150 Years Later, Looking Back to Open's Roots

[Moecat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/sports/golf/15iht-SRBOPRESTWICK.html

 

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

Published: July 14, 2010

 

PRESTWICK, SCOTLAND — It has been a nice and round 150 years since the first British Open. And while the great golfers of today, such as Phil Mickelson, are waxing nostalgic this week about the thrill of returning to the “home of golf” at St. Andrews, the home of the Open is actually here on the other side of Scotland, on the west coast, where the roar of the sea now blends with the roars from the very nearby airport.

 

Antique golf clubs, including one made in 1863, at right, are seen in front of a photo of Open champions Tom Morris Junior and Senior, at Auchterlonies' sporting goods antiques department in St. Andrews on Tuesday.

 

Prestwick Golf Club does not have the global cachet of St. Andrews. Nor does it have the Swilken Bridge, the Valley of Sin or six centuries of golfing history behind it. But the two famous links courses do share the honor of having employed Old Tom Morris as greenskeeper and course designer, and it was Morris and the members at Prestwick who had the bright idea of organizing a competition for golf professionals on Oct. 17, 1860.

 

In the United States, Abraham Lincoln was running for president and South Carolina was preparing to secede from the Union. In China, the second Opium War was just about to wrap up.

 

But sports history was to be made at Prestwick, even if hardly anyone outside Prestwick noticed. To call it a true Open championship is a stretch. It was more of a closed invitation, sent out by Morris to 12 clubs in Scotland and England with the request that they each send no more than three of their best professional players (no amateurs allowed) with the caveat that they be “known and respectable ‘Caddies'.”

 

There was no prize money, only the symbolic reward of a red challenge belt with silver clasps, and the belt could only be kept permanently if it were won by the same man three years in a row.

 

“It was a challenge match for professional caddies,” said Hamish Frew, the club archivist at Prestwick. “It wouldn't become truly Open until three years later.”

 

Whatever it was called, the response in 1860 was hardly overwhelming. Only eight Scottish professionals took part, Morris included, and the fact that he had designed the 12-hole course would not help him win the title, at least not yet. After three rounds in one day, a total of 36 holes, Morris finished second behind Willie Park.

 

But it was the modest beginning of something big as Prestwick would stage the first 11 Opens before Morris's prodigy of a son, Young Tom, won the competition for the third straight time in 1870, thereby retaining the Open's prize. The members took stock, staged no competition in 1871 and then joined forces with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers with all three clubs sharing the cost of purchasing the Claret jug that was put into use in 1873 at St. Andrews and remains the Open trophy today.

 

On an island that relishes its history and is hard-wired to honor paid dues, it might seem surprising that there was no 150th anniversary return to Prestwick. The club remains a lively, evocative place full of character and characters, and although it has hosted 24 Opens, it has not staged one since 1925 because of space constraints and other logistical concerns.

 

While its newer neighbors to the north and south — Royal Troon and Turnberry — have become fixtures on the rotation of Open courses, Prestwick is relegated to the tournament's distant past, like Harry Vardon, hickory-shafted clubs and the gutta-percha ball.

 

“It would be nice to do an Open at Prestwick again, but I'm afraid it's just impossible because of crowd control and because the closing loop would not allow it,” said Ian Bunch, the club secretary.

 

There have been some consolation prizes this year. On Sunday, during the award ceremony at St. Andrews, the Prestwick captain, Brian Morrison, will present the 2010 Open champion with a replica of the red leather challenge belt. Last Saturday, the club organized a day of golf and a gala dinner at Prestwick to honor the 150th anniversary.

 

The present captains of the 13 other clubs that have staged the Open were at the head table. So were the five former Open champions who accepted Prestwick's invitation: Tony Jacklin, Bob Charles, Lee Trevino, Peter Thomson and Sandy Lyle, a Scotsman who started his recreational round on Saturday by hitting his opening drive out of bounds onto the railroad tracks that form Prestwick's eastern border.

 

“It's quite easily done,” Frew said. “I've been a member for over 50 years so I speak from experience.”

 

Prestwick — for all its short holes, quaint touches and unexpectedly friendly atmosphere — remains a links that can bite. But the biggest surprise on Saturday was that the Royal and Ancient presented Prestwick Golf Club with a full-scale replica of the Claret jug, complete with all the names of the winners up to 1925.

 

The jug is already on display in a glass case in the lobby of the Prestwick clubhouse.

 

“There's no club apart from the R and A museum that actually has one,” said David Fleming, Prestwick's head professional, of the jug as he showed it to a visitor on Tuesday.

 

If ever a club would have reason to be pretentious it would be the home of Open golf, but Prestwick is quite the contrary, even if it remains an all-male private club with a membership of just under 600 where coats and ties are still de rigueur in its main dining room and main smoke room.

 

Non-members are welcome and often welcomed and may play the course for a fee of £120, or $180, on weekdays and £145 on weekends, including limited time slots on Saturday.

 

“We have approximately 6,000 visitor rounds a year,” Bunch said. “They are predominantly North American, but come from all over.”

 

In short, it's a long way in spirit from the ultra-exclusive ethos of North American courses that like to play up their significantly shorter history: see Augusta National, home of the Masters. It is even different from a place like Royal Troon, which lies just north of Prestwick, with the two links separated by one of Scotland's many trailer parks.

 

“This is more of a club and Troon is more of a course,” said Ken Fraser, an 83-year-old veteran of World War II who is a member of both clubs and grew up in the house that still sits in the middle of Troon's old course.

 

“Someone like me could never come here and not get a game of golf,” he added. “I've been a member at Troon since the day I joined the army in 1942 and I can sit there all day and not get a game. It's not a club anymore. Most of the people live in Glasgow or whatever. It's just a different atmosphere. Troon is, by any measure, a better golf course, but this is more fun.”

 

Old Prestwick, as it is known here to distinguish it from Prestwick's other courses, remains a serious golfing experience, however. The original course was laid out by Morris in 1851, the same year the club was formed. Morris was from St. Andrews and had been an assistant there to Allan Robertson, the first true golf professional. Robertson supplemented his income by manufacturing the expensive feathery balls of the day but fell out with Morris after he spotted him playing on the Old Course with the new, cheaper gutta-percha ball that would soon dominate and democratize the game.

 

Morris was thus open to the idea of a career move to Prestwick, where the arrival of the railroad in the 1840s had created, as would be so often the case in Britain and Ireland, demand for a formal course. Morris did not have much links land to work with at Prestwick, but he found enough space for 12 memorable holes. The course was later expanded to 18 holes with the addition of new land in 1882, long after Morris had returned to St. Andrews in 1864.

 

But the spirit of Morris's first creation has been respected, and six of the original greens remain in use today. Three of the original holes remain essentially unchanged, including the par-5 third, with its huge Cardinal bunker that looks more like a beach, and the par-4 17th, with its blind approach shot over a ridge that obscures from view the Sahara bunker that guards the green.

 

A bell sits next to the 17th green so players can alert the next group that it is safe to swing away, and there is another bell greenside at the par-3 fifth. The fifth is named Himalayas because of the knoll that makes it a blind tee shot.

 

Walking up “the Himalayas” and the footpath strewn with crushed seashells, it is easy to feel like you are back in the 19th century until you reach the top of the rise and have your field of vision filled by a Ryan Air jet parked at the adjacent Glasgow Prestwick airport.

 

“There is a lovely story the caddies tell,” Bunch said. “They were caddying someone from America, and up on the 18th tee, the American said, “It's a great course, but why put a golf course next to an airport?' ”

 

Old Tom Morris did nothing of the sort.