THE buzz at Mill Creek Golf Club in tiny Ostrander, Ohio, still hadn’t come close to subsiding yesterday, some 24 hours after one of its own hoisted the fabled Claret Jug as British Open champion time zones and an ocean away.
Perhaps the only event more significant to Mill Creek than Ostrander native Ben Curtis, PGA Tour rookie and No. 396 in the world rankings, becoming one of the most shocking Open champions in the 132 years of the venerable tournament was the day Dwight Bill Black turned the family farm into an 18-hole golf course 30 years ago.
That’s really where the seeds to Ben Curtis, major championship winner in his first try, were truly planted.
Curtis grew up 50 yards from the practice putting green at the course his grandfather founded, built and ran, essentially until his death last February.
It’s a shame Bill Black wasn’t there to hang around the clubhouse at Mill Creek on Sunday as masses of people piled around the television set and watched his grandson methodically work his way around treacherous Royal St. Georges en route to overcoming Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Davis Love III, Sergio Garcia and Thomas Bjorn to shock the sports world with his improbable victory.
It surely would have been his proudest moment.
As word moved swiftly around the small Middle America town that Curtis was still in the thick of the Open, golfers out on the course at Mill Creek stopped their rounds dead and made a pilgrimage back to the clubhouse to watch TV and mingle among the locals.
Of course, there also was a lot of family around, beginning with Ben’s father Bob and mother Janice. But then, Mill Creek is all about family anyway, so Curtis’ parents, aunts and uncles would have been there anyway.
According to his aunt, Jeanne Bash – Ben’s proudest aunt, as she dubs herself – she, Ben’s mother Janice and their two other sisters run the golf course, a public track that welcomes all.
Bash, who waited at the airport in Cleveland to welcome Ben home, said Ben’s grandfather was on all of our minds on Sunday.
Grandpa was always gruff, she told The Post yesterday. But Ben was always special to him.
Until Sunday in Sandwich, a small seaside town in Southeast England and in the county of Kent (Curtis went to Kent State and lives in Kent, Ohio), Curtis had been best known as one of only three players to win the Ohio Amateur two times, joining Arnold Palmer and John Cook.
The question that faces Curtis now, though he’s still only a PGA Tour rookie, is where this momentous victory takes him.
What will he do with the riches that have come with Sunday’s victory, including a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour, the Masters, U.S. Open, PGA and essentially a lifetime pass at the British Open?
Will he become the non-factor wallflower Paul Lawrie has become since stunning the golf world with his improbable Jean Van de Velde-aided 1999 British Open victory?
Or will he take this to greater heights, the way Ernie Els did once he broke through with his first U.S. Open win?
Hopefully, Curtis won’t be a guy who four years from now hears things like, “Oh yeah, he’s the guy who won the 2003 British Open. What’s he done since then, though?
Clinging to the Claret Jug on Sunday, Curtis boldly stated that he belongs. Much the way it was last week at Royal St. Georges, the rest is up to him.
