Carnoustie and The Open

Two posts about Carnoustie Golf Links, which hosts The 147th Open Championship next week for the eighth time.

Carnoustie: The Concept of Evil.

The previous Open winners at Carnoustie:

1931 — Tommy Armour.

1937 — Henry Cotton.

1953 — Ben Hogan.

1968 — Gary Player.

1975 — Tom Watson

1999 — Paul Lawrie.

2007 — Padraig Harrington.

That’s quite a group. 

It’s not hyperbole to believe that the horror genre owes an enormous debt to Carnoustie Golf Links. I suspect if you encountered Jean Van de Velde in an expansive mood, particularly after an adult beverage or three, he’d set you straight, if you had doubts.

Jean Van de Velde stepped to the tee on his 72nd hole in the 1999 Open championship with a three-shot lead. But not just any hole. It was the 18th, a conniving, vengeful mixture of turf and murk that mutilates dreams and dismantles careers.

What happened on that hole that late afternoon recalibrates the essence of tragedy, which in order to be truly dark, the victim must have helped spin his own demise — with, of course, "outside" influence. Needing only a double bogey to win the Open Championship, Van de Velde took seven, falling into a playoff with Paul Lawrie and Justin Leonard, and eventually won by Lawrie.

What follows is the account on wiki:

Van de Velde nearly achieved an upset victory at the 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie, when he was the clear leader playing the closing holes. He arrived at the 18th tee needing only a double bogey six to become the first Frenchman since 1907 to win a major tournament. He had played error-free golf for much of the week and birdied the 18th hole in two prior rounds.

Despite a three-shot lead, Van de Velde chose to use his driver off the tee, and proceeded to drive the ball to the right of the burn and was lucky to find land. Rather than laying up and hitting the green with his third, Van de Velde decided to go for the green with his second shot. His shot drifted right, ricocheted backwards off the railings of the grandstands by the side of the green, landed on top of the stone wall of the Barry Burn and then bounced fifty yards backwards into knee-deep rough.

On his third shot, Van de Velde's club got tangled in the rough on his downswing, and his ball flew into the Barry Burn, a water hazard. He removed his shoes and socks and gingerly stepped through shin-deep water as he debated whether to try to hit his ball out of the Barry Burn, which guards the 18th green. Ultimately, he took a drop and proceeded to hit his fifth shot into the greenside bunker. Van de Velde blasted to within six feet from the hole, and made the putt for a triple-bogey seven, dropping him into a three-way playoff with Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie. Lawrie would eventually triumph in the playoff.

This account is Shakespearian. I’d forgotten Van de Velde had to make a nervy 6-footer to get into the playoff, but it was a moot point by then. Or a moat point as they mutter at the burn.

Fans of the play OTHELLO might agree that if a golf hole has endorsed the motive of an evil character, that the 18th at Carnoustie is the perfect Iago … a scheming, whispering menace whose lust for power and position combined with passionate, vindictive purpose to not only succeed but mostly to destroy. And eventually his ploys create the havoc that he'd imagined ... other than the torture that awaits himself ... but at the end of OTHELLO, Iago has not "paid for his deeds."  Perhaps he did. Perhaps not.

But I digress.

Who knows why Van de Velde kept risking his lead? Could it possibly be the voices in his head, a la Iago, that kept muttering, “You can do this. You can do this.”

While the sane portions of Van de Velde’s brain apparently had crashed and failed to reboot.

Along these lines:  (And again from Wiki) the term CARNOUSTIE EFFECT exists, and though part of the definition/explanation concerns Sergio Garcia —nobody's choice for the kind of person who handles adversity in the worst of circumstance — it is revealing nonetheless:

From Wiki: The term CARNOUSTIE EFFECT dates from the 1999 Open, when the world's best players, many of whom were reared on manicured and relatively windless courses, were frustrated by the unexpected difficulties of the Carnoustie links, which was compounded by the weather. One much-fancied young favourite, a 19-year-old Sergio García of Spain, went straight from the course to his mother's arms crying after shooting 89 and 83 in the first two rounds. The CARNOUSTIE EFFECT is defined as "that degree of mental and psychic shock experienced on collision with reality by those whose expectations are founded on false assumptions." This being a psychological term, it can of course apply to disillusionment in any area of activity, not just in golf.

In short, this links course is a savage mofo that tortures, then destroys souls. And as the victims trudge off the battlefield with bent armor and broken swords, they suffer the final insult ... the echoes of maniacal mirth emanating from the Barry Burn where the Carnoustie Effect Spirits gather and dance on the psychological graves of those who tried to tame their golf course.

A cosmic HA, if you will.

Carnoustie — Pressure (The Actual Kryptonite)

Suppose on a decent weather day, though I'm not certain how "decent" is defined in such as places as Angus, Scotland, where one finds Carnoustie Golf Links. Let's suppose then that the wind is down, the pins have been placed in mostly the center of the greens, and there's no rain or massive heat. Does this happen in Angus? Okay. Let's imagine.  

And, even luckier, you have a tee time on the championship course. 

You have won the lottery twice.

Perhaps you're fortunate to be playing with people you know, and even like.

Three lottery wins in a single day.

Can it continue?

Your friends suggest that you play from the championship tees to allegedly simulate tournament conditions.

The only direct parallel with what you are doing and any form of contest at Carnoustie, is the name of the course. You are in a valium mist in comparison.

And this gets us back to the 18th, where Jean Van de Velde needed 6 to win The Open.

Suppose Jean VDW was in your group on that mild, Jimmy Stewart kind of afternoon, he likely stripes the drive, hits the green, and does no worse than 4. Easy peasy.

Pressure is why we become so engrossed in live events. Some of us are likely watching the World Cup. Consider the wonderful chances Mbappe gave Giroud yesterday, and poor Number 9 could finish none of them. Maybe in a friendly that's another tale. Or ponder England's Sterling, who is a pest that has not finished in this World Cup, yet has to be marked anyway.

Pressure takes one from performing in the moment to that netherworld of what the moment means. 

Thus, pressure seduces genius to forgo process, and become totally aware of WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN, or WHAT IS WANTED TO HAPPEN.

This is lethal.

To lose process with the shot at hand in golf is akin to walking a high wire with vaseline on the bottom of your feet in a wicked gale without a net. Gravity is not your ally. And neither is your mind. A parachute, however, would be a great app on your phone.

Pressure induces a gargantuan dose of self-absorption at the worst time. It takes you out of yourself so much that you are seeing yourself in your own film. You are not now. You are not back then. You are ahead, and thus nowhere you need to be.

One of my pursuits is acting. Everything I've suggested about golf is also true for work on stage. A rehearsal in street clothes is just like that balmy afternoon at Carnoustie … where it is not difficult at all to play close attention second to second — the metaphor is that just about anyone can make less than 7 at Carnoustie.

But bring in the crowd, put on the costumes, turn on the lights, and DO THE SHOW FOR REAL? This is a far different creature, even though it is the same room where you've have had continued success for quite some time. And the metaphor turns on itself and just about anyone can make 7 at Carnoustie. Or worse.

The actor must stay in the moment, and one of the keys for me is to remember to listen. The instance that I stop truly hearing what is being said, I am on the way to getting in my head — I am no longer anywhere when I start thinking.

Same is true for hand-eye and foot-eye endeavors — you can’t think.

When you are using your mind, you are likely ahead or behind the moment.

Handling pressure then, imo, is simply staying present. There is no past. No future. Just now.

I realize this sounds wavy gravy on Woodstocky tofu … But it is true.

In my experience and view, it is not so much a player rises to the occasion, it is that the player does not allow the occasion to get in his way.