Open wounds slow to heal

Ian Woosnam crunched a six-iron "stiff" on the first hole of his final round of the 130th British Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St Annes last Sunday. This gimmie birdie was his opening gambit in his quest for the coveted Claret Jug, he thought.

Woosnam bustled down the first hole with his inimitable busy, short steps confident that he had a short putt for a birdie, it might have been six feet, hopefully only six inches.

It had better be a short one, his caddie, Myles Byrne, thought, because what his boss assumed to be a birdie putt was going to be a bogey putt. Myles realised on his way towards the green that they had excess baggage. The charge for this particular bit of excess luggage was going to be extremely high. The figures being bandied about the world will fill sports pages for months to come and will undoubtedly rear their ugly heads intermittently for many years.

Myles was running about with some other errands that he had been asked to do, upsetting his usual pre-round routine, and he obviously didn't take heed of the extra driver - he hadn't realised Woosnam's coach had slipped it in on the practice range.

The clock was ticking and by the time the toter had unfolded the cumbersome pin sheet peculiar alone to the Open Championship, Myles had only enough time to get the yardage of 195 to the pin, check the wind, which was helping off the right, and help select the club.

A rules official is with every group in the Open, and until last year the official used to always ask players and caddies in the group if they had only 14 clubs in the bag. I think it was a series of less than complimentary replies by caddies who felt insulted by being asked to check on such a basic duty that influenced the R&A to stop asking the question before the players teed off. I would imagine that there will be a revised directive for the attending officials at Muirfield next year.

Myles' world was in turmoil on the long walk down to the first green at Lytham. What was he going to do? Drop the bag and disappear into the bushes, never to be seen again? Tell his man, as he walked confidently towards an almost certain birdie and cause him to miss the putt as a result?

Brain pumping, noise, heat, vast crowds, total confusion - what was he going to do? He wasn't going to run, he was definitely not going to cheat, and he was going to have to advise his boss before he teed off on the second that he had to add two to his score. A sphincter-tightening reality gripped Myles Byrne.

Fortunately the birdie putt was a tap in. As the duo strode to the second tee, Myles broke the news with a forewarning to Woosnam of "you're going to go ballistic". And he did. He made a series of bogeys and obviously lost the momentum of the opening "birdie". The extra club almost wound up on the 1.30 train to Liverpool when Woosnam hurled it away, as the tracks were close to the second tee. The abuse was flowing.

"You just had one f****** job to do and you couldn't even get that f****** right," Woosnam howled at his rodent (as we frequently refer to our colleagues, especially at times like these). Myles felt like walking away, he fiddled with his hat, he twitched, he disbelieved, he wanted to go home. But no, he couldn't, he had to go on.

He decided after the first onslaught from Woosnam that he was going to try to do the best job he possibly could for his boss for the remaining holes. By his own admission, he did an exceptional job from then on, tough as it was to bury the club incident. Smoke was billowing from the Woosnam bag in more ways than one: the porter was chewing cigarettes to calm his nerves and the player was smoking in reaction to the two-shot penalty.

Whipping boy, scapegoat and fall guy spring to mind when it comes to laying the blame on someone for a major gaffe. Ultimately the player is at fault. But the reality of today's player/caddie relationships is that there is trust placed in the caddie by the player to carry out certain basic duties. Counting the clubs before you tee off is well within the area of responsibility for the bagman. Myles Byrne feels totally responsible for the error and fully accepts the blame.

"If I am not man enough to accept the blame for this one then at 31 years of age I will never be a man," Myles explained to me philosophically in a bar in Stockholm last Tuesday night. He felt relatively safe from attention in central Stockholm. He was amongst colleagues who were trying to help him come to grips with the whole thing by talking it over. When I went to the bar for a round of drinks I interrupted the barman who had been engrossed in his English newspaper. It was the £220,000 sterling gaffe story that he was reading. We kept Myles away from the bar for the rest of the night.

Myles Byrne is getting a taste of the "big time" whether he likes it or not. As he jumped from Woosnam's chauffeur-driven car at Ulna Golf Club outside Stockholm last Tuesday for the SAS International challenge match, the TV cameras were there to greet him, not his boss. As he took the golf bag from the boot, a camera was stuck in his face. "Have you got a few words for ITN?" the reporter inquired hopefully. To which Myles replied curtly: "Yeah, I do, and the second word is off."

Per-Ulrik Johansson could have been forgiven for thinking that he would have been the most famous caddie present that day. Per was caddying for his soon to be brother-in-law, Jesper Parnevik. Well, it seemed like Myles was attracting most attention. Monty walked into the room we were all assembled in before the game and jokingly called Myles a useless twit. To which he replied, at least he wasn't a fat useless twit. The starter had to have a jab at the unfortunate duo with the "hilarious" question, "Did you check how many clubs you have?"

At the press conference before the game Woosnam was abrupt with the Swedish press when he answered their questions and suggested that they put the issue "to bed". Woosnam is visibly shaken by the whole thing. He had left the bar the previous night after just one beer; he normally likes to hang out for more than one. He threatened to whack one offending journalist over the head with the newspaper of one of the articles he read about himself. He was trying to figure out how the Chicago-based TV chat-show host got hold of his mobile phone number.

I hope for both Ian's and Myles' sake they continue their form over the next few weeks and play their way onto the Ryder Cup team and quell, to some extent, the barrage of hypothesis from those who enjoy dwelling on others misfortune. Myles was able to put the situation in perspective when he walked off the 18th green last Sunday and looked at the row of handicapped people lined up watching the finale to the 130 Open Championship. He had recovered enough to be moved by the joy that one severely handicapped young boy had got from being given Woosnam's golf glove .

Myles has paid heavily for an error that he accepts full responsibility for. He has missed out on a very big pay day and he is being pointed at worldwide as some sort of buffoon. Nobody has looked at his performance for the remainder of the round and suggested how many good clubs he may have selected or how many good lines he read on the greens that resulted in birdies.

One thing that did work in his favour over the incident was that the hat deal he was on was based on the number of seconds he appeared on the TV screen for. So when the world's TV stations were capturing one of the toughest moments of the young Bray man's life, at least he was getting well paid for it.

Myles is coming to grips with the error he made, despite the fact that he will never forget it. I hope his boss is also dealing with the situation. The fact that Myles is still working for him would suggest that his player has forgiven him. Hopefully the press hounds will bury the unfortunate incident as quickly as the two people most directly involved with it seem to have done.

Somehow I don't think that will be the case.