We find ourselves at the midpoint of the 152nd annual British Open Championship at the Royal Troon Golf Club in western Scotland. The Open is the fourth as well as the oldest of the major championships in the world of men’s professional golf. The inaugural Open Championship was initially contested in 1860 and was hosted by the Prestwick Golf Club. At that time Prestwick was just a 12 hole golf course. The contestants played three rounds of 12 holes to equal 36 hole. Willie Park won that first Open after shooting 174, meaning that he averaged an 87 for each of the 18 holes. There was no Claret Jug in those days although Park did get a championship belt for his efforts.
It was some 35 years later that the five clubs that made up the USGA (Shinnecock, The Country Club, Chicago, NY St. Andrews, Newport) held their National Open and Amateur over the course of a single day and 36 holes. That first U.S. Open was won by Horace Rawlins with a score of 173. The contestants in the field played the nine hole course at Newport four times in the same day.
The Western Golf Association was founded in 1899 and held their first Western Open at the Glen View Golf Club. Willer Smith shot a 156 to finish in a two way tie atop the leader board with Laurie Auchterlonie and then won the playoff. Five years later Jon Oke won the inaugural Canadian Open at the Royal Montreal Country Club. Oke also shot 156 to win by two strokes. Various state golf associations and local chambers of commerce began to host tournaments. There was a tournament calendar of approximately 20 eventst that made up the beginnings of the PGA Tour. Most top professionals had real jobs as head pros of established country clubs and would then take some time off to play tournament golf.
There were no such things as major tournaments prior to World War I and yet the top golfers of that era did regard the British, Open, the Canadian Open, the Western Open, and the Canadian Open as important tournaments because of the strength of the field and the size of the purse. Some of the top players of that initial era were competitive amateurs. Instead of returning to a club job, golfers such as Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans, and Bobby Jones were businessmen and attorneys. All three won the U.S. Amateur and yet they also won the U.S. Open. It was difficult to make a living as a competitive golfer and it wasn’t until Walter Hagen started to play dominant golf in the 1920s that the sport was sports section front page news.
Speaking of Hagen, he was the driving force in the formation of the PGA of America. The PGA started its own championship in 1916 and the first winner of the Wanamaker Trophy was long hitting Jim Barnes. Unlike most of the tournaments of that time, the PGA was radically different in that it was decided at match play. With the conclusion of World War I, the game blossomed during a time called the Roaring Twenties. Babe Ruth was the face of baseball, Red Grange was the poster boy of the newly former National Football League, and golf had a triumvirate of stars that included Jones, Hagen, and Gene Sarazen. They played on both sides of the Atlantic and normally the organizers of the game bundled events to enhance ocean travel by scheduling the two Open and Amateur tournaments with the Ryder Cup and the Walker Cup. On occasion a tournament was rescheduled to accommodate the stars of the game, the most obvious example being the move of the 1913 U.S. Open to September to get Harry Vardon and Ted Ray into field. Vardon and Ray had scheduled a series of exhibitions throughout the East Coast and moving the Open to the fall meant that they could do both. In the end, Vardon and Ray lost a playoff to Francis Ouimet in what has been called ”golf’s greatest day.”
Amateur great Bobby Jones called an end to his career after a stellar 1930 season when the Atlanta attorney won the British Open, British Amateur, U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur. His retirement plan was to build his own course in concert with famous designer Alister Mackenzie. The end result was Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia and in 1934 Jones hosted the very first Masters tournament.
There remained important tournaments but no such thing as a major. Money was tighter during the Great Depression of the 1930s with golfers avoiding travel to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The British Open had few American golfers and the reversal was the case at the U.S. Open as well. After World War II both Sam Snead and Ben Hogan made just one trip to the British Open and won. Otherwise, the game was quite parochial.
In 1960 Arnold Palmer won the Masters and the U.S. Open. Following the National Open win Palmer announced that he would be travelling to Scotland to play in the Open Championship at St. Andrews in his quest to win the professional grand slam. Palmer also included a win at the PGA Championship as part of the equation. From that moment onward, the common thought throughout the game was that there were four majors- the Masters, the PGA, the U.S. Open, and the British Open. For the past 64 years the common thinking has been that greatness is determined by major championship success. Nicklaus has 18 majors, Tiger has 15 of them, Walter Hagen has 11 major wins (with his career over before the advent of the Masters), and so on and so on.
The game of golf bas been contested at the highest levels since 1860, yet it took 100 years and the thought process of the dominant player of that era, Arnold Palmer, to elevate four tournaments to major status. In the end, it is the impetus to determine greatness.
