Morning:
8°c
That potty-mouthed young punk Peter Alliss is at it again. "One journalist wrote that it will be a travesty whoever is crowned champion because of the absence of one man," he told a pre-Open dinner the other night. "Well, to use one of my favourite phrases on TV - 'total b****cks'."
Disgusting the way they talk these days, isn't it? It certainly wasn't like that in my day, when we confined any Anglo-Saxon to our pals at the 19th hole.
But enough of these musings on that gentler age when the Krays would break off from knifing someone what looked at them funny to help an old lady across the road. All that need concern us here is whether the Sid Vicious of snug bar philosophy is correct, and the answer is yes and no.
On the one hand, it is idiotic to suggest that the forthcoming champion, having won golf's third most-prestigious tournament, after the US Open and Masters, on such a brutal course as Royal Birkdale will have been guilty of a travesty, which my dictionary defines as "a farcical or grotesque imitation".
On the other, the tournament has been so denuded of its lustre that yesterday's BBC coverage had a flat, hungover feel seldom sensed before at the start of a sporting party.
This is not to suggest that The Open won't have a compelling denouement on Sunday; merely to acknowledge the extent to which any event is inevitably devalued by the absence of Tiger Woods. A few years ago, when a slump in his form coincided with Phil Mickelson finally working out how to win majors, golf seemed poised for the ferocious rivalry any sport requires for a golden age. But Tiger regained his dominance, Mickelson faded and it never happened.
Greg Norman's nostalgic presence on yesterday's leader board reminded me of golf's last scintillating rivalry. No one who saw the final round of the 1996 Masters, when an Englishman, Nick Faldo, shot a 67 and the Aussie collapsed to a 78, will ever forget it, any more than they could forget the climax of the 1999 US PGA when the 19-year-old Sergio Garcia chased his balls down the fairways and Tiger to the brink of extinction before losing by a stroke.
Yet Garcia no more developed into a real rival to Woods than did Mickelson and while Ernie Els and Vijay Singh occasionally threatened to loosen his grip, they never managed it either.
That grip became a murderous stranglehold at last month's US Open, when Tiger's victory on the one leg came as close to Greek mythology as sport ever will. Faced with a labour to have Hercules muttering, "Zeus, mate, you're pulling my plonker", Woods grimaced in perpetual agony and raised himself to an Olympian height at which even Jack Nicklaus never glimpsed.
The contrast between his stoicism and the endless moaning of other golfers about tough courses like Royal Birkdale - and Alliss was right in dismissing them as "so bloody delicate" - underlined his status as a titan among pygmies.
So it's futile pretending that his absence hasn't degraded this event.
Whoever collects the Claret Jug on Sunday won't appear in the record books alongside an asterisk, with a footnote reading "*Travesty: no Tiger Woods". Yet just as no one reveres Jan Kodes for winning Wimbledon in the boycott year of 1973, whenever people speak of the 2008 Open champion they will append a dismissive "Ah yes, but wasn't that the year ... " to the mention of his name.
Do'h! Soggy Sandy is no quitter, he's a hero in the Homer mould
The world, as everyone knows, is split into two groups - those who think that the refusal to quit is the hallmark of human nobility, and those who just can't be done with it when all looks entirely hopeless.
Myself, I'm with the second lot, trusting in the great Homer J Simpson's teaching that: "Trying is the first step towards failure." And so, I'm delighted to say, is Sandy Lyle. I've always loved Sandy for being such an antidote to the snivelling wretches who infest all sports. Never one to complain, his taciturn exterior suggests an archetypal Scot in one of PG Wodehouse's Oldest Member golfing tales.
But never before - not when he won the 1985 Open, not even when he produced that legendary fairway bunker shot at the last to win the 1988 Masters - have I loved him as fervently as yesterday when he jacked it in after 11 holes at 10 over par.
It was wet and chilly, the rough was murderous and he was heading for something like a 94.
He could have told himself some specious rot about former champions soldiering on.
Instead, the 50-year-old just thought "sod it" and strode off. Thank God for Sandy Lyle, a hero to us all. Or half of us, at least.
At last, a great shot from Joe
The death of Joe Calzaghe's career may have been exaggerated. Admittedly, it was the Welshman himself who did all the exaggerating, hinting broadly that September's bout with Roy Jones Jnr would be his last, but he appears to have changed his mind.
Good. Jones is less a shot fighter than a fighter peppered with enough bullet holes to make him 1-3 favourite for the Mr Emmental title at the forthcoming Cheese Impersonators' Convention in Geneva.
However, the fight Joe seems to want after that foregone conclusion, against the fearsome American Kelly Pavlik, looks well worth a Sunday morning 4am alarm call. Calzaghe did his reputation no favours by lumbering to that split decision win over the ancient Bernard Hopkins, and will do himself fewer by whipping the venerable Jones. Beat Pavlik, on the other hand, and he might finally deserve the epithet "great" that has always remained so tantalisingly out of his grasp.
Big Phil's the power at Chelsea
It is with genuine pleasure that we note Big Phil Scolari embracing British high culture. The new Chelsea manager has fallen in love with darts, it is reported, and is such a natural that he is already challenging Joe Cole and John Terry at the head of the club's arrows rankings.
As one who recently scored a maximum 180 at one visit to the oche, albeit with a slightly more than maximum 17 darts, I look forward to Sid Waddell picking this second Phil The Power out of the crowd when the world championships return to Ally Pally in December.
One word of warning, though. In any match against Terry, best not be chalking the scores when the club captain steps up to aim at a winning double.
A foot to the left of the board is the last place to be standing should the pressure cause a sudden loss of footing.
