Somewhere, in the heavens above the west Lancashire coastline yesterday, a wizened old Scotsman looked down as 83 of the world's best golfers rediscovered humility on the links at Royal Birkdale. He would have heard the flapping canvas, seen the seagulls scurrying inland and smiled. And he would have felt not a whit of compassion. Just shook his head and said, “If there’s nae wind, it’s nae golf.”

If you want sunshine, take yourself off to the Canary Islands; for sun and some target golf, try Florida, but for the roots of the old game, you should have been here yesterday. When you delve deeply into golf, you’re near a world where fairness has no say and the fairways lie five yards from the heart of darkness.

It was fun to watch so many fine players taken out of their comfort zone. Some coped quite well. There were many holes where the defending champion Padraig Harrington played the wind like a violin, but he did grow up on a course perched in the hills south of Dublin. He knows what it’s like to cut one into the wind, to get one carried off line and he learned to take the rough with the smooth.

Indeed, that quality defines his golf. Take his performance at the par-four fifth hole yesterday. He hit his drive deep into the rough to the right of the fairway, tried to play up to the green but could only hack the ball down the left side of the fairway. It stopped about 60 yards from the hole, leaving Harrington with a pitch not unlike the one he executed so brilliantly on the 18th at Carnoustie to save his chance of winning last year’s Open.

This time he hit an even better shot, landing his ball inches from the hole and with so much spin it virtually stopped where it pitched and died into the hole, breathing life into the defending champion’s round.

You should never feel sorry for a man who misses a fairway, or even misses a short putt, and we were reminded why on that fifth fairway as Harrington fired his tee shot into the long grass. At once, a volunteer marshall walked swiftly across the fairway and straight to where Harrington's ball lay buried. It was a remarkable piece of ball-spotting and the man with the eagle eye was Capt. Ally Duncan, a soldier with the British Army who has just returned from a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan and expects to be back there again.

The wind was never going to bother a soldier returned from Afghanistan. “Even when it lashed rain all day Thursday,” he said, “I loved it. I was a spotter for Padraig when he won in Carnoustie last year and I can see him doing it again.” The captain may be right if the wind continues to blow because Harrington is masterful in these conditions.

Not everyone, though, loved them. Picture England’s best player, Lee Westwood, as he trooped away from the 18th green; his scorecard said 78, the look on his face asked what’s the point? He had spent three hours practising his putting on Friday evening and started yesterday's round by four-putting the first green. You could say that was a putting problem rather than a wind problem but when a wind blows at close to 50mph, it affects everything.

“My ball moved a couple of times (on the greens), it rolled on six but it was oscillating all the time,” said Westwood.

From early morning fierce winds drove in off the Irish Sea, northwesterlies whistling with a vengeance and, through the day, they just got stronger. Tom Sherreard, the English amateur who is having a fine tournament, told of how the rules official travelling with his match warned that a suspension of play was imminent.

It never came to that but it was close. The tournament committee knew how to cope. They didn’t cut the greens as tight as they normally would and that helped to keep balls from straying on the putting surface. Players would stand over their putts, watch their ball oscillate and then walk away as they suspected it was going to move. Some of the time it was wind, but often their minds were playing games.

Justin Rose came to his first Open Championship at Royal Birkdale 10 years ago. He was then a 17-year-old amateur who knew nothing about the elite game but played with wonderful fearlessness to tie for fourth. But, to steal from Oscar Wilde, innocence is like a delicate flower, touch it and the bloom is gone.

Rose is now 27, older, wiser and a much better player. He knows so much about the game that he sees all the problems and he shot an 82 yesterday, his confidence shredded by those northwesterlies. He thought his ball moved on the 10th green but wasn’t certain. It wasn’t just that. “I was blown off-balance a few times on my backswing,” said Rose, “and if I was being blown off-balance, what chance had my ball?” Depends, Justin, on how you hit it.

Sympathy, you see, would be misplaced. That old Scotsman was right: when it is played on coastal linksland, golf needs a little wind. Tom Watson, who won this championship five times, was asked about this at the Seniors Open in Muirfield last year. “You need a bit of wind to have fun on a links,” he said.

It was fun only for the few. Poor Mike Weir, the Canadian, found himself in a bunker at the back of the 18th green and such were the gusts that the sand swirled around and he had to step away from his ball three times. Things weren't helped when another gust swept the baseball hat from the head of his caddie, Brennan Little. By the time Weir got round to playing his shot, he felt most of the sand had been blown away from where his ball lay. So his bogey five wasn’t a surprise.

A challenging day, for sure, but a great day’s sport on a fine tract of linksland. Even Westwood, who shot a miserable 78, could see the attraction. After playing in the morning, he was asked what he would do for the afternoon. “I’m going to go back to where I’m staying, turn on the golf, sit down with a cup of tea and have a chuckle.”