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There are Opens and there are Opens. And then there are Opens at St Andrews. Even among such glorious courses as Muirfield, Royal Lytham & St Annes, Royal Birkdale, Royal St George’s and now Royal Portrush, to mention only some of those venues that currently host the Championship, Opens over the fabled Old Course stand out. There is nowhere quite like the Scottish city of St Andrews for its sense of history (its university is the oldest in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world), its dazzlingly clear light on a summer’s evening, and the feeling the visitor has no matter how many times he or she has journeyed there that this is a place given over to golf and to its townspeople. So much has happened at St Andrews it scarcely seems possible to cram any more history into its narrow alleyways and cobbled streets. History whacks you over the head wherever you look.
Each Open at the Old Course generates more lore. The 2005 Open was the 27th to be held there dating back to Tom Kidd’s victory after rounds of 91 and 88 in 1873. It was another victory for Tiger Woods, his second at St Andrews in the Open, his 10th major championship victory and his second of the year. And he won it going away. He was two strokes ahead with eight holes to play, three ahead on the next, four on the next and five on the next. That was the eventual margin by which he won. The Times greeted this triumph with the headline: “Woods gets keys to No 10 with No Major Alarms” – 10 also being the number of the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street, London.
There are those who will remember it more for it being the last appearance in the game’s oldest major championship of Jack Nicklaus, by then six months past his 65th birthday. He had played in his first Open in 1962 when a wall divided Berlin, television was black-and-white and John F Kennedy was in the White House. At Nicklaus’s last, the Royal Bank of Scotland printed his image on a £5 note and mobile telephones smaller than one of Nicklaus’s hands could transmit photographs of him to any part of the world. “Attending future Opens at Hoylake and Turnberry, Royal Troon and Carnoustie and not seeing Nicklaus will be like visiting Trafalgar Square and finding that Nelson’s column has gone,” I wrote in The Times.
There was a moving ceremony on the Tuesday of Open week when Nicklaus received an award from the Association of Golf Writers. Nicklaus and golf writers? That might not have been expected. Arnold Palmer, yes. Palmer played bridge with Pat Ward-Thomas of The Guardian and called The Sunday Times’s Henry Longhurst “Henry Longthirst.” But Nicklaus? Hadn’t it been said that when interviewing him it was necessary to prepare your questions first lest his piercing blue eyes reduce you to a molten speck? A story often told among the journalist old-timers concerns the day Nicklaus’s round had comprised a poor outward half and a good inward half. Later, a keen reporter asked Nicklaus what he had done to improve his fortunes after the turn. “Dudley,” Nicklaus replied briskly. “If I told you that your readers would be even more confused than they already are.”
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