Prestwick Golf Club Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Prestwick turns back the clock, brings back 12-hole layout used to host the first Open Championship

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 06:44:36 +0000

By John Huggan
In every other respect, it was just an ordinary October Wednesday in Prestwick 162 years ago. But down at the local links, a golf competition was about to be born. Three weeks prior to Abraham Lincoln being elected the 16th president of the United States and only months before America would indulge in the ultimate oxymoron, a Civil War, eight competitors, seven Scots and an Englishman, were readying themselves to tee off.

The tournament was played over 36 holes and there was no halfway cut (so no World Ranking points were awarded). But this was the beginning of what is today golf’s most historic event, the Open Championship. Which was, at least for that first playing, a misnomer. No amateurs were allowed to enter, only professionals.

Not until the night before the second playing of the event in 1861 was it resolved that moving forward the event would be open to all the world. That reference is still to be found in the Prestwick Golf Club minutes book and probably led to the expression “the Open.” The first event, however, was actually not an Open. It was invitational, a bit like the Masters and merely an effort to find a successor to Allan Robertson, the so-called ‘Champion Golfer of Scotland’ who had passed away the previous year.

The commemorative cairn marks where the first shot in the 1860 Open Championship was struck. Mark Alexander

“Robertson was the first player to break 80 on the Old Course at St Andrews,” says Ken Goodwin, Prestwick secretary. “He never lost a money match playing his own ball. He never lost a money match with a Morris as his partner. The members at Prestwick, more for their own amusement than anything else, thought it would be good to have an event to identify the new champion. There was no enthusiasm from St Andrews or Musselburgh, so they did it themselves. Most of the good players would be coming to Prestwick to caddie for their gentlemen in the autumn medal. So they would be here anyway.”

Play began at noon on Oct. 17, 1860 — late for that time of year in Scotland — but there was no risk of the golfers not getting round before darkness. After two loops of the 12-hole circuit, they even had time for a break at the Red Lion Inn before returning to the course for the third round. All of which was completed in four-and-a-half hours.

The Prestwick club’s ‘keeper of the green and club and ball-maker’, Old Tom Morris, had designed the layout nine years earlier and was a strong favourite to claim first prize, the red Moroccan championship belt that cost the hosts all of £25. But it wasn’t to be. With a score of 174 — 55-59-60 — Willie Park Sr of Musselburgh claimed the first of what would be his four Open victories, two shots clear of Morris.

“Old Tom’s approach to course design was interesting,” Goodwin says. “There are two versions. In one, he went round with a pocketful of feathers. And in the other, a pocketful of sticks. He went out and looked for good places for greens, which he marked with a feather or a stick, depending on which version you believe. Then he would wander off and find another one. And another. If there was a sand dune or depression in the way, it was up to the golfer to negotiate it. You either went over it or round it.”

That fundamental strategy continues to apply today to the now 18-hole layout at Prestwick, which uses six of the original 12 greens. The course remains unashamedly old-fashioned, a quaint and quirky mix of humps, hollows and blind shots. And, happily, one hole has survived from Day 1. The par-4 17th (‘The Alps’) that members play today is the one played in the first Open. The second on the 12-hole course, it is 385 yards and more manicured now than it was then. But golfers still play over the same hill. The Sahara bunker still sits in front of the green. And the green is still marked by an extreme slope. It is the oldest existing hole in major championship golf.

Anyway, starting October 10 and lasting for two weeks this month, the original Open layout, recreated as never before, is going to be available to a mixture of members, media and, on a couple of days at least, visitors.

The original 12-hole layout for the inaugural Open Championship sits inside a eight-hole stretch on the north portion of Prestwick’s current 18-hole layout.

“We’ve always had a good idea where the greens were and that the routing was,” Goodwin said. “The big problem was we didn’t have the equipment necessary to get the job done. So the whole thing was really quite rudimentary. It took a long time to prepare. But now we have the equipment that allows us to cut back large swathes of rough. We’ve done that. Take the first/12th holes. A year ago, the fairway there was covered in grass 18 inches long.”

Inevitably, some compromises have had to be made in trying to recover or retrieve the original course. At the short seventh, ‘Green Hollow’, where the semi-blind putting surface is in what was rough, the construction of a green was necessary. So it won’t be the same condition of the original. But even the worst green is probably better than the best green in 1860. And yes, the fairways are still a wee bit rough in places. But that is how it was back then. In those days, a lot of golf was actually played in winter. In summer, cattle and sheep were used to graze and keep the grass down as much as possible.

One other 19th century feature will be in evidence this month. Rather than the usual flags, the pins will be topped by baskets, something that will be more than familiar to those who have visited Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia, a five-time US Open host.

