Beware the beast that lurks at Carnoustie

Up to his shins in grass, Phil Mickelson put his hands on his knees and peered at his ball in the rough on the sixth hole of Carnoustie Golf Links. The purr of a power trimmer from the other side of the fairway caught his attention.

"Hey," Mickelson shouted. ``Over here!''

Sorry. The brave souls who set out to conquer Carnoustie when the 128th Open starts today will be on their own to battle the rough and everything else that awaits on a beast of a course.

They most likely won't get any help from the weather. The wind was on its worst behavior Wednesday for the final day of practice and is expected to whip off the Firth of Tay at least for the first two rounds.

They certainly won't get any sympathy from officials at the Royal & Ancient, who wanted only to preserve Carnoustie's reputation as the toughest links golf in the world.

Consider the mission accomplished. And then some.

"Too difficult?" said R&A secretary Michael Bonallack. ``I think it is fair. We are not too worried about scores because this is a very difficult golf course. If you get difficult wind conditions, there are going to be higher scores. But they will still be lower than anybody else."

If the wind remains as blustery, count on high scores.

Steve Pate couldn't even hit the fairway with an iron on the 342-yard third hole with wind blasting across from the left. Once he found his ball -- and that took some doing -- he cautioned Dennis Paulson.

"No telling what this will do," Pate said.

He took a mighty hack with his sand wedge, frowned and shook his head as the ball squirted sideways and rolled into a pot bunker.

Mickelson, Mark Calcavecchia and Billy Mayfair had a $2,000 bet for anyone who made it through Wednesday's round without a bogey.

"I made it through 10 holes without a bogey," Calcavecchia said. ``Then I made about six after that."

The Open, known for its rolling, bumpy fairways and pot bunkers along a British seaside, looks like it stole a page from the U.S. Open. British officials are even starting to sound like their American counterparts.

"There was no way in the world that we set out to embarrass the best players in the world," said Hugh Campbell, chairman of the championship committee. "It is quite the opposite. We set out to present them a test on one of the toughest links in the world.

"And the weather has chipped in to make it an even more severe test than we imagined in would be."

The only consensus on a winning score is that it most likely will be over par for the first time since Sandy Lyle won with a 2-over 282 at Royal St. George in 1985. Some have predicted something in the neighborhood of 300.

Not that the R&A cares.

"As long as the best player does it," Bonallack said. ``I don't think they'll mind what score they have if they do win."

An American has won the Open the past four years. Another victory Sunday would match the longest U.S. streak since Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen won five straight from 1926 to 1930.

Most fingers point in the direction of Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in the world and winner in three of his last four tournaments. He also is among the early leaders in positive attitudes, which may be the greatest asset this week.

He loves the links. He likes the nasty weather. He is always up for a challenge.

"I think it is one of the best, one of the fairest golf courses," Woods said. "There's only one blind shot. Everything else is self-explanatory. It's right there in front of you."

His chief challenger is a little more perplexed. David Duval, a four-time winner who held the No. 1 ranking for 14 weeks, played practice rounds on Monday and Tuesday and then decided it he needed time away from the talk about carnage at Carnoustie.

"I'm trying not to expend much energy thinking about what it's going to be like," Duval said Wednesday. "We all know what it's going to be like. It's going to be hard. It's going to beat up everybody. I'm not concerning myself with it today."

Carnoustie is being used for the Open for the first time since 1975 and only the sixth time in history, the least of any courses in the current rotation.

The R&A wanted to make sure it was as close to the same conditions as the previous Opens, such as Ben Hogan's victory in 1953, Gary Player's outstanding duel with Jack Nicklaus in 1968, and Tom Watson's playoff victory 24 years ago.

One problem.

A wet spring caused the grass to grow like a weed, causing this seaside course in northeast Scotland to resemble Kansas.

"That has not been induced by the R&A," Campbell said. ``I would feel seriously guilty if we had deliberately set out to grow wheat fields off the edge of the fairways."

It's not a wheat field. It's just Carnoustie. And by the look of it, there could be plenty of carnage by the end of the week.

AP