The Open 2012: Watching major golf should come with a health warning A few years earlier, hearing that Jack Nicklaus's involvement in the Memorial Tournament in Ohio was likely to be his final competitive outing, another fan, who had never seen his hero play, drove hundreds of miles to witness the event. Stationing himself by one fairway, he finally saw the Nicklaus swing - and a few moments later felt the Nicklaus ball split his lip and cheek wide open. There was not even the consolation of meeting the great man; clearly in distress, he was rushed away for treatment. By the time Nicklaus arrived at the scene to offer his apologies, only a bloodied towel remained. Former US president Gerald Ford once suggested that he knew his golf was getting better because he was hitting fewer spectators. After leaving the Oval Office, Ford was a regular at celebrity golf tournaments, where an incendiary mix of incompetent golfers and rubber-necking spectators combine to provide the sport's most dangerous format. But it is not all bad news. In fact, as a number of his rivals have observed, Tiger Woods has had a few lucky breaks by bouncing his ball off fans, an option unavailable to those whose galleries are usually counted in single figures. During the closing stages of the 2001 PGA Championship, the third leg of his Grand Slam, Woods had a particularly helpful ricochet on his way to taking the title. Yet there is no point in running for cover, as greater danger at a golf tournament probably lies in taking a tumble down a bank rather than taking Top-Flite between the eyes. Already this week, one woman was taken away from Lytham with a suspected broken leg, although Dr Steven Reid, the tournament's senior medical official, said that wet conditions had actually helped. "Doctors have a saying: "wet slips, dry trips,"" Dr Reid explained. When it's wet, people tend to fall on their backsides, get up and walk on. In the dry, they tend to fall forwards and go over their ankles, which causes more problems. We would expect to get two or three broken ankles per year. But when you have around 150,000 people walking over rough grounds it's inevitable that some accidents will happen. If you come through unbloodied and with limbs all in working order, you still have to cope with unpredictable weather, overpriced merchandise (£99 polo shirt, anyone?) and some seriously suspect food. But isn't it the same at so many of the insanely masochistic excursions of the British summer season? And when was anyone ever given a signed glove for getting a sore head at Glastonbury?