Open officials criticise players for bad thinking

Open officials slammed the players on Monday for not thinking hard enough about how to play Carnoustie and said Tiger Woods should have used his driver more during the championship.

Officials from the tournament and from the Royal and Ancient Club who stage it said the players did not employ a suitable strategy for the 7,361-yard course on which the event was staged for the first time since 1975.

"I think the best players in the world did not work out the best way to play the golf course," Hugh Campbell, chairman of the Championship Committee, told a press conference.

"I was amazed at how defensively a lot of top players in the world played the course," he added. "They hadn't been faced with it at an Open championship for a very long time."

The title was won on Sunday by 30-year-old Scot Paul Lawrie by three shots in a four-hole play-off against Frenchman Jean Van de Velde and American Justin Leonard.

Outgoing R and A secretary Sir Michael Bonallack said he was surprised players did not use their drivers more.

"Tiger Woods played a lot of holes with his irons and so lost all his advantage," Bonallack said. "Yes I would have expected more players to use driver more often.

"If you have a 468-yard par-four hole you have a much shorter second shot if you use a driver."

Woods, the world number one who tied seventh, was among the vast majority of players who had complained during the week that it was unsafe to use drivers because of the bunkers, the narrow fairways and the thickness of the rough just off the fairways.

The officials were unrepentant about the set-up of the course.

"Carnoustie has always been difficult. The fairways have always been narrow. The difference this time was that if you missed the fairways, the rough was wet and long," Bonallack said, adding that that was because of extreme growing conditions early this year.

"The golf course remains a very difficult test of golf," Campbell said. "It will find out anyone who does not come here on top of their game. If there is a flaw in your game, Carnoustie will find it out."

"If you have Carnoustie set up for a championship in a strong wind, it is a severe test of golf and of patience and strategy. If you go in the rough, you try and get out of it straightaway."

They did not believe that when Carnoustie stages the Open again -- perhaps towards the end of the next decade, they speculated -- the fairways would be any narrower. "That's the way they always are here," Bonallack said.

Campbell said that with hindsight the only course change he would make would be to widen the landing area for the second shot at the 578-yard sixth hole. The fairway was only 11 yards wide at that point.

They discounted the threat by some players they they would not return to Carnoustie.

"If you challenge a top player and he is unsuccessful in his first attempt he will want to come back and try again. Golf's like that," Bonallack said.

The officials added that they would not be setting up Old Course at St Andrews in such a way when the Open returns to the "Home of Golf" next year.

"St Andrews is a completely different, traditional venue. It is used at Opens so frequently that there is a clear pattern to be followed. It is defended by bunker and pin positions. There is no policy to change that pattern," Campbell said.

"You can't change St Andrews," Bonallack added huffily.

Reuters