Alliss' rant on Arnie's golden era leaves Nantz stuck for words

TV VIEW:THERE WERE more than a few who'd just about regained their composure after watching the reception the young Rory fella received when he walked up the 18th at the Congressional.

But then yesterday happened, and you were floored all over again, the greeting Darren Clarke received at Royal St George’s as he strolled towards the final green one of the lovelier sporting sights and sounds you’ll ever witness.

“Makes your toes curl up, doesn’t it,” said Peter Alliss, which wasn’t actually what he meant at all, but it’s easy enough to mispeak at emotional times like that.

There were still five or six holes to go when we were shown the engraver, Claret Jug in hand, warming up for the task ahead. Alliss noted that ‘Darren Clarke’ would be a whole lot easier to inscribe than, say, ‘Louis Oosthuizen’, which, you’d imagine, led to a collective cry from the viewers of: “Nooooo!”

You just don’t want to be tempting fate like that.

There are bunkers on that course that have a black hole quality to them, golfers failing to ever emerge from them after going in search of their wayward drives.

“Only one team can win this now – and that’s England,” Kevin Keegan somewhat infamously declared in 1998, just before Dan Petrescu got Romania’s winning goal.

You had to fear Alliss had placed a similar hex on Clarke.

Mind you, the fate-tempting had been going on since Friday. “Just imagine if Darren wins the Open, Northern Ireland should just retire,” said Andrew Cotter, to which Mark James replied: “They might even stop fighting each other.”

As is often the case at times like that, there followed a lengthy enough silence in the commentary box, but it was broken a bit later by Hazel Irvine’s “we’d like to apologise for any offence caused” apology.

Mind you, when you have four days of morning to evening coverage to fill, it’s inevitable enough that you’ll have these mishaps, especially when – with the exception of Irvine and Maureen Madill’s interjections – there’s a bit of a gentleman’s club feel to the BBC’s commentary team.

American guest Jim Nantz, for example, was reminiscing about Arnold Palmer’s 1961 British Open triumph, when he famously “hit out of the scrub and somehow muscled a six-iron on to the green”.

“Ah yes,” Alliss purred, “those were the days when men were men and women were very glad of it.”

Jim just didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing at all.

Britain’s nursing union might be more vocal, though, in response to Alliss’s tribute to the cameramen who had to endure woeful conditions over the four days. “But they do it with a happy smiley face and very little money,” he said, “it’s a vocation – like nursing used to be in the 30s and 40s.”

Next time Alliss needs a spot of colonic irrigation . . . well, you have to wish the fella all the best in his recovery.

As for Rickie Fowler’s attire, Alliss was stupefied.

“He’s got the dreaded pox,” he suggested, when he laid eyes on that white rig-out sprinkled with orange spots, later recommending that both Fowler and McIlroy “ask for Crystal” at his favourite tailors, “she’ll sort you out.”

The advantage, though, of Fowler’s daring attire was he was the only golfer visible on the course during those stormy spells when it looked like Royal St George’s would be uprooted and deposited in northern Finland. Although he did resemble a landing strip at times, thereby risking a Boeing 747 touching down on him.

“The wind could blow a dog off a chain,” Wayne Grady noted yesterday, while Madill, unlucky enough to be posted out on the course, reported that “these raindrops are so heavy they’re actually hurting”.

The only thing that lifted their windswept and soggy spirits was Miguel Angel Jimenez’s warm-up routine, which truly was a sight to behold.

Especially that bit where, cigar in mouth, he kind of imitated a surfer (without a board).

“He looks like a Sumo wrestler when he goes down on his haunches,” was Grady’s take on the vision.

“He has the body of a 47-year-old, the swing of someone much younger, and the hairstyle of who knows what,” suggested Cotter.

Jimenez, then, was our second choice to win the tournament, but Clarke was, in truth, the only man. Deepest apologies to Phil Mickelson for unsportingly greeting his end-of-round hiccups like an €185 million Eurolottery win.

Clarke, quite joyously, prevailed.

“Hmm,” said Alliss, “interesting choice for sports personality of the year: McIlroy or Clarke?”

Now, that’s something nice to fight over.