The wicker baskets will return to Prestwick once again. Mark Alexander

“Back then, you could use whatever you wanted to indicate the position of the holes,” Goodwin said. “Some courses used rags on the end of sticks. But Prestwick preferred baskets, which probably started off as small fisherman’s creels. At some point early in the 20th century, we stopped using baskets and went to flags. But this month we are recreating the original feel. Hugh Wilson, who would go on to design Merion, visited in 1910 and took the idea back to the States.”

The scorecard for the original 12 holes is another fun feature. For whatever reason, those in charge at the Prestwick club were not content with mere yardages. Not nearly exact enough. Take the first hole, ‘Back of Cardinal’, which is played from the cairn that sits just onside the entrance to the club to what is now the 16th green and where, in 1870, Young Tom Morris started his third consecutive Open victory with a remarkable 3. On the card, the hole is listed as a “bogey six” and “stroke index one” befitting the most difficult hole on the course. And the distance from tee to basket: 578 yards, one foot and nine inches.

The scorecard at Prestwick is pretty precise!

Indeed, there is no need for range finders at ‘old’ Prestwick. Other examples: The second longest hole on the original Open course is the fourth, ‘Wall’, which measures 448 yards, two feet and five inches. The eighth, ‘Station’, (where Young Tom made the first Open hole-in-one in 1869) is 166 yards and four inches. And the 10th, ‘Lunch House’, is 213 yards, one foot and two inches.

One last thing: In 1851, when the course first came into being, health and safety issues were clearly not part of Old Tom’s thinking. On the 314 yard, one foot, nine inch sixth hole, ‘Tunnel (White)’, golf is a dangerous business. From the tee, the route to what is also the third green on ‘Tunnel (Red)’ means sharing space with those playing the fifth, first and 12th holes, then entering what locals colloquially label “the killing zone”. There, players on the second, ninth and seventh holes interfere with each other.

Still, let’s not be too harsh. Given what the Open is today, it’s hard to argue that the men of Prestwick got too much wrong.

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U.S. Open 2018: Are we due for a journeyman major championship winner?

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 06:39:22 +0000

By Shane Ryan
There’s nothing that golf fans and golf media love quite as much as a complete and utter no-name winning one of golf’s major championships …

… is a sentence you might write if your goal was to be hit by a wheelbarrow full of rotten tomatoes.

It is not, of course, a true statement. There is nothing the golf world loathes like the scenario described above, and I’m no exception. It’s not that we don’t like an underdog story, you see. It’s just that the underdog has to be someone hugely famous, like Henrik Stenson beating someone even more hugely famous like Phil Mickelson.

In other words, underdog stories are great—as long as there are no underdogs involved.

In this regard, individual sports differ from team sports. Find me a group of plucky spoilers in baseball or basketball or football, and I’ll find you a regional fan base that can rally behind them. With enough success, they can even win the hearts and minds of an entire country. In golf and tennis? No way. We want the big names, as demonstrated by the fact that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have dominated their sport for approximately 50 years, and nobody is sick of it.

This dynamic is even more true in golf, where the format of the majors deprives us of head-to-head match-ups, and we rely on the biggest names for drama and narrative.

When they deliver, it’s wonderful. When they don’t, it’s an utter disaster. Even when there’s a “good” dark horse narrative in golf, it’s only really good after the fact. Sure, we’ll make a whole movie about Francis Ouimet’s upset win at the U.S. Open today, but I guarantee you that in 1913, 90 percent of the spectators on the course were thinking, “Who is this PUNK KID ruining our precious Harry Vardon-Ted Ray duel?”

The good news for modern fans is that we are firmly ensconced in the era of the big-name winner. The bad news is that I think we might be due for a journeyman champion at the U.S. Open this weekend. Frankly, it’s been too long, we’ve been too blessed, and Trey Mullinax is going to win by 15 strokes.

Before we discuss Shinnecock Hills, though, I want to delve into the rich history of the journeyman fluke. It arguably began with a man named Andrew Strath, who won the Open Championship at Prestwick Golf Club in 1865, the same year America was wrapping up the Civil War. From the inaugural championship of 1860 all the way up to 1872, he was the only man not named Tom Morris (Young or Old) or Willie Park (just Old) to take home the belt they used before they had the Claret Jug. He was the ultimate journeyman, and in fact, his journey ended sadly when he died of tuberculosis at age 30.

But he had set the tone for longshot Open champions to come—men like Mungo Park and Willie Fernie and Hugh Kirklady, and Tamoshanter Lochnessie. All of whom, I assure you, are real people. (OK, I made Tamoshanter up.) Then the U.S. Open began in 1895, and a bunch of non-Americans won for a decade. Some were famous, like Vardon, but there were a few journeymen in the mix there too—Horace Rawlins, Laurie Auchterlonie, Fred McLeod.

It wasn’t until golf became a true big money sport, though, that the era of the journeyman reached its prime. So let’s speed pass the two World Wars (summary: both went well), and talk about men like Jack Fleck, who didn’t become a full-time pro until age 33, at which point he beat Ben Hogan at the 1955 U.S. Open before fading away.

