Garcia blown off his pedestal

In its wisdom, the Royal and Ancient doesn't allow any sponsorship to taint its great championship. Yesterday, there was a case to be made for the provision of some Kleenex tissues. Grown men, paid to compete, had their professional pride hurt and moaned about the injustice of having to play golf on a monster of a municipal course where, any other week, ordinary punters are required to hand out £59 in green fees.

Yet, for a kid competing in a man's world, there was some sympathy. Sergio Garcia, known as "El Nino", has been a breath of fresh air for European golf in the past few weeks. Winner of the Murphy's Irish Open at Druids Glen, and runner-up to Colin Montgomerie in Loch Lomond, the 19-year-old Spaniard was expected to blow his way into his first major as a professional with the nerveless verve he'd shown since chasing paydays.

The first day of the British Open cut him open, chewed him up and spat him out.

After signing for an opening 89, his mother Consuela put consoling arms around her prodigy and guided him into the sanctity of the players' locker-room. For now, the scavenging media circus who had built him up wouldn't get the chance to pry into the teenager's inner thoughts.

"One of those days," said his caddie Jerry Higginbottam, who had carried Mark O'Meara's bag to victory in Birkdale a year ago. "The bunkers were like magnets, and we couldn't put a finger on what was going wrong. At least he broke 90, I suppose."

On a day of hard falls, Garcia was the one who fell the furthest and the hardest. Some hours later, after his parents and his manager had soothed some teenage scars, Garcia finally felt able to talk of his misery. "How can they put the rough half a metre high and the fairways 10 metres wide?" he wondered. "I don't understand it, and the public doesn't enjoy it."

Garcia had a truly lousy day. Some will say it is part of the learning process, others that he had already done too much too soon.

"Vijay (Singh) said at the 17th hole that we play golf to enjoy ourselves and what we are doing here is not having fun. Yes, I was suffering," said Garcia.

"I didn't put too much pressure on myself, or set my goals too high. I always say I want to win - I did in Ireland two weeks ago. Tomorrow is another day, then I can look forward to the European Open in Ireland, then the United States, and see if I can get back on track. I am just learning to take things as they come when they don't work out like you want them to."

Garcia wasn't alone in shooting a score in the 80s. Ireland's Paul McGinley covered the outward journey in 46 strokes - two more than Garcia - and had to dig deep to salvage his pride.

"It was all about getting back to respectability coming home," said McGinley, who did just that with a homeward run of 37 for an 83. "I'm not going to blame the course or anything. It was the same course that every other player had to play. But my long putting was very poor. I had seven three-putts and you just can't do that."

Last year's champion O'Meara was savaged and also signed for an 83. Was his pride hurt? "A bit," he replied, "but I got the score I deserved." And Tom Watson, champion on the last occasion the Open was played at Carnoustie, had an 82.

"It is an unfair golf course from the standpoint that the greens are too narrow," said Watson. "But Bobby Jones said it wasn't meant to be a fair game."

No, it sure ain't fair.