[Patrick_Mucci]

Is it the wind ?

The bunkering ?

The rolls ?

The roughs

A combination of all of the above and more.

I happen to love the design, placement and construction of the bunkers, their feeding surrounds and their juxtaposition to the greens

[Tom Zeni]

It's the entire atmosphere including the history of it all.

As for one particular thing, I'd say it's the bunkering.

[Steve Pozaric]

To start, because it is different from what we see week in and week out on US PGA golf and our own weekend rounds.  

The impact of weather which is expected as a variable as opposed to something that is out of left field.  Maybe that is the crux of it all expected variables that yield the unexpected and it is intriguing as to how the best players in the world handle it (or don't).

Lastly, because we are all closet Anglophiles!  

[JR Potts]

For the above reasons plus one more.

Live golf in the morning.  There is nothing better than waking up, rolling over, [then hopefully some other stuff happens], then flipping on the TV to live Major Championship Golf.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
The shaky camera work matches up nicely with my shaky self, especially at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  

Seriously, there is something about revetted bunkers, tall fescues, brown fairways, crazy bounces, humps and hollows, nearly limitless roll, and people in coats (sometimes) in July that is irresistible.

[James Bennett]

For the above reasons plus one more.

Live golf in the morning.  There is nothing better than waking up, rolling over, [then hopefully some other stuff happens], then flipping on the TV to live Major Championship Golf.

For us down under, there is nothing better than watching the end of the Open Championship after Dinner for several hours and then going to bed knowing who has won.  

For the other three US majors, it is wake up and watch till perhaps 8am in the morning when play finishes.  Day 4 means a late start to work for the US events as it is Monday down here.

James B

ps  One of the interesting aspects of the Open is the putting.  The range of outcomes from long putts holed at pace and short putts missed through feeble attempts seem so much more common on the links.  Must be the combination of native soil greens, wind, a variety of turf grasses and a slightly slower green speed.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Pat, yes yes yes and more yes. Additionally the R&A does not seem to play with the architecture like the USGA does with the US Open. The weather effects the score as much as anything the R&A does. The Open and the Masters are the big 2.

[Jon Wiggett]

The Open requires the players to play a game that they don't see week in, week out on the tour. This was also one of the main attractions of the Masters. With the US Open the course may not play quite the same as on the tour but it looks the same on TV just alittle tighter and USPGA is to all extents a normal event. I think if the R&A were to move to playing on inland courses the Open would lose its specialness, lets hope they don't.

[Bill_McBride]

The brown fairways -- some more beige than brown - are fantastic, and certainly not like anything seen on the U.S. tour weekly event.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

It's simply where we begin.

[Jesse Jones]

 I just love watching great golfers actually hit a myriad of golf shots..
 This championship has always been my favorite to watch.
  There's something about the impending doom of watching a shot on the ground bounce..skip and jump either in or around bunkers..

[Jim Thompson]

Maybe it is just because, deep down, we really want to believe in trusting our shots, throw our fate to luck, and accept severe consequences for marginal failures.  Maybe we want to play the bounces and be put in situations where the aerial came is equally as risking as the ground game due to wind and ground conditioning.  It may even be that we all know that this type of game reveals more character than the game we play here and we all want to be revealed and revered for overcoming such hardships….

[Mark_F]

I wasn’t aware there was a British Open.

The Open Championship we like so much down here because:

A)It isn't in the USA
B)We can go and play the courses
C)We like to think some of our courses are fairly similar

[Jim Nugent]

The lay and look of the land, the wild bunkering.  

[Shane Gurnett]

Because it is such a refreshing change from the sh1t that the US Tour dishes up every other week.

[Eric Franzen]

Besides what everyone else already pointed out I would like to add the history and heritage together with the unpredictability that signifies links golf from the normal tour event.

[Andrew Thomson]

because its golf played like it was intended.

some of the stuff on the PGA Tour could almost be considered another sport altogether.

[John Chilver-Stainer]

In addition – the penal nature of the bunkers  - and how they influence the strategy.

Seeing Faldo hit it past Tiger into a bunker illustrated the 2 different mind games at work. Faldo had to get it up the fairway as far as he could to make his second shot effective, thus risking the bunkers.Tiger lays up sensibly and still has plenty of length left up his sleeve to place the second shot.

[Tom_Doak]

In the simplest terms, I would agree with Andrew T.:  because this is golf, much in the same way as Wimbledon is tennis.  The official name of tennis is "lawn tennis".  The official name of golf should be "firm and fast golf".

Because the shot is not over when the ball lands.

[ForkaB]

Tom

Wimbledon has significantly and deliberately slowed down their surfaces over the past 10 years or so, in order to rein in the serve and volleyers.  They have succeeded, and you rarely see a successful player consistently following his serve to the net compared to the days of Sampras, Ivanesivic, Phillipousis, etc.  IMO this is a bad thing, as it has made the game unidimensional--in the same way the the PGAT has made golf unidimesional.

In the good old days you could see dust coming off the surface when a ball hit hard and low came off centre court.  No longer, alas.....

[Kevin Pallier]

To name but a few reasons.....

Becuase of the wonderful array of courses it's played over and the fact that they are accessible to play for oneself.

Because imagination and strategy is more important than pulling driver on most hole's and firing at pins as we see most weeks on the PGA Tour.

Because the bunkering are a hazard to stay well clear of and the wind brings a variety of shot making skills to the fore.

Because it forces the best players in the World to travel outside of the US  

[Voytek Wilczak]

For any lover of the game, the Open is like going home...

[Brent Hutto]

1) Seeing the best players in the world play courses I would love to play. There is hardly a course in the Open Rota that I wouldn't go to great lengths to play. Outside the majors, there are maybe half a dozen PGA Tour stops that I would pay to play even if I were right across the street. And some of the PGA Championship venues are no better than a run-of-the-mill Tour stop.

2) Seeing more shotmaking per hour than you'll see per week in most US tournaments. The weather, the tight lies and most of all the firm conditions force the players to play funky-cool shots that would be low-percentage aberrations in a typical PGA Tour round.

3) I like seeing such a rich mix of PGA Tour stars, top European Tour players and internationals, not to mention the occasional remarkable performance by an amateur. It may not be considered the strongest field in golf but it's mighty strong and easily the most diverse.

4) The Open is very often played within sight of water, making for interesting scenery in the background. Plus the galleries are filled with a wider variety of spectators than the usual US Tour mix of corporate types and drunken boors (not that there aren't drunken boors at the Open as well).

[Allan Hutton]

I love the Open because of the amazing imagination of the players.  Jim Furyk just splashed a putter out of a greenside bunker at the 4th then got the ball to slingshot around the shoulder of another bunker to 10 feet.  A most extraoridinary shot!

Ciao

Sean

This I have to see!!  The Beeb commentary...

"Incredible golf from Jim Furyk on the 4th. Stuck in a bunker, he takes out his putter and thwacks the ball up the steep turf wall, round the next bunker and onto the green. He then curves in his par putt to widespread disbelief"

To be stuck at work

[George Pazin]

Lots of great posts (even Rich's ).

Seems like The Open best illustrates John Kirk's time test theory of gca.

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