July 18: South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen maintained his grip on the British Open on Sunday and with a stunning 40-foot eagle putt at the ninth kept closest challenger Paul Casey four shots at bay.
A win so unpredictable at the start of the week — he had missed the cut in all his three previous Opens — was starting to look like something of a stroll as the Oosthuizen, nicknamed ‘Shrek’ by his friends, compiled seven steady pars before his first signs of frailty with a bogey at the eighth.
The leading two then drove the par-four ninth, leaving long putts for eagle. Casey left his a testing 10-feet short but Oosthuizen rattled his in to momentarily hold a five-shot advantage before the Englishman sank his to narrow the deficit again.
With the strong winds that buffeted St Andrews earlier this week absent, the scoring was set to be low but the huge yellow scoreboards towering over the first and 18th fairways were surprisingly short of red figures.
In fact not one player in the leading seven groups carded a birdie in the first four holes as the Old Course on the final day of the tournament.
The scene was set for a titanic battle between the final pairing when Casey missed a five-foot putt at the first for birdie that would have put Oosthuizen under early pressure, and when the Englishman bogeyed the second the South African’s lead was back to five. Casey cut the deficit to four with a birdie at the sixth but as the birdie chances went begging and no-one from the chasing pack threatened to take the Old Course apart the title looked like Oosthuizen’s with every passing hole.
The South African, even escaped with a par at the fifth after his second found the deep gorse and his recovery scooped up an enormous tuft of undergrowth on his follow-through.