Golf-Open `99: Caddie not at fault for debacle

Despite criticism of `Christophe', Jean Van de Velde can have no one to blame but himself.

THERE ARE three million idiots in this area," David Mitchell, captain of the Carnoustie Golf Club said, with a touch of hyperbole, "and not one of them would have done what Van de Velde did on the 18th".

Virtually everyone now has an opinion of how Jean Van de Velde staggered not into the Open Championship's hall of fame but into infamy by blowing a three-stroke lead with just one hole to play.

Mitchell, who has played the 18th more times than he cares to remember, has an opinion shared by three million and more. "All he had to do to win the Open was hit a two-iron off the tee and then go for safety with a seven-iron. If he'd reached the green in three he would still have had three putts to win the Championship." Well, everything is easy from the safety of the bar stool. All he had to do?

That Van de Velde had played the golf of his life for 3.9 rounds is not in doubt. Nor, sadly, is the impression that the enormity of what he was about to do finally enveloped him, causing him to behave like a man hit by a brainstorm. The derision seemed to be universal.

The knee-jerk reaction when the pressure apparently sent Van de Velde haywire is that his caddie was guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. Surely, Christophe (no surname for personal reasons) should have commanded his employer's attention on the 18th tee to say something along the lines of: "You have a three-stroke lead, play conservatively, keep a cool head, take an iron off the tee instead of a driver, avoid the Burn. If you've got to take six take six and you'll still be the Open champion by a shot and we'll fill the old claret jug with a vintage little French number."

Fine, except that we are dealing with Frenchmen here. Even Napoleon made mistakes. "If I'd played the 18th with a sand wedge I'd have been called a coward," Van de Velde said after his debacle. "I wanted to finish in glory." The French have phrases for this sort of thing.

Christophe is 30 years old, three years younger than Van de Velde. He is an eight-handicap amateur who only teamed up with his fellow countryman a few months ago: Van de Velde had sacked his English caddie while Christophe had been dismissed by the French golfer Fabrice Tarnaud.

In Tayside the pair were having the time of their lives, coming through final qualifying to stake a claim to the 128th Open. Christophe is a relatively inexperienced caddie; Van de Velde has been around, he knows the score. A wiser, older head - a local caddie perhaps - would have offered advice but there is no guarantee that Van de Velde would have taken it.

In any case the partnership had worked brilliantly for 71 holes. Van de Velde is a professional and it is he who not only calls the shots but, of course hits them. The going rate for a caddie (the word derives from the French cadet) is 10 per cent of the prize- money won by a player. It follows that the caddie's responsibility is a 10th of that of the professional. To blame the caddie is worse than shooting the messenger.

When Van de Velde waded into Barry Burn most observers thought it was a sure sign that he had taken leave of his senses. "Nobody had ever attempted to play a ball from the burn," Mitchell said. "It's not something you would contemplate." When Van de Velde walked off the 18th with a triple- bogey seven and made his way past the spectators massed in front of the Carnoustie golf course hotel en route to the play off, he told them: "I just wanted to entertain you."

He certainly succeeded but that was not his prime motive for attempting to walk on water. He had a lucky break with his drive but his wayward second shot could hardly have ended up in a worse spot and he was only too aware that, after putting his third shot into the water, the alternative to playing out of the burn was to take a drop from almost an equally awful lie.

The most experienced caddie in the world could have spoken to Van de Velde but there is no guarantee he would have listened. Even if he had, who is to say that Van de Velde would not have mis-hit a two-iron, a seven- iron or any old iron?

Van de Velde was in his own little world and he only has himself to blame.