Open back at Royal Birkdale without Tiger

(AP) -- Royal Birkdale has a reputation as the fairest of all links courses in the British Open rotation.

Its fairways have been shaped alongside the picturesque sand dunes of the Lancashire coast in England, instead of going through them, which eliminates most of the blind shots and reduces the number quirky bounces that so often define this style of golf.

Now, another element of equity has been added for this British Open, perhaps the most significant.

Tiger Woods won't be there when it begins Thursday.

Eight days after his epic playoff victory in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the world's No. 1 player had reconstructive surgery on his left knee and will not play the rest of the year.

"It's not just an opportunity for me," Justin Rose said, "it's an opportunity for 155 other guys."

Woods doesn't win them all, but it is rare when his name is not on the leaderboard of a major on the back nine Sunday afternoon. He already has captured 14 majors - second only to the record 18 won by Jack Nicklaus - and perhaps even more intimidating is that Woods has 25 finishes in the top five at majors, a staggering rate of 54 percent.

Winning the 137th edition of golf's oldest championship still comes with a claret jug, not an asterisk. Even so, the fresh wind off the Irish Sea now carries the kind of optimism not felt since Woods was an amateur.

"The door is a little more wide open than it has been in the past because Tiger is not playing," Colin Montgomerie said. "And it's given a lot of players on form the opportunity of winning a major that possibly they wouldn't have felt that confident before. Without him, someone is going to win these couple of majors, and it's not Tiger Woods.

"How often can you say that?"