It's Canadian Open, from today to Sunday, for the protagonists of world golf, a sort of fresh interlude between two sumptuous dishes: last week's Open Championship and next week's Pga Championship. Squeezed between two monstrously important events, the contest, held at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario, in any case boasts many great names starting with world number one Jason Day, who is also the defending champion. The Australian arrives at the appointment in modest form, but will look for the best swing of him, in view of next week's major where he will defend again the title conquered in 2015.
In addition to Jason Day in Ontario we find the world number two Dustin Johnson and then Jim Furyk, Matt Kuchar, Tony Finau, Graeme McDowell, Ernie Els, Brandt Snedeker, for a total of 156 athletes from all over the world. The prize pool is 5,9 million dollars, just over a million for the first and 500 Fedex points. The course is a par 72 of approximately 6.500 meters designed by Jack Nicklaus. A run-in tournament, the only one on the square at this level, as this week the European tour rests after the glories of the Open in Scotland.
On this occasion it is worth remembering the extraordinary show offered by golf last week. It was the best tournament in many years, a challenge that made even the absence of Tiger Woods forget. Protagonists of the feat were the winner Henrik Stenson and the runner-up, Phil Mickelson. Two forty-year-olds of great class and exceptional skill, who faced each other in an epic battle.
The Open was dominated from day one by the American southpaw, joined and then surpassed in the following days by the Swede, who conquered his first Claret Jug. Saturday and Sunday Stenson and Mickelson played together, a head-to-head match full of continuous upheavals and unforgettable emotions. Phil, 46, was battling for his sixth major and his second Open Championship, while Stenson, 40, was battling for his first major. It was a tough, fair, unique fight, won by skill and not by the mistakes of one of the two opponents.
Nobody gave up until the end, nobody lost physical or mental control of the match, up to the last hole, up to the last putt. Stenson and Mickelson played far superior golf to the rest of the field, as you rarely see and as can be understood simply by looking at the results: Stenson finished at -20, an all-time record, Mickelson -at 17, the third-placed , GBHolmes, stopped at -6.
Let's hope the next major is just as amazing, sadly, once again, even without Tiger Woods. “Tiger is making progress – says his agent Mark Steinberg – but he is not ready for the PGA Championship. In the coming months he will continue his rehabilitation and will try to work hard to evaluate when he will start playing again next season ”. In short, for this year, the topic ends here.
