Kenny Dalglish splashes cash but Liverpool spirits rise | Paul Hayward

Kenny Dalglish is rebuilding not for a title push but a solid top-three place from which a proper challenge can then be mounted Photograph: Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images

The Kop lives in mortal fear of the mediocre buy, the non?Liverpool signing: a dread that dates back to Phil Babb, Neil Ruddock, Julian Dicks and Jimmy Carter. These unwitting souls are among those blamed for the dilution of the great Anfield tradition of recruiting only aristocrats capable of maintaining the lustre of the Shankly?Paisley era.

zThis understandable defensiveness is a problem for modern Liverpool managers because each new acquisition undergoes an especially fierce scrutiny, especially if he is British and therefore known to the Anfield jury. Buying an average player to perform a specific function stirs the anxieties of supporters who can reel off the duds of the past 10 years, from Paul Konchesky to Salif Diao, Fernando Morientes and Andrea Dossena, who still guarantee a rueful shake of the head on Merseyside.

Supporters who have witnessed five European Cup wins are within their rights to demand the highest possible standards, but in the current phase of mass transition there is little prospect of instant elevation to the Premier League's top spot. Kenny Dalglish is rebuilding not for a title push but a solid top-three place from which a proper challenge can then be mounted.

Unless my eyes fail me, Dalglish is organising a staged recovery. And it could be no other way, given the sheer number of passengers and stowaways who packed the squad over a decade of experimentation under Gerard Houllier and Rafael Benitez. The legacy of that transfer trawling still confronts Dalglish, who has so far managed to cull only Konchesky in his summer dealings.

The Englishman, bought by Roy Hodgson to perform a limited service at left-back, was perhaps the unhappiest of all recent temporary Anfield residents. His mother's brief declaration on Facebook that Liverpool fans were "scouse scum" was unlikely to endear her to the locals. This miserable relationship ended when the son trudged off to the King Power Stadium and Sven?Goran Eriksson's Leicester City.

Plainly no tears will be shed if he is joined by Alberto Aquilani, Joe Cole, Christian Poulsen, Milan Jovanovic or David Ngog. For all Dalglish's recent flourishes in the transfer shop, Liverpool's followers will only really relax when they no longer have to look at players who are emblematic of strategic failings stretching back to the Graeme Souness reign.

With Dalglish back in charge and more sensible American owners at the controls, you can sense a burning urge for there to be no more flops on the recruitment front. In that context, the ?20m spent on Stewart Downing this week is bound to seem more risky than Liverpool fans would like. Each new face is cast against the backdrop of Robbie Keane, Ryan Babel and Bruno Cheyrou.

But a clear policy is emerging under Dalglish and Damien Comolli, the director of football whose presence is bound to cause friction at some point between manager and executive floor. First, Dalglish has employed his knowledge of the youth setup to hurry along John Flanagan, Conor Coady, Jack Robinson and probably now Raheem Sterling, a teenage firefly in wide positions.

At the core, Liverpool are investing in mid-twentysomethings, to escape the Europa League trap. Jordan Henderson, 21, and Andy Carroll, 22, are further down that scale, but this summer the main action has come closer to the point of full maturity, with Charlie Adam, 25, joining from Blackpool and Downing, 26, arriving just as his career starts bearing fruit.

To see Liverpool spending ?36m on Henderson and Downing is bound to unsettle the congregation, especially after the ?35m splurge on Carroll, who was listed in Newcastle's accounts only 18 months ago as a ?500,000 asset.

In the deepest recesses of Anfield there is mounting anxiety about Carroll's prospects of graduating to Ian Rush level. Aspects of his "lifestyle" suggest a less than austere approach to life away from the pitch, which may explain the club's interest in the similarly meaty 18-year-old Connor Wickham, who moved instead to Sunderland.

Extending the contract of Glen Johnson, 26, was another act of mid?range consolidation, and while these names are unlikely to revive memories of John Barnes, Kevin Keegan, Souness or Dalglish himself, they are a realistic first response to the might of Manchester United, the capriciousness of Chelsea and the petro-wealth of Manchester City, whose ?400m deal with Etihad Airlines has so upset the Anfield board.

At this moment in their rise from upper mid-table it is less about instant Hollywood sparkle than assembling a core of hardened pros who can lift some of the burden off Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher. When John Henry's firm ousted the speculator-clowns Tom Hicks and George Gillett, we all ran off with the Moneyball theory about cheap talent acquisition.

In the event, Liverpool have had to pay well over the odds for players whose price tags massively outweigh their achievements, but it still feels like a shift in the right direction. In this needy age, the CV and star profile are everything but Liverpool are still in the business of restoring something far more precious: their spirit.

Compared to the Rugby Football Union, News International are BMW or Apple. Some weird suicide pact appears to be gripping Twickenham, which is without a permanent chairman and chief executive and almost lost its respected disciplinary officer, Jeff Blackett, until Judge Jeff was talked out of resigning by members.

