There’s a British Open Winner Coaching High School Golf in Ohio

Ben Curtis, right, teaches at a golf academy that bears his name. He won the British Open in 2003.Credit...Daniel Lozada for The New York Times

All of the noise is gone now. There is no entourage, no hubbub, no fuss. Instead of yukking it up with David Letterman, as he did 20 years ago this month, Ben Curtis is spending the morning teaching southeast of Cleveland and steeling himself for the roughly 750-mile drive to South Carolina for a family vacation.

This kind of understated Friday morning is very much how Curtis likes his life two decades after he made his major tournament debut at the British Open — and won. His victory at Royal St. George’s was an international sensation: He went from…