Even sports fans with active plans to ignore the perjury trial of Roger Clemens had subconsciously prepared themselves for it. There would be hours of stern in-studio voice-overs, and grandstanding from theatrical defense counsel Rusty Hardin and weeks of determined and stolidly be-suited courthouse-bound striding from Roger Clemens, the seven-time Cy Young Award winner whose statements before Congress provide the basis for the prosecution. And while we may yet get all those things, the trial took a surprising twist Thursday when Judge Reggie Walton upbraided prosecutors for overstepping the evidentiary bounds he had set before the case began and declared a surprise mistrial.  What does it mean? Maybe not much  at a hearing scheduled for September 2, Walton could always re-start the trial, or he could toss it. But in the short term, it means much less breathless coverage of Clemens walking into and out of courtrooms, which should be nice. It also means that the prosecution, which has been building its case against Clemens for years, had a bad day of epic proportions. Or, as the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell put it, “the most shocking, inexplicable error in modern baseball history has taken place in a courtroom, not on a field.”  Bill Buckner will surely be glad to hear Boswell’s assessment, if probably not nearly as happy as Clemens had to be at the stunning ruling. “When you wake up in the morning on trial for your freedom, and you go to bed that night with that trial gone and your prosecutors humiliated, thats a pretty damn good day,” Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra writes.  If the trial begins again in September, this will be little more than an embarrassing bump in the road. But there are real questions about whether a retrial could  or should  happen. “Would it be worth it to retry Clemens? That’s the issue the Justice Department will now consider,” the Houston Chronicle’s Richard Justice writes. “In some ways, it doesn’t matter. He’ll be looked at as a cheat whether he actually cheated or not. [But] how many more chances should the government have?”  To a certain extent, a wild opening day is (ahem) par for the course in your bigger golf tournaments. For every wire-to-wire Rory McIlroy romp, there are tournaments that begin the way the British Open did on Thursday  with only a pair of top-40 players among the 13 golfers within two strokes of the lead, and with 40-year-old Thomas Bjorn and 20-year-old amateur Tom Lewis sharing perched atop the leaderboard at five-under. Lewis’s 65 set a new record for amateurs at the British Open, which is only a small part of what was amazing about his first day at Royal St. George’s.  It’s a surprising mix even by crazy-first-day-of-tournament standards  Bjorn, who only barely made the field, is best known for his British Open collapse in 2003, and his first day co-leader was just 12 when it happened. The British Open’s wild day one and wide-open future owe as much to the course as the motley assemblage of players making their way through it. “One thing all these players at the top share is not being links specialists,” the Journal’s John Paul Newport writes. “That’s because, in professional golf, there are no links specialists. The fact is that the British Open is the most open of golf’s four majors precisely because it is links golf, a style of play equally out of the ordinary for almost all of the world’s top players.”  Things continued in that extraordinarily out-of-the-ordinary way on Friday morning, with Lewis falling off the pace, at least for now, and Tom Watson  after whom Lewis, Watson’s playing partner on Thursday, was named  dropping in a hole-in-one.  All of which means that golf fans would do well to keep their eye on the British Open leaderboard, and keep it locked at the Fix for a running live blog from the Open and constant updates, stories, and blog posts on our page dedicated to the British Open.  Not that the rest of the world cares, or should, but the United States seems to be figuring out how it feels about soccer. The answer being, it seems, increasingly interested, except where it’s ambivalent or outwardly trollish. So maybe it hasnt totally figured out just yet. But, with the U.S. women’s team playing its way to the final of the Women’s World Cup in the most exciting way possible  and galvanizing those who care here in the U.S.  it’s increasingly difficult for stateside soccer fans to worry about what stateside non-fans think.  “Another U.S. World Cup victory won’t provoke an instant soccer revolution and transform Wambach and Hope Solo into Tom Brady and Peyton Manning,” the Journal’s Jason Gay writes. “But it’s silly to consider that a letdown. This U.S. women’s team has been everything a sports fan could ask: thrilling, resilient, unselfish, successful. What’s more, they’re still playing, which is more than two of our popular-but-broken pastimes can say.”  Those who have already given themselves up to the charms of the U.S. women’s team should check back at the Fix on Sunday for a live blog of the final with updates from Matthew Futterman in Germany, plus dispatches from the U.S. and Japan.  Dennis Dodd, who writes about college football for CBS Sports, has done good work over the course of his nine-day, five-part investigation into the slow-motion credibility crisis in big-time college football. Of course, circumstances have worked to Dodd’s advantage to a certain extent: since the series began, a pair of blue chip programs  first West Virginia and, on Thursday, Georgia Tech  have been disciplined by the NCAA. For anyone that has witnessed the collapse of the Ohio State program over the past few months  whether with delighted schadenfreude or the nausea of a disillusioned loyalist  it’s tough to argue with Dodd’s argument that the sordid situation surrounding the Buckeyes is a good place for the NCAA to make its stand.  “What we’re hearing is more of the same  committees, restructuring, press releases,” Dodd writes. “There has been precious little meaningful action. Ohio State has come to this special point in history to be an example for future generations. Its initial response has been lacking  a self-imposed penalty that promises nothing more than to take a couple of lines out of the media guide. Whether the NCAA agrees will likely become a tipping point in the sport’s reform.”  Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfixlinks@gmail.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email David at droth11@gmail.com.
What's next after a major blunder puts the prosecution of the pitching great in doubt. Plus: The latest from the British Open; college football's credibility crisis; and more.