One of the many myths exposed is that men from Surrey who speak the language of management training manuals are automatically qualified to run a sport. The RFU's obsession with overlapping job titles and corporate-speak is in direct contrast to rugby's love of plain speaking. The assorted Twickenham committees are now lost in a destructively introspective cycle of provincial power struggles and pomposity.

The final folly was to approve an all-black change kit for the World Cup in New Zealand, where the prime minister, John Key, responded by dismissing England as "a bunch of wannabes". Clumsy, embarrassing and counter-productive, England's feeble attempt at psychological jousting neatly expresses the chaos at the heart of the sport.

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Old master clears out the clutter to keep Tom Lewis in Open hunt | Paul Hayward

Tom Lewis receives encouragement from the veteran Tom Watson during the second round of the Open. Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images

An Open moves with bruising speed but a still picture best described the Tom-Tom show. On the 16th green, Tom Lewis stood motionless over a putt while Tom Watson stood 15 feet away studying his young namesake with intense paternal concern. Sun lit the scene, the sky shimmered blue and all the ages of golf were united.

Striding off the green, Lewis extended his hand to a random boy of around 14 and pressed a gift into his palm. The lucky lad opened his fingers to find Lewis's golf ball. Delight rendered him speechless. From communing with the 61-year-old Watson, winner of five Open Championships, Lewis was connecting with someone closer to his own age on a day when few were left in any doubt about his potential to thrive in this most sadistic of games.

Eerie is the only way to characterise the throwing together of Old and Young Tom for 36 holes at Royal St George's. The young amateur takes his first name from the mellow-eyed legend. His brother, who was here, owes his moniker to Jack Nicklaus. If their father Bryan thought name-plagiarism was a quick route to fame he could claim vindication as the two Toms pursued their parallel paths across Kent.

Watson struck his second hole-in-one in major championships, with a four-iron at the 178-yard 6th, and Lewis shot a four- over-par 74 following his first-round 65: the lowest first-day score by an amateur in the 151-year history of the Open. In summery conditions he bogeyed the 4th, 6th, 12th, 17th and 18th and landed his only birdie on 13. This was nearly the best moment on the walk, he said, but there was one better: "Walking down the fairway with Tom on 7, with him giving me his tips on how he's won and the courses he's enjoyed is definitely the highlight of my career so far."

Those five bogies distort the tale of Lewis's second round. This was a display of grace under pressure, of courage in the face of spectacular overnight duress. In bed, his phone had beeped incessantly until he switched it to silent. In the morning he woke to 80 texts and "a lot more Facebook apps" – the new measure, one supposes, of cultural recognition.

Scanning his wardrobe, Lewis rejected sobriety in favour of a polo shirt that featured white, blue and turquoise sashes in the style of a 1970s football team. Blending in and hoping not to be noticed were not his aims. There was still no sign of his dad, who says he is too nervous to watch, so it fell to Watson to offer a kind of parental support and the galleries to help him through the many edgy moments that were bound to afflict the round.

"The crowd out there kept me going. If it was an amateur event where no one is watching I probably would have slipped away more," Lewis said. The swarms who followed him could sense the precariousness of his position and offered all they could to keep him on the path of romance. To head into Saturday one under after 36 holes remains a badge of honour for a youngster from Welwyn Garden City who claimed an Open place in final qualifying with rounds of 63 and 65 at Rye.

"If you asked me that two days ago, I'd have taken it, but at the moment it doesn't feel so good," he said. "I didn't putt very well. I didn't get the pace of the greens. I felt they were quicker and when I did hit it hard it went past quite a long way and when it came up short it was way short. I had to limit the damage and I felt there was loads of it out there. It would be nice to win the silver medal [for the leading amateur] and try to finish in the top 15."

The main damage was inflicted on the last two greens. Lewis bogeyed the 17th then fired his second shot at the last off the back of the putting surface, where it cracked into a wooden post and landed on a gravel path. The indignity was lifted by a fine scuffed chip shot to within seven feet of the flag but his putt for par slipped past. A smack of his putter head with the ball and a long rub of the face spoke of his annoyance at not finishing the round with a show of authority.

Senior Tom led the group up the 18th, still basking in his ace at the 6th, which reprised his hole in one at the 1980 US Open at Baltusrol, and showed Lewis, whose father idolised the old master, the role played by individual brilliance in the making of great careers. Inspiration is delivered best not through whimsy or fireside tales but ecstatic practical demonstration.

"He's good – he's a fine player, he really is," Watson, who was two over after 36 holes, said of Lewis. "He's got strength, he's got a wonderful putting touch, pitching touch. He flights the ball very well. He has a very good complement of shots in his bag already as a 20-year-old, and that's what you look for. Tom Lewis played a wonderful game yesterday. Today he missed a few shots, got the ball going off line a little bit a few times.

"I think the most important advice is, don't get too complicated in your life. You can get it very complicated by adding a lot of people and a lot of things in your mind. You don't need the clutter."

A warning to his new young friend, there, to keep the laser sharpness in those eyes.

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