British Open

I like this oddly surrealistic photo by Glyn Kirk of Phil Mickelson and ten greenskeepers, none of whom is looking at the second most famous golfer in the world. It's like a Magritte version of Van Gogh's picture of crows and a wheat field, or maybe a still from an alienated 1960 Euro movie: Last Year at Muirfield. (By the way, the essential weirdness of golf courses has only been exploited in one or two arthouse movies, most notably Lars von Trier's Melancholia.) Or Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year and Race for People with No Sense of Direction skits. Or like when all the Agent Smiths in the Matrix Reloaded fight scene finally lose and then they all get depressed, turn different directions, and walk off (8:30 in the video).

It's interesting that all those greenskeepers aren't watering the not very green fairway. American golfers like a uniform carpet of green grass, but British Open courses are played on the random humps and bumps of sand dunes, where the trouble comes from the ball rolling into trouble. These days, pro golfers only fear two things: wind and gravity. Playing conditions look sensationally fast for an Open.

Muirfield, the home course of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, is the snobbiest, most formal golf course in Scotland. And yet, like almost all Scottish clubs, it is less private than thousands of American country clubs. Muirfield is open to non-members two mornings per week. If you are interested in private club lore, here's a description of what getting on Muirfield is like for an outsider by a guy who managed to play all the top 100 courses in the world on Golf magazine's list, finally finishing off with Augusta National after about a decade of trying to wheedle an invite.