of his career.

“I’m not going to win all of them,” Woods said after his worst 72-hole finish in a major in six years. “I’ve lost a lot more than I’ve won.”

No way he was going to win this one. Neither was anyone else.

Oosthuizen might have been nervous, but it didn’t show. Charl Schwartzel, his best friend from their junior golf days in South Africa, ran into him on Saturday and said Oosthuizen was showing him comedy videos on his phone.

“This was about an hour before he teed off,” Schwartzel said.

If anyone showed nerves, it was Casey. With the warm applause from a British gallery that had not seen one of its own holding a claret jug in 11 years, he hit wedge to 4 feet below the hole at No. 1 to send a message. The birdie putt caught the right lip, however, and it took until the sixth hole before Casey could make a birdie.

He wasn’t alone. Of the final 10 players to tee off, only Goosen made a birdie on any of the opening five holes.

Oosthuizen plodded along with pars.

“He’s doing all the things he needs to do,” said Woods, who has more experience than anyone playing from ahead in a major. “He’s being consistent, putting all the pressure on Paul to come get him. He doesn’t need to go out there and shoot a low round today.”

Oosthuizen went 24 consecutive holes without a bogey until his streak ended on the par-3 eighth hole by missing a 6-foot par putt. That trimmed his lead to three, and Casey hit driver onto the par-4 ninth green.

Whatever momentum he had didn’t last long. Oosthuizen also drove the ninth green and holed his 50-foot eagle putt to restore the lead to four shots, same as when he started. And this Open effectively ended three holes later.

Casey drove into the gorse bushes left of the 12th, took a drop back toward the seventh fairway, came up short of the green and wound up making a triple bogey, dropping him eight shots behind.

Oosthuizen spent the final hour with a big grin on his face, although he started out that way, too.

The biggest smile came on the 18th green, with a hug for Rasego, and an embrace with wife Nel-Mare and 7-month-old daughter Jana. It will be years before the child can appreciate the magnitude of this moment.

“I will say, ‘That’s the day Daddy makes us the proudest,”’ his wife said. “And we’ll never forget it.”

World Cup, now golf: Bravo South Africa!

Trapped inside the hard, forbidding walls of his jail cell, with barely space to move, did Nelson Mandela the prisoner ever dream that things would turn out quite this well? Surely, even the world’s most inspirational and famous optimist must be thrilled and perhaps a little surprised — who isn’t? — that South Africa is proving to be such a shining ambassador for itself.

Talk about a country having a banner sporting year. First, hosting a football World Cup that radiated warmth and joy. Then, giving golf a new champion with an alphabet-soup name who came out of nowhere to win the British Open.

How deliciously intriguing that a player nurtured under the African sun proved best able to handle Scotland’s howling gales.

Do, however, spare a thought for the engraver who had to carve “Louis Oosthuizen” onto the base of that celebrated silver trophy. Takes up more space than Tiger Woods. And yet, in four short days that transformed him from who? to the

name on everyone’s lips, Oosthuizen ensured that the entire golfing world now knows that his tongue-tripping jumble of vowels and consonants is pronounced WUHST-hy-zen.

Can there be better karma than a South African lifting the claret jug on the day Mandela turned 92?

Clearly, Oosthuizen thought not.

“Felt a little bit special, really. When I walked down 18, I was thinking about his birthday,” he said.

The 27-year-old was just a young boy when the anti-apartheid leader was freed in 1990, after spending 27 years in prison.

“What he’s done for our country is unbelievable, and happy birthday to him,” Oosthuizen said.

The power of sport to put a nation on the map and to unite and inspire its people is not new. Mandela saw it. In fact, he practically willed South Africa’s Springbok rugby team to victory at the 1995 World Cup that his nation hosted. Mandela’s utter delight when South Africa lifted the trophy — he shook his arms in the air with the enthusiasm of a young boy — was infectious, an uplifting moment for a country mired in post-apartheid fears, uncertainty and hardships.

South Africa then topped that this year with what many visitors will remember as a football World Cup that was exciting, exotic and a huge success, even if it — grrrrr — also introduced the world to those infuriating vuvuzela horns. Perhaps infected is a better word — they’re now being heard at the Tour de France.

Of course, South Africans were crushed that their team, the Bafana Bafana, was knocked out after three matches, the worst ever showing by a host nation. But that didn’t really seem to matter compared to the PR triumph the nation reaped from being so welcoming and capable.

Since Spain beat the Netherlands in the July 11 final, we’ve not heard a squeak from the doomsayers who had predicted that holding the tournament in South Africa would be a disaster; that stadiums wouldn’t be finished, that lax security would allow terrorists to waltz in, that tourists would be robbed, raped and murdered by the busload. There were a few logistical glitches but nothing to really spoil the mood. World football had its first, and long overdue, African party — proving that it can be done.

And now, just to make sure that everyone gets the great-place-to-be message, here comes Oosthuizen, gushing about how South Africa is a fabulous home for a golfer. During the apartheid years, the sound of Afrikaans-accented English was like a stain on a person, marking them as coming from what then seemed to be a despicable country because it treated blacks as inferior humans and had Mandela locked away on Robben Island. Now, spoken by the likes of Oosthuizen, that same sound seems liltingly pleasant to the ear. It no longer carries shame.

