Mark Calcavecchia

You might wonder what a 62-year-old, with two gammy knees and who can't break 80, is doing playing in The Open. What are we doing clogging up the field with ...

“I set the alarm for 5:00, but I actually got up at 3:35 to go to the restroom, and I started looking at my iPad, and I figured there's no point in going back to bed at that point. Calcavecchia actually got to the hit the opening shot of the day, another cool initiative by the R&A, and despite not finishing in front of packed grandstands on a balmy Friday night, the final send-off was more than enough. He once told me that he would bring a four pack along for the end of the day as nobody wanted to go to the pub any more. I’m not like Steve Stricker, but I get a little choked up sometimes. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I felt it. But the putting was brutal all week. I thought I could do that, but then I just got off to a crappy start. It’s not often many want to heap praise on the R&A but this is one of them – the cut-off mark for the past champions to take up a place in the field is to be 60 or under on July 17. Not in the modern sense of being stylish and athletic, more in being laid back and normal. After that, I was just trying to make pars, basically.” He’s now played in 30 Opens, made the cut in 19 of them and, of course, he won at Troon in 1989. My goal was to make the cut.