Open trophy back where it belongs

Scots don't have summer, not a real one, anyway. Their big cities have too few bright lights. And nobody ever flies over for the food.

But what the Scots have more of than anyone else in the world -- besides breathtaking vistas -- is golf. And now, thanks to homeboy Paul Lawrie from just up the road in Aberdeen, they once again own the most important piece of hardware in the very game they invented.

Victory came 68 years after the last Scot won on home soil, in the very same place, Carnoustie. And even if you didn't know much about Lawrie -- New Year's Day baby, 1969; two previous wins as a European tour pro -- you knew he descended from the same bloodlines as Tommy Armour the moment he wrapped his big hands around the auld claret jug.

That's because Lawrie didn't begin his acceptance speech by thanking a swing guru, personal trainer, nutritionist, sports psychologist or the corporation that manufactured his clubs for helping him win the Open.

He thanked Carnoustie's greenskeeper first, then his wife and family. That portion of the speech might have been longer, except Lawrie's wife was at home tending to their 7-month-old son and the rest of his family was in Spain "enjoying themselves in the sun."

Then he turned to the grandstands on either side of the 18th green and thanked the fans who cheered him on all tournament long, especially through the darkening chill and driving rain of the four-hole playoff.

The only thing that would have been more authentically Scottish was for Lawrie to mention each and every one of his hunting dogs.

"Thanks to everyone that knows me, which is a lot of you now. You all clapped for me."

"I'm a local boy," he finished. ``Thanks a lot.''

Lawrie put American Justin Leonard and Frenchman Jean Van de Velde out of their misery on the 22nd hole all three of them played Sunday with the bravest shot of the tournament. It was a 4-iron from 221 yards out that sailed through the wind and wet and over the narrowest part of the last green to within 3 feet of the flag.

It capped the greatest final-day comeback in the history of major championship golf, from 10 strokes off the lead. In keeping with theme established during the four days of the tournament, Lawrie's shot was also one of the riskiest.

The best players in the world came to Carnoustie, the toughest championship venue there is, and right from the start -- to turn Bobby Jones' famous line on its head -- played a game with which all the rest of us are only too familiar.

With the fairways narrowed in places to the width of a country lane, rain falling occasionally and the wind howling steadily, their shots flew off course with regularity. All of a sudden, pros were banished to those parts of a golf course only hackers ever visit.

Sometimes they had to improvise shots from thigh-high hay. Other times, it might be with one foot in a sand bunker and the other on a ridge. A few times, they swung mightily and missed. A few other times, they made contact and after seeing where the shots wound up, wished they had missed.

All the while, almost to a man, they complained about how unfair it was. By the end, it made them so wacky that at the most critical juncture of the tournament, Van de Velde took off his socks and shoes and waded into the Barry Burn, the meandering stream that crosses the 18th hole three times, and prepared to play his ball where it lay.

"Wait just a little longer," Craig Parry, his playing partner said only half in jest, "the tide's going out in a couple of minutes."

After some pleading, though, Van de Velde's caddy talked him into taking a drop and trying the more conventional play. Yet more wackiness only ensued when the Frenchman hit his next shot into the bunker guarding the right side of the 18th green and managed to get up and down with a triple-bogey 7 and into the playoff.

An hour later, Lawrie stared at the same bunker for the second time that afternoon. As he stood in the fairway, he had a 1-stroke lead over Leonard, who had dumped his approach shot into the burn, and Van de Velde, who was hacking his way toward the green via the left-side rough.

Lawrie could have played cautiously, laid up with a wedge on his second shot and then hit another, shorter wedge shot into the green for a certain bogey 5 to secure his win. But that would have rubbed his Scottish nature the wrong way, gone against the way he was taught to play the game.

So he hit that brave, or maybe foolhardy, 4-iron across the slate-gray sky, walked up with all those cheers still ringing in his ears and tapped in for a birdie 3.

"I just went ahead and did my job," Lawrie said. ``The golf course was very, very tough. But it's a major tournament and you should have to pass the exam."

AP