“The weather in South Africa is brilliant,” he said. “Wintertime you can still play some days in shorts there.”

Quick, when’s the next plane?

No one, of course, is naive enough to think that sport can gloss over South Africa’s frighteningly large array of complex and difficult problems. It is a promised land of much misery. No number of new World Cup stadiums, for instance, can hide such a shockingly large gulf between rich and poor.

Nevertheless, the last few weeks have been remarkable — so much so that 2010 could perhaps mark a watershed in world perceptions of South Africa and its people. The rainbow nation. That colorful and positive name that South Africans give themselves makes so much sense now.

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org

--John Leicester

Casey can see bright side after Sunday collapse

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) — The tee shot sailed into the prickly gorse, and with it went any chance Paul Casey had of winning the British Open.

The 32-year-old Englishman was the only player who had any hope at catching Louis Oosthuizen in the final round at the Old Course. With no way to hit out of the thick bushes left of the 12th fairway, a penalty drop was his only option. Unnerved, Casey needed five more to finish off a triple-bogey 7.

Oosthuizen made birdie at the same hole, and — just like that — a four-shot margin grew to a staggering eight. The engraver had a little extra time to put a name on the claret jug that few people knew before this week.

Even if that shot hadn’t veered off course, it’s unlikely that he, or anyone else, would have caught Oosthuizen. The barely known South African put it all together for one magical week, and Casey would have needed something akin to a 67 — as good as anyone shot on Sunday — to have any chance of wiping out the deficit he faced at the start of the round.

“As disappointed as I am with the way I played today, Louis was in a different league,” said Casey, who struggled home with a 3-over 75 that left him tied for third. “You know, that softens my disappointment slightly, because it was a tremendous performance. Hats off to him.”

Casey’s pain was eased even more by the state of his game.

He was No. 3 in the world heading into last year’s Open, but strained a rib muscle the week before. Casey made it through four painful rounds but could only manage a tie for 47th at Turnberry. After rest and treatment, he tore the muscle at Firestone and had to withdraw. He withdrew again before the PGA Championship.

Casey didn’t play another full round until the World Match Play Championship in October, where he lost all three of his rounds.

“I’ll be honest, it was scary,” he said. “I was very worried about it. I thought, ‘Is this something I’m going to be battling the rest of my career? Am I done? Will I ever be pain free?’ I had no idea. I was pretty down.”

Casey has rebounded this year, with five top-10 finishes around the world, but his performance at the birthplace of golf makes it clear he’s all the way back.

Now, all he has to do is win that first major title.

“Six months ago, I had no idea if I was going to get back to this sort of form again,” he said. “Now I know I’m going to win a major. It’s just a matter of time. This week just wasn’t my week.”

Casey’s chances were largely undone by two of the 72 holes. He took a triple-bogey at No. 17, the famed “Road Hole,” in Friday’s second round. Then came No. 12 on Sunday.

Bad enough that he drove one straight into the gorse. Casey was actually more perturbed about what he did after that. Taking a drop behind the bush, he came up short on his approach to the green. Then he chipped it past the green. He left his putt 4 feet from the hole, but missed that one, too. In a matter of minutes, he had another triple on his card.

“I should have been making 5, at worst 6,” he said. “That was very annoying.”

After watching Casey knock it all over the place, Oosthuizen knew victory was his. To eliminate any doubt, he rolled in an 18-footer for birdie.

“All of a sudden, it was mine to throw away,” the winner said. “It was actually very tight until the 12th hole. I mean, it could easily be: I make bogey and Paul makes birdie, and it’s a (two)-shot game. The minute he made that number, that putt to me meant a lot, that birdie putt, just for momentum on the next six holes.”

Casey kept grinding, hoping the stiff wind sweeping across the course might throw Oosthuizen off his game. But when Casey sent what he thought was a perfect 6-iron soaring toward the 16th green, then watched it roll back into the valley, he knew it was over.

“I was like, OK, clearly I’ve got to back away from the sharp objects,” he quipped.

There will be other majors, other chances to break through. Next up is the PGA Championship, where Casey will be eager to make up for missing the cut in 2004 when that major was last held at Whistling Straits.

Oosthuizen, who spent much of the round chatting amiably with Casey, has no doubt his friend and rival will have his moment.

“Paul is a fantastic golfer and a great person,” Oosthuizen said. “He’s definitely going to win a major, that’s for sure. It’s always nice playing with him. We have a lot of fun on the course, talk about other things. I think it’s important. It’s still just a game you’re playing, and you’ve got to have fun with the guys you’re playing. Otherwise, it’s going to be quite miserable out there.”

--Paul Newberry

Rare sight: Woods playing out the string in major

ST. ANDREWS (AP) — His day was effectively over by the fourth hole, where Tiger Woods needed two tries to get out of a pot bunker. What followed was something rarer still: Woods simply playing out the string in a major.

