Experience matters, especially at THE OPEN!!!

The previous 5 Open Champions

Looking at the history on the Open over the past five years, the interesting thing is the age of the winners. Louis Oosthuizen is the only player under 30 and an average age of the last 5 winners is 36.8.

 Don't forget that Tom Watson should have won when Stewart Cink won and Greg Norman had a great chance to win when a Padraig won his second Open, so it could have been two players winning aged in their 50's.

The evidence of experience also shows up in the past 25 years of the Open winners. If you take Tiger Woods out of the equation then 4 players over 40 have won The British Open with only 5 winners being under 30. Average age of the winners including Tiger Woods for the past 25 years is 33.12 years of age.

There is all this talk about the young stars taking over the game of golf, but the truth of the matter is that they are great golfers but they don’t win!!!

Players like Angel Cabrera, Thomas Bjorn, Jim Furyk and Retief Goosen always come out of the woodwork and perform so well in Major Championships

 It is one of only 4 events these days that you see players struggle under the pressure of trying to win a Golf Major.

Click on this link to watch some of that pressure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3_kLTQuopg

 and Adam Scott is not on this yet!!!

The British Open is a very different major as the players must play very different shots and control their ball flight due to the fact the weather can play such a big part in deciding who plays well!!!

If the weather is windy but sunny then the better ball striker will come thru with the win, but if the weather has the combo of wind and rain, then this levels the playing field and then alot more players have the chance to win

Because of this here are my picks for 2013 British Open,

1) Ernie Els - by far and away he has the greatest record by a current player in the British Open

2) Tiger woods - Mentally he is the best (especially under pressure)

3) Thomas Bjorn - is in good form and has had some very good results in the Open

4) Henrick Stenson - is my dark horse (again very good record at the British Open and if the weather is poor could be a great chance)

I would also look at Paul Casey, Lee Westwood and Adam Scott.

Let’s hope I am right and the statistics don’t lie!!!!