british open notebook

Eye on the Cup: Jordan Spieth drew some attention during his Masters victory for the way he hit some of his shorter putts — he looked at the hole instead of the ball. Who knows, the trend may be catching on. Louis Oosthuizen said he used the technique several times at the U.S. Open, where he rallied with a final nine of 29 at Chambers Bay that left him just one shot short of a playoff with Spieth. “I did it a lot coming into the last nine holes on Sunday and it worked,” Oosthuizen said. “On a clutch putt which I felt I needed to make, I freed my stroke a bit by doing that.” Tiger Woods played with Oosthuizen the first two rounds of the Open and noticed. “I’ve played a lot of golf with Louis, but I’ve never seen him look at the hole before,” Woods said. “He was looking at the hole when he was hitting putts, and they were going in from all different distances. I’ve never seen that before, but it obviously worked.” Woods has his own issues with putting in the Greenbrier Classic, but didn’t start looking at the hole. Instead, he re-gripped his putter, making it slightly larger. “I’ve used that grip for probably maybe a year and a half or so, so you can see my indentations of my fingers in there,” he said. “That’s probably a sign when it’s time to change it.”

Bubba’s chances: Listen to Bubba Watson talk, and you might think he doesn’t stand a chance in the British Open at St. Andrews. The two-time Masters winner says the combination of wind and rain predicted for this week will make it difficult for his game. “The ball bounces around a lot, rolls a lot,” he said. “The way I like to move it in heavy winds is pretty difficult. On paper it’s probably not the best for me, with all the conditions you add to it. I don’t really play good in the rain because I move the ball so much. Lucky for me that we don’t play every course like this.” Watson, who missed the cut when the Open was last held at St. Andrews in 2010, said he sometimes wishes he didn’t move the ball so much sideways when it comes to playing courses like this. “I want to be like the greats of the game, hit the ball dead straight,” he said. “I just can’t do it. I’ve never tried to do it and I don’t want to change my game. I’m getting to play the Open championship, so my moving the ball is doing OK. The winds can get up pretty high here, so I’ve just got to figure out how to hit it a little bit straighter.”

Culinary delight: Spieth is getting into the Scottish way of life during his week in St. Andrews. He says he has tried haggis — the national dish where a cooked sheep’s offal (liver, heart and lungs) is rolled in oats and pepper, then stuffed into beef intestine to create a kind of sausage. “I have had it. I didn’t mind it,” Spieth said at an Under Armour event Tuesday. Spieth won’t be making it his pre-round meal this week, though. He will stick to his usual omelet before teeing off.

Associated Press