It’s been a half-dozen years since he came down the back nine on Sunday in a grand slam event with absolutely nothing at stake. With good pal Lucas Glover in tow, Woods played fast, casually and laughed a lot, looking to all the world like a guy resigned to his fate. Scolds no doubt will point to his performance here as more evidence that all those romps off the course sapped nearly all of his strength and resolve on it.

Woods won the last two times the Open stopped off at St. Andrews, once by a record margin, and the best he could muster this time around was a tie for 23rd. Coming on the heels of fourth-place finishes at the Masters and the U.S. Open, two other major championship venues where he also won by record margins, they’d have you believe he’s become Samson in golf spikes — after the haircut.

But Woods is going to make them look foolish soon enough.

Only he knows where his head is at and his game remains a work in progress. Woods still can’t putt, he’s so-so with his irons and most troubling, he’s back to making the big mistakes that produce momentum-killing double-bogeys, as he did at No. 4 Sunday. Yet he hasn’t hit so many tee shots this sweetly in years.

“It’s ironic that as soon as I start driving it on a string, I miss everything,” he said. “Maybe I should go back to spraying it all over the lot and make everything.”

Perhaps more important, though, he’s most of the way back to being regarded as a golfer instead of a pariah — at least on the course. As his comfort level rises, so does his confidence. The tabloids here did their best all week daring fans to give Woods the English version of a Bronx cheer.

Instead, he drew applause from every corner of St. Andrews and saw nothing more provocative than three woman who shed their jackets on one tee to reveal matching Tiger-print blouses — they were hired by an Irish bookie looking for publicity — yet even they turned out to be on his side.

Not long ago, with Woods in the middle of a winning streak that positively spooked his rivals, Stewart Cink wondered what they’d find if they sliced him open.

“Maybe,” Cink mused, “nuts and bolts.”

But you only had to see Woods talking about his reception on this chilly, wind-swept coast to know how relieved he was.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the lead, but still it was very warm. ... For them to be as warm as they were,” Woods said, then let his voice trail off for a moment.

The question is how long the galleries will feel that way, considering how much ground he’s already given up.

This, after all, was supposed to be his year. He was shut out of the majors in 2009, but the first three grand slam events were at courses where Woods had won seven of his career total of 14 — Augusta, Pebble Beach and the Old Course.

Few doubted he’d be a step or two closer to Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 by the time his jet left Scotland in the distance. Then his SUV went pin-balling down the driveway hours after what must have been a tense Thanksgiving dinner and changed everything.

In January, while Woods was still in hiding and on what he called an “indefinite break,” Nicklaus said, “If Tiger is going to pass my record, this is a big year for him.” By June, Jack had changed his tune only slightly.

“Do I still think Tiger will break my record? Yeah, I think he probably will. He is a very dedicated, hard-working golfer. But then again, I always said you have to do it. It’s not just gimme. You have got to go do it,” Nicklaus said. “We’ll watch.”

The scene shifts first to Firestone, where Woods has won the tour event seven times, and then to Wisconsin and Whistling Straits, site of next month’s PGA Championship and the season’s final major. The last time Woods played in the PGA there, he finished tied for 24th.

“This week I kept having long putts, and I wasn’t real steady in the wind out there,” he said. “Where we’re going to be playing from here on in, it’s not going to blow like this, so I won’t have that problem.”

Maybe.

Whistling Straits sits along the bluffs of Lake Michigan, a breezy spot to be sure. But it’s nothing like St. Andrews, where stiff gusts off the North Sea toss around almost anything that isn’t tied down. For all his fond memories of the place, Woods was already focusing somewhere down the road.

“You’ve won half your majors at venues that we’ve seen this year,” a reporter began. “How disappointed are you to be walking away with none this year?”

Woods cracked a smile.

“The good news,” he said, “is I’ve won half of them not on these venues, too.”

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org

--Jim Litke

South Africa celebrates Oosthuizen victory

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A week after the World Cup, South African leaders are basking in Louis Oosthuizen’s overwhelming victory at the British Open.

Minister of Sport Makhenkesi Stofile and the country’s ruling party lauded Oosthuizen for his seven-stroke victory at St. Andrews on Sunday, saying he has strengthened the nation’s sports credentials.

Oosthuizen (WUHST-hy-zen) won on the same day South Africa celebrated the 92nd birthday of former president Nelson Mandela. South Africa, the successful host to soccer’s first World Cup in Africa, has said it will bid to bring the Olympics to Africa for the first time in 2020.

Oosthuizen’s triumph also follows the winning return of South African runner Caster Semenya.

This “shows that we are not just champion hosts,” Stofile said.

Semenya, the 800-meter world champion, won her second consecutive comeback race in Finland on Sunday after being cleared by track’s governing body to return to competition following gender tests. Semenya won her first comeback race Thursday, having not run competitively since capturing the world title in Berlin last August.

The African National Congress said Oosthuizen underlined that South Africans can win on the world stage.

“This shows that besides hosting soccer and cricket international tournaments successfully, we are an excelling sporting nation,” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said. “Louis Oosthuizen’s victory shows clearly that South Africa has the capacity to do other things and do them successfully. We are really proud of his performance.”

--Eric Nakai