AS we watch the top players at any sport, the Walter Mitty in us

sometimes takes over. The tennis courts and golf courses are boosted

phenomenon each summer as we imagine ourselves imitating the stars.

Eventually, realism forces us to accept that the sport is not really

simple: it's just that the stars make it look easy. It's a different

game they play, isn't it?

Having convinced ourselves of our own incompetence, we come to regard

golf as consisting of the top level, and one's own standard. My

favourite golfer at my own level is . . . well, myself, if you must

know. But, as for the Open at Muirfield, I must adopt someone else to

play for me.

The proxy for many of us will be Sandy Lyle or Colin Montgomerie. But

if your hero is not in contention, you will have to adopt someone else

-- anyone else, bar those you dislike.

I have found it easy to dislike Nick Faldo ever since, many years ago,

he reported Lyle for using some anti-glare tape on his putter. The rules

of golf apparently force you to be a sneak; you cannot turn a blind eye

to a minor indiscretion by another player lest you, too, be disqualified

as a supposed accomplice.

Next there was the incident in the 1983 Suntory World Match-play

Championship. With Australian Graham Marsh on the green, Faldo's ball

bounced through the back only to reappear a few seconds later --

obviously thrown by a sympathetic spectator. He holed out from where it

landed and, instead of conceding Marsh's long putt for a gentlemanly

half, Faldo watched the Australian miss.

My impression of him is shared by many people north of the Border. I

believe Faldo could be the role model if the Herald's former deputy

editor, George MacDonald Fraser, ever decides to write about the

adventures of Flashman on a golf course.

There are other professional golfers whom I dislike for different

reasons. Some, for all the good it does them, seem to take all day

before playing their shots. A couple of practice swings and the removal

of nearby twigs preface any attempt at the real thing. Even then, they

step back from the ball once more because of some supposed distraction,

such as the sound of a woodpecker two miles away. Eventually they hit

the blasted ball, and the camera at last moves on to someone more

interesting.

However, whether popular or not, top golfers do come to grief in the

Open, giving us all a little encouragement. At St Andrews in 1978 Tommy

Nakajima took five shots to get out of a bunker, prompting the quip that

the Road Hole should be renamed ''The Sands of Nakajima''. Four years

later Troon took revenge on the quaintly named American Bobby Clampett

-- wasn't he one of the men Wyatt Earp shot at the OK Corral? -- who had

burned up the course with a 67 and a 66 only to come a cropper with a 78

and a closing 77.

Too frequently, however, just when some illustrious golfer whom you

dislike is about to prove mortal, something happens to rescue him. Maybe

his ball will be lost . . . but no, some busybody manages to find it.

It does not happen to you or to me, does it? You don't have an army of

searchers to look for your ball. In your own club game, too, much

depends on whether the finder is friend or foe. Your ball may be found

all right -- yes, found embedded in the ground in thick rough, or aided

by some nifty footwork into a hazard which you had somehow avoided.

That's another thing. The hazards are in the wrong places for the

professionals. They belt the ball far too hard for it to catch the

fairway bunkers. Not only that, whereas we frequently fall foul of some

exotic rule -- such as, you must not play a wedge shot with your back to

the sun on a Tuesday afternoon -- the professionals always seem to come

up with some excuse to avoid trouble.

Their stray shots conveniently land beside benign things like TV

cables, which can be moved out of the way, or else an official comes

along and the pro gives him golf's equivalent of a doctor's line. Next

thing you know he is allowed a free drop or a preferred lie.

As I was saying, it's a different game they play. You just watch and

you'll see what I mean.