Weakest Links

Appalling weather has turned the Dunhill Links championship into a farce, but few people are laughing

Alasdair Reid, The Sunday Times, 21 October 2001

They say history repeats itself as farce, so at least we can credit the organisers of the inaugural Dunhill Links championship with one perverse distinction. So completely have they fouled up the running of this ill-conceived event, so thorough has been their creation of a full-blown dog's breakfast of a tournament, that it has been their singular, momentous achievement to have come up with something quite stupendously farcical at the first time of asking.

There is almost nothing good to be said for this tournament. Yesterday, as sheets of rain swept across its three host courses, as celebrity players swaddled themselves into anonymity with more and more layers of clothes, and as the already thin smattering of spectators fled for precious cover, the monumental folly of it all became increasingly clear. For that, at least, we should be grateful, for clarity has been a rare quality during these mist-shrouded days on the chill linkslands of Fife and Angus.

Yet even the thickest coastal fog could never compare with the density of the pea-souper that must have formed between the ears of those misguided souls who dreamt up this risible concept in the first place. It is hardly the most arcane corner of the science of meteorology that the weather in these parts can be a little tricky at this time of year, but such pitfalls seem not to have occurred to officials who allowed little room for slack as they crammed their schedule with 312 competitors across three courses over four days. In Scotland. In October. Insane.

The utter madness of it all was never more stark than the moment yesterday when Peter German, the tournament director, turned up in the St Andrews pressroom and restated his hope that four rounds could still be completed. At that point, just before 1pm, play was suspended at the Old Course and Kingsbarns, while Carnoustie was hanging on by the skin of its frost-bitten teeth. German looked a worried man, an impression enhanced by the hat pulled low over his forehead and the windcheater buttoned up to his neck.

Scarcely had he left the room when it was announced that Carnoustie, too, had just succumbed to the elements.

Such was the stop-start nature of the day, with more of the former in the morning. Latterly, when the weather across all three courses changed from impossible to merely deeply uncomfortable, some fitful progress was made, but it was clear that the event was still hopelessly behind schedule going into what should have been its final day.

Certainly, none of the Hollywood celebrities taking part could ever have considered a script so grim or heavy with black humour as this. Dutifully, they have all bleated on about the privilege of taking part, but the stony expressions paraded by Michael Douglas, Kurt Russell and Kyle MacLachlan suggest that this is a movie they would rather not be in and that they will certainly think hard about before signing up for the sequel. So, too, Sir Steve Redgrave, who has probably been at greater risk of drowning in this event than while winning his five Olympic golds.

Not that their misery has been obvious to many. The deserted grandstands around the waterlogged Old Course yesterday afternoon were monuments to the absurd optimism of the organisers, but they provided no less damning a commentary on Friday when, with play trickling through, they were almost as empty. Had any Dunhill director wandered out from the warmth of his hospitality tent then, he would have found precisely 17 people watching the action at the Road Hole, arguably the most hallowed spot on planet golf. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong format.

St Andrews may be the home of golf, but Scottish golf followers, who turn up in droves for a genuine contest, know a pig in a poke when they see one. All of which adds to the irony, for beneath the more-dross-than-gloss of its badly tarnished glamour there is a perfectly acceptable professional tournament trying to get out. Indeed, more than acceptable, for the £3.5m total prize fund is the richest offered in Britain, while the £560,000 available to the winner ranks second only to The Open.

All of which makes you wonder why Dunhill, with a lengthy track record in golf sponsorship and seemingly bottomless pockets, should be given such a desperately poor slot at the fag end of the European season. Next year, it is likely to be moved forward by three weeks, a change that will cause a quiver of excitement in the company's Knightsbridge offices - until somebody points out that Scottish weather is not exactly tropical in early October either.

At least by then the tournament committee might have sorted out the fiasco of the elastic handicaps that have blighted this year's event. Thirty-nine players have had their handicaps cut here, most controversially Clay Walker, the American singer, who was cut from 11 to seven. Amazingly, Jeremy Lambourne, a 29-year-old property developer, hung on to the 11 that allowed him and his professional partner, Lucas Parsons, to get round Carnoustie's fearsome links in an eyebrow-popping net 59.

It is hard to imagine Paul McGinley's eyebrows moving far up his Cro-Magnon brow, and the steadiness that has been a feature of his play this year was again in evidence as he set about defending his 13-under overnight lead with a succession of straight pars at the Angus course. Steaming up to join him, however, came Paul Lawrie, the 1999 Open champion, who birdied eight of the 12 holes he played at St Andrews before fading light ended the day's proceedings.

A greater threat, though, might be provided by Ernie Els, three off the lead after eight holes at St Andrews. The Old Course has been the easiest of the host venues and Els could approach its back nine with more confidence than McGinley could possibly feel about the closing stretch at Carnoustie. Yet no sooner had Els lit up the scoreboard with a birdie at the fifth than the skies darkened and the rain began to lash the fairways again. The old grey town of St Andrews has never looked greyer than this.