Rain, Wind, Oosthuizen Win at St. Andrews 2010 British Open Championship

With the sweet tones of ancient bagpipes singing in a fitting backdrop, South African Louis Oosthuizen, caddied by a black man, walked through the 2010, 156th British Open Championship as a man born to play golf in discouraging conditions of rain and wind and a pot-bunkered links layout. Indeed, he apprenticed on Mossel Bay, South Africa's windy, bunker-splattered course.

Successful Mentorship for Oosthuizen

Mentored and sponsored by fellow countryman Ernie Els, because his family of sheep farmers was too poor to help develop his golf game and early career, Oosthuizen won at 16-under-par, going hard for the wire and mildly chased until the last few holes only by playing partner Paul Casey in a clear, warm Final Round.

Oosthuizen took the lead in the weather-challenged tournament on Friday, when he roared around several players who had replaced the sinking Rory McIlroy, Thursday's leader after shooting a record First Round 63.

The most significant turnabout on Sunday was Casey's triple bogey on the 12th Hole that pushed him back to nine-under-par, while Oosthuizen birdied to go -17.

Old Tom Morris (Sr.) and Old Tom Watson

Old Tom Morris (Sr.) surely was smiling from above the Old Course, the cradle of golf, remembering his own four Open triumphs at Prestwick in the 1860s, even as St. Andrews' links and nature had their way with the weekend's best golfers.

Five-time British Open champion Tom Watson watched as a TV commentator on Saturday and Sunday.

The oldest player on the PGA Tour, Old Tom Watson, 60, struggled with his play on Thursday and Friday, succumbing to the weather and age before Round Two was finished.

Watson didn't like St. Andrews when he first played the Old Course, he blogged, but he learned, "eventually, to love it" and to simply accept its rolling greens, coffin bunkers, hollows, and crevices as the links challenge that it has represented for years.

Old St. Andrews apparently never forgot Young Tom Watson's firstly expressed opinion. The five-time champion has never won at St. Andrews. The Old Course won't host the British Open again until 2015.

Old Tom Watson's Last Two Rounds

Watson never got a decent run going in this tournament, after firing into a Final Round tie last season at Turnberry. Stewart Cink won that traditional four-hole playoff.

Respectable rounds weren't good enough for Watson to win a sixth British Open and get that coveted victory at St. Andrews. He birdied on the 9th and 18th holes, while shooting a double bogey at five, and bogeys on eight, 16, and 17, scoring 38 out and 37 in for a 75 mark in Round Two, finishing his St. Andrews career with a two-round score of 148. In Round One, he shot 38 out and 35 in for 73, clubbing bogeys on two, three, and four, and firing birdies on five and 14.

Old Tom Watson's Curtain Call

Watson, however, did get his career St. Andrews curtain call on Friday. After a birdie stroke on the 18th, he climbed Swilcan Bridge and waved farewell with hat in hand for a cheering crowd and eager photographers.

When a player (Oosthuizen) is playing like a master, with heart and head together, there's nothing to do but stand and applaud, Old Tom Watson summarized. And that's what he did Sunday.

Resources:

Televised British Open Championship July 15-18, 2010;

Sports Illustrated 2009 Almanac; The Ultimate Golf Book, Edited by Charles McGrath and David McCormick, 2002, Houghton Mifflin Co., NY/