It”s the 150th anniversary of the inaugural British Open and there is nowhere more fitting to contest the world”s oldest golf championship than at the Old Course at St. Andrews alongside Scotland”s northeast coast. Noted as the birthplace of golf, St. Andrews is hosting its 28th Open Championship.
Since 1990 the Open has been played every five years on these hallowed links. In 1990 the top players of the era, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman, were tied through 36 holes. Conditions were benign that week and the top professionals of the day took advantage of the kindness of Mother Nature. Faldo and Norman were in a dead heat at 12-under-par when they teed it up in the final grouping on Saturday afternoon.
When we look back on that third round some 20 years after the fact, the results are not surprising when one considers the ups and downs of Norman”s career in relation to Faldo, a six-time major champion. Norman was the emotional frontrunner who found numerous ways to be victimized on the golf course. Faldo was a true tactician of links golf, playing conservatively, steadily, and without emotion.
On that Saturday on St. Andrews” Old Course, Faldo destroyed Norman, shooting a 67 to the Shark”s 76. The same scenario would play out six years later at the Masters. Faldo would go on to win the 1990 Open, beating Mark McNulty and Payne Stewart by five shots. Norman would finish sixth, some seven shots back. Faldo would win a third Open title in 1992 and Norman would win his second British Open in 1993. Nonetheless, that Saturday at Andrews in 1990 would forever establish the pecking order of the era, namely that Nick Faldo was the alpha male of championship golf in the late 1980s through the 1990s.
The 1995 Open was back to normal with heavy winds influencing the way St. Andrews played that weekend. No one was going to shoot anything near 18-under-par as Faldo had done five years earlier. Through three rounds, Michael Campbell of New Zealand stood at 9-under-par. Constantino Rocca of Italy was two shots back and Americans John Daly and Mark Brooks were four and five shots behind the leader.
During the middle of Sunday”s round, Campbell started to struggle off the tee and with his putter. He would card a 76 and finish at 5-under-par. Daly played solid and surprisingly conservative golf, carded a 72 for a 6-under-par aggregate, and held a one-stroke lead as Rocca came up the 18th hole. A birdie would result in a tie at the top with Daly.
Rocca hit a long drive and had to hit a short pitch close, make the putt, and he”d be able to join Daly in a four-hole playoff. However, Rocca chunked his little pitch shot and his ball ended up in the ultra-difficult Valley of Sin, some 70 feet away from the flagstick. With chances ranging from slim to none, Rocca hit one of the all-time great Open shots, holing out for birdie from the Valley of Sin. Alas, he had very little left in the tank as Daly won the playoff for his second major title.
On a historical note, the 1995 Open at St. Andrews marked the final appearance of Arnold Palmer, winner of two British Open championships. While Palmer didn”t win either of his titles at St. Andrews, it was his entry into the 1960 Open at St. Andrews that reinvigorated the tourney and brought it newfound legitimacy in the modern era. The ”95 Open marked the first appearance of a young American golfer who was exempt into the field as the U.S. Amateur champ, namely Tiger Woods.
What a difference five and 10 years can make as Tiger Woods won the 2000 and 2005 British Open titles at St. Andrews. The 2000 Open will forever live in golf lore as Woods shot rounds of 67-66-67-69 for 269 total and 19-under-par score, beating Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn by eight strokes. Significant in Woods” win was the fact that he never had to play out of a St. Andrews bunker nor did he ever record a three-putt. The 2000 Open was the second major win in a row for Tiger, a streak that would continue through another two majors and result in the Tiger Slam of 2000-2001. That Open marked the final appearance of another two-time champion as 60-year-old Lee Trevino retired from the game.
While not as dramatic as his 2000 triumph, Tiger Woods still ran away with the 2005 Open at St. Andrews as he shot 14-under-par to beat Colin Montgomerie by five strokes. Woods opened up play with scores of 66 and 67 and would never be challenged. His 66 on Thursday was the lowest round of the championship.
In keeping with tradition, the ”05 Open was the farewell moment for Jack Nicklaus, arguably the greatest golfer of all-time with 18 major titles. Nicklaus first won the British Open in 1966 at Muirfield and added Open titles in 1970 and 1978, both times at the Old Course. Nicklaus missed the cut at the 2005 Open Championship, and yet his walk up the 18th fairway on Friday was historic in that an enormous gallery of golfing fans and fellow pros ringed the final hole. Nicklaus accommodated the overflowing gallery by making a 20-foot putt for birdie.
Nicklaus, Faldo, Daly and Woods are just a foursome among the many great golfers who have won the world”s oldest championship on the Old Course at St. Andrews. Other winners have included Seve Ballesteros in 1984, Australians Peter Thomson in 1956 and Kel Nagle in 1960, Sam Snead in 1946, Bobby Jones in 1927, Jock Hutchinson in 1921, James Braid in 1905 and 1910, and J.H. Taylor in 1895 and 1900. If I look at this correctly, all of the aforementioned except Daly and Woods are in the World Golf Hall of Fame. St. Andrews has always seemed to identify the best golfer to raise the Claret Jug at the conclusion of play on Sunday. I believe we”ll see more of the same this weekend.
