An Open Championship - don't dare come here and call it The British Open - at St Andrews is the greatest of all golf championships.

Here is an old and historic town filled with beautiful buildings with views over the sea, a renowned university and a unique and incredible golf course.

The greatest of champions - from the father and son firm of Morris and Morris, to Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Peter Thomson, Jack Nicklaus, Severiano Ballesteros and most recently Tiger Woods - have won the Championship over the most confounding of links where the questions asked vary from day to day like no other course in the game.

Its brilliance is that there is barely a single shot on the course where the way to play it is dictated by the architect, the greenkeeper or the organizers and players are forced to work out for themselves how best to answer its questions. During Tuesday's practice rounds, players were driving conventionally down the long par-five 14th hole and then fired long seconds off onto the adjacent 5th fairway and coming back across to the green from there.

There is an almost complete absence of long grass around the greens making chipping a significantly more interesting proposition than it is at regular tour events where players routinely reach for a lofted wedge to chop the ball out of thick, green grass grown to create a more difficult examination.

The only hole that looks completely out of place is the famed 17th - The Road Hole.

The tee has gone back across the boundary fence and at close to 500 yards it is the most difficult par four in the game. The fairway is blind from the tee and the left rough much thicker than it has been in years past. Up by the green the fairway has been narrowed to about fifteen paces and that alone has created the one situation on the course where players are told to hit. There is a mile of land on the right but that is smothered in long rough that could have been cut as fairway. That would have opened up the possibility of playing far to the right with the long second in order to set up a better angle into the pin for the pitch but the opportunity to make the hole even more fascinating to watch and play was missed.

Tiger Woods has dominated the last two Opens here - in 2000 and 2005 - and the course is made for him. There is more space off the tee than most other courses and certainly more than he found at Pebble Beach a few weeks ago in the US Open. That gives him more freedom and he is the master of controlling the trajectory of the iron shots especially in the seaside winds. Despite the catastrophe of his life off the course he must still be the most obvious choice to win but the suspicion has to be that some of the others are less fearful of what he might do that in years past.

There are high hopes for a British winner this week and that optimism is based on the two recent wins in America by Justin Rose, as well as Lee Westwood's win in Memphis and Graeme McDowell's at Pebble Beach. They have good reason to be hopeful but so much can rest on the luck of the draw and finding the calmer parts of the day.

The Australians are an unpredictable lot this time around. Geoff Ogilvy was fifth here in 2005 in a performance that hinted at what was possible for him; a year later, he won the US Open. Since then, he was won with some regularity on the US Tour but his major championship play has been a little disappointing.

He missed the cut by a shot at Pebble Beach but he really likes the course and more importantly he understands it as well as anyone in the field. ''I am hitting the ball fine but just not scoring that well'' was his simple assessment of his recent form. That is hardly a unique situation to be in for a professional golfer and he just needs to make some putts. No doubt Adam Scott and Robert Allenby are thinking exactly the same.

The golf world - the writers and commentators, the administrators, the manufacturers as well as the players and accompanying entourages - has descended to a small town in Fife this week to witness the deciding of a great championship. The course is one of the very best in the game and the forecast is for some difficult weather early on in the Championship. That is not so much fun to play through so close to the sea but it will make for some fascinating observation from beyond the ropes.

(Footnote: the picture shows former Open champions lining up - and squinting into the sun - for the traditional pre-championship photograph. Standing: Padraig Harrington, John Daly (yes, in lime green and technicolor jacket), Tiger Woods. Sitting: Roberto de Vicenzo, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson.)