Singh has the perfect game plan

Vijay Singh has an ideal game plan for playing Carnoustie at the British Open this week -- just drive the ball in play.

Avoiding the rough will be the key to success, the tall Fijian said on Monday. "It will be okay, I think, if you drive the ball in play. Once you do that I think you can play any game from thereon.

"If you start missing the fairways you're going to have a hard time playing the golf course."

Singh, who has finished second, third, fourth and fifth in the last four weeks, just missing a second major title at the U.S. Open last month, has had three practice rounds since getting here early to prepare for Thursday's start of the first Open at Carnoustie since 1975.

"Probably this year is the best I have looked coming into the Open," the reigning U.S. PGA champion said.

He said the present course bore little resemblance to the course when he played in the 1995 Scottish Open here.

"We were able to take the driver on a few holes and even if you hit it in the rough it was playable. But if you hit it in the rough right now you will be lucky to find the ball.

He said players then just had to avoid the fairway bunkers. "Now you avoid the rough and the fairway bunkers, which is a little much, I guess."

Singh did not say the course was unfair. "The first day I played it I thought it was impossible. I've learned a little more about it each day," he said.

"I think it is a little too tough. It is just really, really hard. It is probably the hardest Open golf course I have ever played.

"If the wind blows we will probably still be playing here next week."

Singh is one of the longer hitters in the game, averaging 280 yards a drive.

"But length doesn't matter here anymore. Here they are taking the driver out of your hands. You hit a driver, you have to avoid the fairway bunkers, then the rough.

"The fairway is, in places, only 10 or 15 yards wide with a lot of bounce in the middle. You can carry one or two fairway bunkers, then there is another one past that.

"Whoever hits the ball very straight off the tees is going to have a good chance of winning," Singh said.

Reuters