Even though Phil Mickelson was never anywhere near the top of the leaderboard, the 137th British Open at Royal Birkdale turned out to be an extremely entertaining tournament. Please don’t get me wrong – I ususally want other people to do well. But every once in a while it is somewhat comforting to see professional golfers hack it around the course just like we do every weekend.

And a hack it was indeed for some of the world’s top professionals. The main reason were the extremely difficult conditions during all four days of the tournament. Day one was already difficult with constant rain and strong winds and the early starters certainly got the worst of it. As a result guys like Vijay Singh or Ernie Els failed to break 80 on a Par-70 course.

Conditions on day two were a bit better, but only slightly with light showers and gusts of over 20 mph. However, the best (or worst…) was yet to come. While the clouds moved away and everyone stayed dry over the weekend, the winds were just horrific. On Saturday a few balls were blown away from the greens and there was talk about suspending play. Luckily everything continued as planned and the tournament did end on time Sunday evening.

To give you an idea of how difficult it was over the weekend: 83 players made the cut at +9. If a player would have been at that number after two rounds and would have shot level par over the weekend, he would have finished the tournament in a tie for third!

While Ireland’s Padraig Harrington successfully defended his title won at Carnoustie in 2007, the big story of the week was really 53 year old Greg Norman. The “Great White Shark” lead the tournament after 54 holes and only slipped back into a tie for third due to a round of 77 (+7) on Sunday.

Let’s take a look at the final results and how my five pre-tournament picks fared at Birkdale:

With four out of five making the cut I feel that I didn’t do too bad. However, I think it will be a wise decision to not put too much money into sports betting…

As for Phil: Once again it was an up and down tournament for Lefty. After a really bad start in dreadful conditions on Thursday (79) he shot an excellent round of 68 on Friday to make the cut. A lot of people (including myself) thought that he would be able to play himself back into this with another good round on Saturday but that was not to be. 76 strokes in round three pretty much ended his hopes of winning the 2008 British Open. Sunday was very good again with a round of 71, but that was just too little too late…

Well, the PGA Championship is only three weeks away, so there is no time to get depressed. I am sure that Phil will do a lot better in the hot and calm conditions of Oakland Hills Country Club.