Golf-Nearly man Westwood ready to play the patience game

SANDWICH, England, July 12 (Reuters) - Lee Westwood is nothing if not patient and the world number two intends to use that virtue to the full around Sandwich’s lunar-like landscape in

 this week’s British Open.

The classic links course at Royal St George’s, complete with crater-like bunkers, rollercoaster fairways and a teasing wind off the English Channel, will provide plenty of frustration for the world’s best players over the coming days.

Westwood, though, will not be one of those gnashing his teeth at the injustice of it all.

At 38 the Englishman has usurped Colin Montgomerie as the best modern-day player never to have won a major—a dubious honour he shrugs off these days just as he will a cruel bounce of the ball around the 7,211-yard layout.

“I think more than anywhere on the Open rota there are a couple of fairways out there where you can get bad breaks,” said Westwood, runner-up at St Andrews last year to Louis Oosthuizen and tied third the year before at Turnberry.

“I suppose you can get good breaks as well but I think at some point during the week you’re going to need patience; it’s going to be tested. But I’ve got plenty of that,” he told reporters before his first practice round.

With top-three finishes in all the majors, including a distant third last month at the U.S. Open behind runaway winner Rory McIlroy, Westwood is one of the favourites this week — particularly if the wind blows.

“Links golf is determined by the weather so you don’t want it flat calm,” said Westwood who won as an amateur at Royal St George’s in 1992.

“These golf courses are designed with, I guess, a 15, 20-mph wind in mind so you don’t want it flat calm. You want it, well I certainly want it so ball-striking is a prerequisite.

WEATHER GODS

“Ideally you’d like it so it’s the same morning and afternoon but often that doesn’t work out in links golf. It’s the luck of the draw really. If that doesn’t happen then you’re hoping that you’re on the right side of it.

“I remember in 1992 it being very windy and I played well,” added Westwood of his amateur title at Sandwich.

Whatever the weather Gods have in store, though, Westwood said the course would provide a fair test.

“Strategically it’s a good golf course. You have to plan your way around it,” he said.

“The rough seems pretty fair. You do get a few freaky bounces out there because the fairways are a bit undulating, I’m thinking of 13 and 17 because they’ve not gone silly with the rough this year.

“It just seems to be a nice height where you can get a shot but the flier was in the equation out there.”

Westwood had a word of warning for the gung-ho master blasters unused to the subtleties of links golf however.

“It can be mentally frustrating out there. I think that’s why people either like or dislike it,” the former world number one said. “You’ve got to love it and get on with it.

“There’s no point in coming to a golf course and saying, I don’t like this place. You can mentally get in your own way straight away there.”

While many of the 156-strong field were out early on Tuesday, Westwood was taking his time, preferring a leisurely tea-time stroll with the course largely to himself.

“You tend to find that most people get carried away at Open championships first thing in the morning, practice too much and then there’s nobody on the golf course at three or four.

“It’s the best time to play. Hopefully come Sunday I will be teeing off about that time or maybe just a fraction earlier.”