Woods Needs To Be More Careful At Turnberry

Woods Needs To Be More Careful At Turnberry

Watson won the famous "Duel in the Sun" with Jack Nicklaus in 1977, when the pair went head-to-head over the last 36 holes and played such brilliant golf that Hubert Green was 10 shots behind Nicklaus in third.

In 1986, Greg Norman won his second Open title after a second round of 63 - the joint lowest score ever recorded in a major championship - helped him to a five-shot victory.

And in 1994, Zimbabwe's Nick Price carded four rounds in the 60s and finished birdie-eagle-par over the last three holes of his final round to pip Sweden's Jesper Parnevik to the title.

Woods feels it is no coincidence that the three Opens staged at Turnberry have produced such high quality champions, and the world number one believes the same will be true this year when the Claret Jug is presented to the winner on Sunday. 

Unsurprisingly, Woods is a prohibitive favourite to claim his 15th major title, with world number two Phil Mickelson absent as his wife undergoes treatment for breast cancer and defending champion Padraig Harrington struggling for form.

Of course it was Woods who was missing last year as he recovered from knee surgery following his amazing US Open victory at Torrey Pines, but the American looks back to his best with three tournament victories this year.

All those victories have come in his last tournament before a major, the 33-year-old going to finish sixth in both the Masters and US Open.

In eight strokeplay events Woods has not been outside the top 10 all season, has a stroke average of 69.28 and is a collective 63 under par.

In contrast, Harrington - seeking to become the first player since Peter Thomson (1954-56) to win the Open three years in succession, has missed his last five cuts in Europe and America and is ranked 175th out of 204 players on the European Tour in driving accuracy.

The Dubliner did win the Irish PGA Championship last week for the third year in a row, but that was against a field largely comprised of local club professionals.

Asked if he could take comfort from winning in 2007 and 2008 despite also having troubles with his preparation, Harrington said: "No, it's different sort of issues.

"I would have been mentally strong and well prepared in my mental game and things like that for the last couple of Opens, whereas this time round my preparation has gone out of the window on the mental side of things.

"Even though I wasn't prepared as I wanted to be last year, it was a different sort of lack of preparation. I had a nice, quiet mind that week.

"This week, with all the stuff I'm doing with my swing, it's a bit active. It's going to be hard to be calm and focused throughout the tournament."

As for the course itself, Ian Poulter, second to Harrington at Birkdale 12 months ago, warned missing the fairways at Turnberry is "bad news".

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