The 140th edition of the Open Golf Championship tees it up on July 14 at the Royal St. George”s Golf Club in Sandwich, England. Commonly known as the British Open on this side of the Atlantic, the Open Championship is the longest running of golf”s four major championships, having first been contested in 1860 on the links of the Prestwick Golf Club in western Scotland.
There are nine courses on the current British Open rotation and a number of those sites are well known to even the most casual of golfing fans, namely St. Andrews, Muirfield, Carnoustie and Turnberry. Royal St. George”s is not as high profile of a golf course as the aforementioned foursome, but it is a stern test of links golf and it has been a regular member of the British Open rotation since 1894. This will be the 14th time that St. George”s has hosted the Open Championship.
Local lore has it that Dr. Laidlaw Purves, a well-known Edinburgh surgeon, was standing in the tower of St. Clement”s Church in Sandwich, and upon scoping out the surrounding countryside, he supposedly stated, “By George, what a great place for a golf course.” Although Purves had no real background in golf course architecture in an age that featured Old Tom Morris, Alister Mackenzie and Donald Ross, he was able to lay out the routing design for Royal St. George”s and had well-known Scottish greenskeeper Ramsay Hunter build the course for him. From the moment the course opened in 1887, it has been highly regarded in England golfing circles and has also been the site of 13 British Amateur championships.
Five years after its opening, St. George”s hosted its first British Amateur, and two years after that, in the summer of 1894, it served as the site for its first Open Championship. Up until that point in time, every British Open had been contested on Scottish soil at Prestwick, St. Andrews, Musselburgh and Muirfield. The 1894 Open at Royal St. George”s marked the first time that the event was played in England. That inaugural St. George”s champion was J.H. Taylor, one of the greats of that time who alongside Harry Vardon and James Braid made up golf”s Great Triumvirate.
Royal St. George”s was considered a beast of a course, even more difficult than other courses on the rotation. Harold Hilton won at Muirfield with a 305 total aggregate for 72 holes in 1892. William Auchterlonie recorded a 322 total at the quirky Prestwick the following year. In the 1894 Open at St. George”s, Taylor shot rounds of 84-80-81-81 for a 38-over-par total of 326. The numbers were high because the course was tough due to its length and a handful of blind tee shots. Nonetheless, Taylor”s win was no fluke as he finished five shots ahead of his closest pursuer, Douglas Rowland.
The Open returned to St. George”s five years later and this time around it was Vardon who took home the Claret Jug. Varson posted a 310 total and beat back Jack White by five shots. White, the highly regarded head professional at Sunningdale Golf Club, turned the tables on Vardon and Taylor some five years later at the 1904 Open Championship at St. George”s. White shot 80-75-72-69 for a 296 total and a one-stroke victory over Taylor and Vardon. White”s 296 total was the first time a British Open champion shot lower than 300 over the course of 72 holes. The final-round 69 was equally impressive, too.
More golf courses were added to the Open rotation, so the next time that the championship returned to St. George”s was 1911. Harry Vardon won his fifth of six Open titles that time around, recording a 303 total while beating Arnaud Massy in an 18-hole playoff. World War I impacted the playing of the Open from 1915 through 1919 and the tournament was unable to return to the Sandwich links course until 1922.
The 1922 Open was noteworthy in that Walter Hagen became the first American golfer to win the British Open. When the Open returned to Royal St. George”s in 1928, Hagen repeated the feat with a two-stroke win over Gene Sarazen. Hagen”s triumph in 1928 was the third of his four Open victories.
The 1934 Open at St. George”s was won by Henry Cotton, a putting genius from that early era. He also would win the 1937 Open at Carnoustie. Cotton closed the chapter on top-notch golfers winning at St. George”s with his 1934 victory.
The next St. George”s Open started the “who”s he?” trend of unexpected winners at the Sandwich course. In 1938, Reg Whitcombe beat Johnny Adams and Henry Cotton to won his one and only major title. His older brothers were far better known to golf fans of the time as older brother Charles Whitcombe captained four Ryder Cup teams while middle brother Ernest played on three Cup teams.
The post-war era has featured some pretty top-notch champions out of the St. George”s site at the Open. South African Bobby Locke won his first of four Open titles at St. George”s in 1949, Scotsman Sandy Lyle won his first of two major titles there in 1985 with his win over Payne Stewart, and in 1993 Australian Greg Norman posted a final-round 64 at St. George”s to come from behind to beat Nick Faldo by two strokes.
However, in 1981, Texan Bill Rogers had his brief brush with fame with a runaway four-stroke win over Bernhard Langer at St. George”s. Rogers is now a club professional in San Antonio and completely lost his game in the mid-1980s. The last time that the Open visited Sandwich, total unknown Ben Curtis had his first professional win of any sort. Curtis had to sink a boatload of crucial putts down the stretch to defeat Denmark”s Thomas Bjorn and Vijay Singh by one stroke.
The Open Championship starts in 12 days at the Royal St. George”s Golf Club in Sandwich, England. Louis Oosthuizen is the defending champion and Rory McIlroy, the reigning U.S. Open champion, is obviously the favorite.
Next week we”ll take a look at the course at St. George”s and discuss the nuances and quirks of linksland and the game”s oldest championship.
