A confused message is emerging from Royal Birkdale. After two days of hard, grim, high-scoring play in damp, dreary, blustery conditions, you can take your pick: either a player can win this if he has a steady game, some good wet-weather gear and a lot of moral backbone; or if he has recently got married to Chris Evert and cannot stop telling people how happy he is.

When pundits speculated on who would benefit most from Tiger Woods's absence, no one picked out Greg Norman, who turned professional 32 years go, before some of the other main contenders were born. Yet the Great White Shark finished his second round yesterday at the top of the leaderboard, having gone round in an impressive even par on two consecutive days. And he has been quick to give Evert all the credit - which is terribly sweet, or a little bit sick-making, depending how you look at it.

The feeling at Birkdale is that if Greg and Chrissie are in love, it is a relief to have some good news. Yesterday morning I sat at the 499-yard par-four 6th hole and watched umpteen demoralised players fail to reach the green in regulation. Some of them had bogeys. Some had double-bogeys. And then, just for good measure, it started raining.

I have a raging sore throat, a feverish temperature and all my “picks” for the tournament have let me down spectacularly. Few cheers are heard on the course. It's no wonder, then, that we all rush to the press tent to see Evert (in baseball cap and ponytail) beaming and nodding at Norman from the back of the interview room while he cheerily answers questions about the happiness of his life and its impact on his game.

Does this happy-heart theory stack up? Well, despite the obvious fact that a lot of deeply miserable people play golf (some of them for a living), there is still quite a bit of evidence that a happy mind does make for birdie, birdie, birdie. Certainly, bad times make for bad play. Woods missed his only cut in any major tournament in the month after his father died. Colin Montgomerie was a walking zombie when his first marriage was on the rocks.

There is a story by P.G. Wodehouse about a chap whose golf improves beyond recognition when he falls in love with a woman called Mary, because the rhythm of the ecstatic words “Oh Mary! Mary!” gives him, overnight, a perfect swing. “Oh Mary!” he says to himself on the backswing. “Mary!” he exclaims as he unleashes the shot and beautifully follows through.

Of course, golden sporting couples do not come in higher carat than Greg and Chrissie. They have had the fairytale umpteen million dollar wedding in the Bahamas at the end of last month; they have an £11million house in Florida modelled (somewhat ingeniously) on the Doge's Palace in Venice. Whether they know that the Doge's Palace is best known for the way condemned prisoners crossed to it over the Bridge of Sighs and never saw daylight again, I do not know. In fact, I now feel terrible for mentioning it.

Most of us will root for the success of Greg and Chrissie. After all, they are players we have rooted for many, many times. When Norman undertook that fateful final round at Augusta in 1996 - starting the day with a six-stroke lead over Nick Faldo and crumbling horribly to lose by five - most were extremely sorry for him. At Augusta, thereafter, whenever he made a charge, there were roars of encouragement.

When Evert was playing competitive tennis, she hardly needed our support, winning more than 90 per cent of her matches - a statistic that puts her above all other women players. But we rooted for her anyway. In her heyday of finals against Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, she was steely and had a very tight way with her pre-serve ball-bounce, but she was still overtly feminine and people liked her for that.

And now she is teaching her new husband tennis, apparently, three or four times a week, and he says that it is good for his golf. Asked yesterday about the difference in sporting temperament between them, Evert said: “Under pressure, he's aggressive. Under pressure, I held back and, believe me, it hurt me, especially against Martina.”

What would have been their effect on each other's performances if they had met and married sooner? “If I'd known him then, he'd have brought out more aggression in me and I could have reduced it in him,” Evert said. Ah, bless.

And now they will be heading to the Ayrshire golf resort of Turnberry for a second honeymoon when this Open is completed. And Evert is keeping him away from the newspapers this weekend so he can maintain this wonderful equanimity.

He is adamant that it is his peace of mind that is keeping his game going so well. His life is “wonderful”, he said. That they are both 53 is made much of, and it certainly is amazing. A man of 53 breaking off a 26-year marriage for someone his own age? I think I am right in saying that it has never happened before in the history of the world.