Skipping British isn’t a new trick

Davis Love III has problems with the ones who play and complain.

SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Kenny Perry was the butt of jokes for playing in Milwaukee instead of a major championship, even though he had already wrapped up a spot on the Ryder Cup team.

It’s not like he was the first American to skip the British Open.

Curtis Strange played only 13 times in his career, missing five starts in the 1980s when he was at the peak of his game. Scott Hoch only played the British Open five times, and never bothered to learn the names of the courses.

They are exceptions.

Davis Love III, who considers this one of his favorite tournaments, doesn’t hold grudges against those who are eligible and don’t come.

“Kenny is a great guy. There’s nothing bad in his heart,” Love said. “He wasn’t complaining. He just doesn’t want to play.”

What bothers Love more are the players that do fly across the Atlantic and start complaining. He didn’t mention names, but Pat Perez would have been a candidate for saying the rain and wind in the first round didn’t feel like golf.

“Just don’t come,” Love said. “If you’re going to have a bad attitude on Thursday before you tee off because it’s raining, then don’t come, because you’re just wasting your time. It’s going to be bad, eventually, one way or another.”

Love believes the Americans get a bad reputation when one or two players don’t come to the British Open — remember Woody Austin last year, who had played eight of nine weeks? — but he got a different perspective while qualifying in Detroit earlier this month.

“There were a lot of tour players there, and there were a lot of guys grinding it out, trying to make it,” he said. “There are guys who are desperate to play.”

His advice is to expect the worse, which is what Health Slocum did when he came over as first alternate and didn’t have a spot in the field until Thursday morning. Slocum said wind, cold and rain were part of his British Open memories when he watched on TV as a kid.

“You’re not going to have an easy round of golf every day,” Love said. “If it’s warm, it’s just as hard in another way. It’s firm and fast and you get bad bounces, and there’s a lot of luck involved. Then it gets like this, and it’s incredibly tough to control your ball and you just have to have the patience, no matter which way it goes. It’s very rarely nice and comfortable.”

But worth it? It is for more Americans than people realize.

Even after he withdrew after nine holes, Rich Beem said he would continue to attempt qualifying if he wasn’t exempt.

“It’s the greatest golf known to man,” he said.