T.J.'s Take: Ready for rain, fish and memories

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Next week, we say goodbye to hot and humid temperatures, plush, green golf courses and good food and say hello to cold, wet conditions, a course that looks like a cow pasture and more fish 'n chips crammed into seven days than you'd ever want to eat in a lifetime.

We say goodbye to shorts and short-sleeved golf shirts and hello to sweaters, pants and probably raingear.

T.J. Auclair

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If it sounds depressing, don't feel bad for us. We'll also be saying hello to great beer, which makes the bad food taste a little better and the gloomy weather look a little brighter. Oh yeah, and it'll warm you up if the sweater and pants don't.

So is the Apocalypse upon us? No, not at all. It's the British Open. Or, as our friends on the other side of the pond call it, "The Open Championship."

All kidding and sarcasm aside, attending The Open Championship is an incredible experience. It's unique in the sense that it's different from anything we're used to seeing.

At first glance, you look at the track -- in this case Royal Birkdale -- and you think, "What's so special about this place? It's brown. The wind blows and the little grass that's on the fairways whisks away like dust."

Watching The Open could be compared to watching an NFL game where the team focuses on the running game. Golf in the U.S., for the most part, is an aerial assault on the course -- soaring iron shots that float through the sky and land next to the hole soft as a baby's bottom.

The Open is ground and pound -- more give the ball to LaDanian Tomlinson than Tom Brady chucking it up to Randy Moss. It takes a lot of imagination. The key is to keep the ball low and let it run along the lay of the land. Because of the elements, you'll see full 6-iron shots from 100 yards.

Everything that's different about the only major championship not played on U.S. soil is also what makes it the coolest of the four to watch.

This, essentially, is the game of golf the way it was first played -- not to be confused with the game of golf the way it was meant to be played, as a wise veteran writer once told me.

Royal Birkdale has a special place in my heart. I attended my first British Open in 1998, which was the last time it was played at Birkdale. The trip provided a lifetime of memories, just like every British Open trip does.

First there was the miscalculation in geography that led my father and I to think Southport must be south of London.

After a couple of hours of pricing out cabs and bus rides upon our flight landing at London-Gatwick, we soon found out that, in fact, Southport was an 8-hour bus ride northwest of London. That's exactly what you want to hear after a 9-hour flight from the U.S.!

All said and done, roughly 23 hours after our departure from Boston, my dad and I finally arrived in the center of Southport. We had a week-and-a-half's worth of luggage. Cranky and miserable from the long day of travel, I asked the reasonable question, "So which hotel are we staying in?"

My dad, a veteran of several British Open trips, scoffed at the question and said, "Hotel? Bud, you don't do hotels at the British Open. You just show up and find a B&B (Bed and breakfast)."

Perfect, I thought. Thankfully, the drinking age in England is 18. That's how old I was on that first trip, which made the news easier to swallow... literally.

An hour or so later, we found a delightful family willing to take us in and put us up for the week at their B&B. It was roughly a mile from the course. Each day after we were finished at the golf course, the family would treat us to drinks and great company after a stroll to the nearby "Chippy," British slang for a fish 'n chips restaurant.

A couple of stops at nearby pubs allowed us to meet some new friends for the week. It was incredible how hospitable these people were to perfect strangers. The accents sounded different and the surroundings sure didn't look like anything we were used to, but everyone made us feel right at home.

All in all, the trip that seemed doomed from the start ended up being unforgettable in a great way.

This time around things will be a little different. Regardless of what the old man once told me, you don't necessarily have to "show up and find a B&B." You can actually make outstanding accommodations ahead of time. You can also fly into Manchester instead of London and drive one hour to your final destination instead of eight. What a concept, dad!

So yes, we're all but assured of some lousy weather, some questionable cuisine and a golf course that, to the eye, doesn't look anything like the pristine places we see week in and week out on the TOUR.

Thankfully, we're also assured that when we leave Birkdale along with our luggage we'll be taking home another lifetime's worth of memories.