Listen all ye men of England: We have place names for a reason.

It's the "BRITISH Open," all you snobby Anglophiles. Not "The Open."

Forget about all those Brits who insist everyone call it "The Open." Like England and its tournament is the only "Open" in the world, for Christ's sake.

It'd be like me starting my own golf tournament and calling it "The Tournament." Rather than "The Tim Tournament."

See, this is to distinguish it from, for example, the "U.S. Open." Or, The "Scottish Open." Or, the "Australian Open."

There is no good rationale for calling it simply "The Open" other than England's arrogance and snobbery.

OK, now that we have that out of the way, one of the reasons I like the BRITISH Open is because a huge part of the tournament's difficulty, no matter where it's played, is that isn't mad-made. The USGA makes the U.S. Open hard because of the way they set it up. All the BRITISH Open has to do is let nature take its course.

It rained on Wednesday, and Hoylake was playing completely different from the day before, when the ball was running 50-60 yards in the fairway and you had to land the ball in front of the green to have any chance of staying on. And the wind hasn't even started to blow yet.

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