The Magic of The Open Championship: Why Golf's Oldest Major Captivates Like No Other

4:30 AM alarm on a Thursday in July. My wife thinks I've lost it. I'm up making coffee in the dark, settling into my chair, and waiting for those first shots from Scotland. Something about watching golf at that hour just feels right.

When those links courses show up on the screen, you're transported. St. Andrews with that old stone bridge. Royal Troon getting pounded by wind off the water. These aren't country club courses where they vacuum the fairways like we have here at home. This is golf in its rawest and most natural form. You versus whatever Scotland decides to throw at you.

European crowds get it in a way we don't as Americans.

We're loud, we cheer and we lose our minds. I'm guilty of it, too. But watch the Open crowds. There's this quiet respect that's almost religious. A guy walks across the Swilken Bridge, perhaps for the last time, and you could hear a pin drop. Someone hoists that Claret Jug for the first time? Grown men start crying.

The green jacket has prestige, no doubt about that. The Wanamaker Trophy looks absolutely amazing. But the Claret Jug? Oh, that Claret Jug is something else. Champion golfers of the year don't hold it – they cradle it in their arms with love and affection. Nicklaus said it was like holding "a newborn baby." That's coming from a guy who won everything, multiple times.

The history smacks you in the face. When you're watching someone play St. Andrews, it's awe-inspiring to know that golfers have been getting beat up by that exact hole since the 1550s. Five hundred years of torture in many cases, but a walk that most would choose for their last round before they die.

That's the magic of the Open Championship. It gets back to the basics of this game that we all love so very much. You. Club. Ball. Whatever Mother Nature's mood is that day. Everything else feels manufactured these days. The Open? Still real.

So yeah, I'll keep setting that insane alarm every July. Coffee ready, TV on, watching golf the way it was meant to be.