The 138th annual British Open Championship tees it up this coming Thursday for first-round play on Scotland”s westernmost coast at the Turnberry Ailsa Course. Turnberry features a gigantic five-star hotel that overlooks both the Ailsa and Kintyre courses and offers beautiful vistas of the Scottish countryside and the adjacent Irish Sea. On the clearest of days, one can see across the sea to the distant shoreline of Northern Ireland.
One can also see the ruins of the castle of Robert the Bruce, Scotland”s dynamic king who initiated the cause for the country”s independence from Great Britain in the early 1300s. More recently, Turnberry served as a Royal Air Force military base during World War II. The original Ailsa and Kintyre courses were destroyed beyond recognition as concrete runways for bombers were extended across the fairways, temporary barracks were built throughout the property, and piles of munitions were stacked into the bunkers.
Turnberry entered the British Open rotation in 1977 and had an immediate impact upon major championship history with the Duel in the Sun featuring eventual winner Tom Watson and runner-up Jack Nicklaus. As evidenced by its billing, the ”77 Open Championship at Turnberry featured beautifully hot and sunny weather, a very un-Scottish type situation during the summer months alongside the western coast. The locals in the gallery were suffering from extreme sunburn that week, a most unique occurrence in Scotland.
Watson and Nicklaus were extremely hot, too. When the dust finally settled with Watson making a 3-foot birdie putt on the final hole to beat Nicklaus by one stroke, the scoreboard had Young Tom at 12-under-par 268, while Jack posted an 11-under-par 269. They lapped the remainder of the high-profile field as Hubert Green finished third at 1-under-par and Lee Trevino came in solo fourth at even par. It was a two-man show over the final 36 holes as Watson finished 65-65 to Nicklaus” 65-66 on Saturday and Sunday.
Nine years later the Open returned to Turnberry. The weather was more typical of the Scottish seaside with gale force winds and rain during play on Thursday and Saturday. In fact, on Thursday the low score of the day belonged to Ian Woosnam with an even-par 70, and on Saturday it was Roger Maltbie”s 69. Australian Greg Norman shot a pair of 74s on those two bad-weather days, but went off in benign conditions on Friday to record a 7-under-par 63. As impressive as 63 sounds, it could have been better as the Great White Shark had a pair of three-putts as well as three bogeys on his card. A final-round 69 got Norman the 1986 Open win by five strokes as well as his first major title. His aggregate score was even-par 280.
In 1994, Turnberry hosted its third Open Championship. Tom Watson turned back the clock to 1977 by shooting rounds of 68-65 to take the lead at the midway point. However, the 45-year-old Watson couldn”t sustain it as Fuzzy Zoeller, Brad Faxon and David Feherty jumped atop the leaderboard following third-round play. In a dramatic final round, Jesper Parnevik took the lead with but one hole to go, only to bogey the 18th. Two shots back, Nick Price eagled the par-5 17th and made par on the 18th to win by one shot.
Price finished at 12-under-par 268, the same number posted by Watson in 1977. Afterward, runner-up Parnevik acknowledged that he hadn”t looked at the scoreboard, had no idea that he held the lead, and incorrectly assumed he needed to birdie the final hole to tie Zoeller. Parnevik would never again factor into a Grand Slam event.
It is now 15 years since Turnberry last hosted the Open Championship. It missed its turn in the rotation some six or seven years ago with the reappearance of Carnoustie and Hoylake in the rotation coupled with some necessary infrastructure work on the winding and narrow local roads. In 2009, Turnberry remains the most beautiful of the British Open venues. I played it in August of 1986 (five rounds in two days) some two weeks after Norman”s Triumph, and the course I feel it most closely resembles is Pebble Beach. It has a great stretch of holes in the middle of the round alongside the Irish Sea with a giant lighthouse looking over the farthest point of the Ailsa Course.
Next week Turnberry will play to an elongated 7,204 yards and a par of 70. The yardage has been increased by some 400 yards since 1994 and nine of the course”s par-4s will play to 450 yards or more. Both par-5s, the seventh and 17th, are reachable in two shots if the conditions are good although the relatively easy 17th has been stretched from 490 yards to 560 yards.
Nonetheless, if the wind doesn”t howl and rain doesn”t so sideways, Turnberry will show itself to be quite beatable and the aggregate tournament record posted by both Watson and Price could easily fall. The greens are relatively easy to putt when compared to other Open sites and there are no real forced carries into the putting surfaces. In a nutshell, if the wind doesn”t blow, then red numbers can be expected. Fifteen years ago under kind conditions, there were 148 rounds in the 60s.
For Tiger Woods, Turnberry may offer a good omen. Every British Open winner there has been the No. 1-ranked player in the world at the time of his triumph.
Then again, because of the relative simplicity of the greens, perhaps a ball striker supreme such as Sergio Garcia or Adam Scott may prevail at the Ailsa Course. I”m of the opinion that a Euro such as Ian Poulter or Henrik Stenson may break through, but in the topsy-turvy world of Grand Slam golf, one never knows. How about a win from a dark-horse American with past success at the Open Championship? How about David Duval following up on his U.S. Open experience and hoisting the Claret Jug once again? It”ll all depend on the weather.
