SETTING THE SCENE:
Carnoustie plays host to the 2007 Open
Mention Carnoustie to golfers and they will often resort to war metaphors to describe the brutality of the Scottish seaside course. When the British Open was last contested at Carnoustie in 1999, the world's top players muttered and clutched their heads like traumatized veterans. In a book about 21st century warfare published in 2002, Scottish author Gordon Lang coined the term Carnoustie Effect to describe the "psychic shock experienced on collision with reality by those whose expectations are founded on false assumptions."