Micheel, Beem, Campbell and Hamilton are some of the more memorable recent journeymen to claim major victories. (Getty Images (Getty Images (4))

Let’s talk about Orville Moody, who had just one PGA Tour victory … which happened to be the 1969 U.S. Open. Let’s talk about Lionel Hebert (’57 PGA), Charles Coody (’71 Masters) and Dick Mayer (’57 U.S. Open). Let’s talk about Lew Worsham (’47 U.S. Open) and Herman Keiser (’46 Masters) and Max Faulkner (’51 British) and Jim Turnesa (’52 PGA) and even Claude Harmon (’48 Masters), who only won a single event on tour before siring the sport’s most famous modern coach.

Of course, the parade of journeymen doesn’t stop in the good old days. A man named Wayne Grady—not the musical improviser from Whose Line Is It Anyway, I’m told—won the 1990 PGA Championship. Steve Jones won the ’96 U.S. Open, and never finished better than 24th in any other major. Paul Lawrie won the ’99 Open at Carnoustie. Rich Beem won the PGA in 2002. Todd Hamilton won the Open in 2004. Shaun Micheel won the 2003 PGA and never won again.

None of these men had what you would call electrifying professional golf careers. At best, they were journeymen—“technically competent,” as Wikipedia notes, “but unable to excel.” At worst, they were one-hit wonders.

Almost universally, their triumphs came at the expense of our enjoyment. It may sound cruel, but watching Beem win a major is a very different experience from watching Tiger Woods, or Rory McIlroy, or Jordan Spieth, or even a minor superstar like Martin Kaymer or Padraig Harrington. When the no-name excels, the increasingly disheartened internal dialogue of every fan evolves like so:

“Wow, this guy’s really hanging in there.”

“This could really happen, couldn’t it?”

“Well, it happened. He won.”

“Hope that never happens again.”

The cruellest part of the journeyman victory in golf is that it very rarely entails an exciting duel against a legend. In fact, the no-name triumph usually takes one of three forms:

1. The Hero’s collapse.
In these cases, the emotional trajectory of a tournament is one of deflation. For Michael Campbell to win the 2005 U.S. Open, Retief Goosen had to blow a four-shot lead by shooting 81 on Sunday. For Beem to win the 2002 PGA, Justin Leonard had to shoot a 77. For Lawrie to win the ’99 British, Jean Van de Velde had to go full Van de Velde, although Van de Velde himself would have been a journeyman, so now I’m confusing myself.

2. The “nobody makes a run” situation.
Trevor Immelman won the 2008 Masters despite shooting 75 on Sunday, mostly because of his three biggest threats (Brandt Snedeker, Steve Flesch, Paul Casey), shot 77, 78 and 79, respectively.

3. The “my God, this leaderboard is trash” scenario.
This is the rare case when the worlds best just don’t show up on a given week. Check out, for instance, the top 10 names on the leaderboard heading into the final round of Micheel’s 2003 PGA victory: Chad Campbell, Micheel, Mike Weir, Tim Clark, Billy Andrade, Briny Baird, Alex Cejka, Ernie Els, Fred Funk, Charles Howell III, Vijay Singh. I mean … did anyone even watch that?

Luckily, as mentioned above, we are currently in a golden age of big-name winners. I would contend that the last true journeymen to win majors came during the Glover-Cink-Yang stretch in 2009. Some people will argue that Danny Willett fits the bill (his green jacket even fits the hero’s collapse narrative, courtesy of Spieth), and frankly, I’d have trouble defending my position. I just happen to think he’ll come out of his weird lull and forge a solid career with at least one more major, though I’m fully prepared to be wrong.

Aside from Willett, though, it’s a collection of major stars (Rory, Spieth, Mickelson, Day, DJ, Thomas, Els), minor stars (Sergio, Stenson, Kaymer, Rose, Scott, Bubba), extremely good near-stars (Oosthuizen, Walker, Dufner, McDowell, Schwartzel, Clarke), exciting young rising stars (Reed, Koepka), and two guys in Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley who have won other huge professional events (the Players and a WGC).

That’s quite a murderer’s row of champions. The closest you really get to a journeyman there is Bradley, and that’s only because his career was ruined by a putting ban. Besides him? It’s a rich tapestry indeed.

Which means I’m afraid, that we’re due. The U.S. Open has had its fair share of fluky winners—the variable conditions are conducive to odd results—and Shinnecock already has the vibe of a “let’s add insult to injury” major. My Twitter feed has been flooded by journalists and fans stuck for hours in Long Island traffic, and what could be a better reward for that living nightmare than Brian Stuard riding a Sunday 74 to the title? Might as well screw the public twice!

All I’m saying is, brace yourselves. We’ve been living in a bubble, but all bubbles must burst. As the old saying goes, you can’t keep a good (journey)man down.

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