Players’ Love/Hate Relationship With The Old Course
The Old Course In St. Andrews, Scotland
by Jeff Sutherland
The Open Championship goes this week and it’s a guarantee some players will love their experience while others, not so much…
EMBRACING THE CHALLENGE
While their success is obviously primarily related to their ability, it could not have hurt that both also clearly embraced the challenges of golf’s original course. Jack Nicklaus said, "I fell in love with it the first day I played it. There's just no other golf course that is even remotely close." Tiger Woods was equally enamored, "Without a doubt I like it the best of all the Open venues. It's my favorite course in the world."
FAMILIARITY BREEDS RESPECT
For other professionals, it can be a different story, much more of a love/hate relationship and sometimes, hopefully, a hate then love relationship. Two golfers in particular were - at least early on in their careers - not as complimentary as they would become later on.
During the Alfred Dunhill Cup in 1998, Lee Westwood, when asked if he would put The Old Course among his top 50 courses in the world, replied, “I wouldn’t put it in the top 100 courses in Fife.” (Ed. Note: There are only approximately 30 courses in the Kingdom).
Pilloried in the press, he would amend his comments almost a decade later, ”My frustration lay in the fact I couldn’t see how to shoot a low score. I could see the birdies but I would play so aggressively that I would run up bogeys as well… (my previous comments) encouraged me to see the subtleties and grow to love it.” He would find some redemption with a runner-up finish in 2010 at St Andrews to South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen.
It may be that Nicklaus might have learned from Jones’ experience. In a 1970 interview with Sports Illustrated after his win at St. Andrews, he was quoted as saying, ... "A golfer must play (here) at least a dozen times before he can expect to understand its subtleties. If a player becomes irritated at the bad bounces and unusual things that happen at St. Andrews, forget it.”
Sage words but the significance of the moments at St. Andrews can make maintaining an even keel a lot more difficult. Everything around an Open at the Old Course seems to be magnified providing some of golf’s most historic moments.
THE 18TH GREEN
The 18th green has had two moments that stand out in terms of their immediate impact and on both players’ subsequent fame and fortune.
Nicklaus and Sanders in 1970
Jack’s first win in 1970 almost did not happen. Fellow American Doug Sanders' agonizing miss of a two-and-a-half foot putt on the final hole of regulation forced an 18-hole playoff the next day. Ironically, Nicklaus would then birdie the same 18th to win.
This would mark the second time in four years that Sanders had ended runner-up to Nicklaus in the Open Championship (Muirfield, 1966).
Sanders would be able to top-ten at the next two Open Championships but would end his career without a major. Jack would go on to win another 10 Majors including the 1978 Open Championship at St. Andrews.
Playing the final hole, Italy’s Costantino Rocca needed to get an up-and-down birdie from just in front of the green to force a playoff. After he duffed his chip and it ended up in the ‘Valley of Sin’, it looked like John Daly would win. Rocca then recovered by holing a 65-foot putt.
Daly would brush off the distraction and win the three-hole playoff after Rocca hit into the Road Hole Bunker while playing the 17th hole, taking three shots to get out.
Rocca would only top-ten twice in Majors over the remainder of his career. Daly would fare even worse, only cracking the top-20 once in 54 starts in the Majors (2012 PGA Championship - T18).
THE 17TH ROAD HOLE
The 17th “Road Hole” has also seen its share of heroics and disasters both from the bunker and the road.
Aside from the Rocca’s visit to the notorious bunker noted above, it also played a part in regulation when his putt from the road hit a rock, bounced four feet in the air, and ended five feet from the hole.
Even less well-known was Daly’s escape from the same bunker minutes earlier where his ball was right up against the face and he was able to extricate himself.
In 2010, Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez’s ball ended up almost right up against the wall behind the road. Jimenez then played an intentional carom off the rock wall and onto the green… one of golf’s all-time iconic trick shots.
In 1978, Japan’s Tommy Nakajima was tied for the lead near the completion of the third round. His approach ended on the front right of the green… a relatively safe spot to leave it for a back left hole location. His subsequent putt, however, would catch a slope and end up in the bunker. He would then take four shots to get out and card a nine.
Asked afterward if he had lost his concentration, Nakajima answered, “No, I lost count.”
THE BUNKERS IN GENERAL
Few courses have names for their bunkers. At the Old Course, names like ‘Spectacles’, 'The Principal’s Nose', and 'Beardies' may sound fairly innocuous but a visit to any of them can be just as disastrous as those named 'Hell' and 'The Coffins.' The best strategy is to miss all 112 bunkers… easy to say, not so easy to do. The only player to do it was Tiger Woods in 2000 and he admitted later that it was a fluke (see below).
While the Road Hole bunker may often play a pivotal role coming down the stretch on Sunday, there are many more that have taken a player out of contention much earlier.
In 1995, Jack Nicklaus took four shots to get out of the aptly named Hell Bunker enroute to a quintuple bogey ten. Why is it named Hell? Facing a ten-foot high revetted sod face is close enough to a trip to Hades to more than qualify.
Another brutal bunker is the one fronting the par three 11th named Straith for a 19th century professional Davie Strath who either spent a lot of time there or expired in it and was just buried in the sand. In 2000, during a practice round, Mark O’Meara took eight swings trying to get out of Straith before giving up and throwing it out.
(Ed. Note: See this story from Golf Monthly for a more complete list of the bunkers to avoid HERE)
“If a golfer is to be remembered, he must win the Open at St Andrews,” Bobby Jones once said. Jack Nicklaus acknowledged his awareness of Jones’ comment saying, “That is a quote I always remembered in my career and because of that I knew it would be important to win at St Andrews.”
It is also likely that Tiger was well aware of Jones’ comments and aware he was chasing his legacy. Having played poorly at St Andrews as an amateur in 1995 gave him an added focus.
Not that he really needed it.
When he came to St Andrews in 2000 at the age of 24, he arrived as the best golfer in the world having already won the Masters (1997), the PGA Championship (1999) and the US Open (2000). A win here would not only cement his legacy as defined by Jones, it would give him the career grand slam… two years earlier than Jack.
In one of the more dominant performances in golf history, Tiger would post 67, 66, 67 to lead by six shots after three rounds. In the final round, he would shoot 69 to eventually win by eight. Over the four rounds, Woods amazingly never found one of the 112 bunkers that dot the course.
Like all play on links courses, luck helps. Tiger acknowledged this later, saying, “I should have been in probably three or five bunkers, easily. Just off the tee shots alone, it happened to hop over a bunker and catch a side and kick left or right of it. That happens. Fortunately, it was happening that week. I got lucky a few times.”
So next Sunday, who will see their name engraved on the Claret Jug? Look for someone with the requisite skills, the right attitude, a little luck and a sense of history.
To find out more about The Open Championship, visit these sites:
The Official R&A Site: https://www.theopen.com/